Sunday, May 20, 2012

Mythbuntu

 Carts, horses.

But oh hell yes replace XP with Ubuntu. And now, I'm replacing Mythbuntu with Ubuntu. At this stage, it only makes sense.

All this is happening on the Dell Dimension 3000 that Kim gave me. Did I need another computer?  Well, not really... I just hate to see working PCs get tossed out, and she was surely going to do that. So!  Here we are.

Years ago, when it first became feasible, I dreamed of turning a PC into a DVR, but I never had a spare one to dick around with to make it happen. Now, I do. So, I got it in my head that Mythbuntu was the way to go (and really, this still sounds like a fine idea, but...), given my comfort and high regard for Ubuntu as an OS.

However, this PC has no DVD drive, neither reader nor writer. It also has no TV tuner card. It currently has only a 40GB hard drive. Only 512MB/RAM. In short, it has great potential  to be a Mythbuntu system DVR and media center, but it's not quite there, yet.

So, this is my hobby box, and a way to dip my toe (probably my leg) into Unix, again. Mythbuntu is not exactly a "install-it-and-use-it" OS, but it's not far from it. There are lots of tweaks that can be done to it, but a lot of that tweaking has to be done through the shell interface, and not Ubuntu's lovely GUI. I call this my plan to keep my brain from prematurely wilting.

I have some RAM around here, somewhere... we'll see if it's PC3200 of a usable size. If not, will have to buy enough to max it out (2GB). I have oodles of IDE HDDs here, and most of them are bigger than 40GB. The Dimension 3000 can take a Pentium 4 Prescott 3.2/800, and I can get one with free shipping for $10.

This is gonna be fun. For geeks.
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