Is It Supposed To Be Like This?

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

Built an HTPC about a month ago and still haven't been able to use it. All I need it to do is browse the web, play youtube, netflix, HD videos etc. @ full screen and run Steam in-home game streaming via HDMI. Regular HTPC stuff.

So far I've tried Sabayon, Mint 16 and Manjaro Open Box. With all of them I've run into problems I simply could not figure out, regardless of how many hours I spent researching and working on it. Often, if I managed to fix one issue, another would arise. 

As much as I enjoy tinkering with Linux and learning how to use it, I would very much like to actually USE the machine for it's intended purpose!!! (>_<)

Can anyone recommend any other distros I haven't tried yet?

How long does one continue to try and make something work with little/no success before it negates the whole purpose? 

I realize I'm still very new to Linux, but is it supposed to take this long to get such simple functions to work? Is it supposed to be this tedious? 

Hate to say it, but I'm starting to think the only solution at this point is to just cave and buy windows. I'd really prefer not to, but I'm running out of options. Instead of using and enjoying my new PC, I'm spending hours upon hours troubleshooting and typing in bash with little to no success.

 

Linux is playing "hard to get" with me to the extreme. lol

2

Ubuntu is a really nice distro that i have used before, i don't use it anymore cause i was able to get windows for free. it was very simple to use and very user friendly. So just as my personal opinion that is what i would recommend. 

http://www.ubuntu.com/

3

Thanks for the recommendation. I've used Ubuntu before, several years ago, but have not tried it again since. I know it has large community support so it might be worth another shot. 

Will give it a try in virtualbox first and see if I can get everything working properly.

4

Manjaro XFCE flavor worked nicely for me. I couldn't figure out the Openbox on very well.

Elementary OS is pretty nice.

OpenSUSE also worked well for me.

5

I thought Xbmc on Manjaro open box rocks. Mint 17 was pretty easy to setup.

 

6

I'm guessing it's the “windows mentality” that's the issue, in linux you don't install & edit the programs settings, you write rules to all the processes since everything runs from a text file, everything. It might seem confusing at first but it's surprisingly easy, and you'll be amazed how much you can tinker when you get the hang of it.

All distros run the same kernel and function equally so distrohopping won't be of much help. I'd still recommend Manjaro (maybe try another DE if openbox was too limiting) since it's up-to-date and the whole Arch Wiki (Linux Bible) is at your disposal.

What kind of issues did you have? There's easy workarounds for all the problems.

7

Know what you mean i struggle with my windows mentality daily. I still feel lost without my antivirus, malware,adware scanners watchdogs and such.

8

Here's a link the to post I made on the Manjaro forums with a list of issues: https://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=14813.0

I know it's not windows and I understand everything runs via text rules/commands. The problem is when I try and follow the wiki (or what ever) fix for which ever issue and it either doesn't work, causes other issues or I can't complete the steps because of some other error or problem. 

Manjaro Open Box was the first distro I tried where pipelight actually works properly and allows netflix playback to work and steam in-home streaming also works. All other distros I tried, I followed the instructions exactly for getting pipelight to work and it just wouldn't. And nothing I did could get in-home streaming to work. Even after trying solutions other people found worked for them - and I always try to find late/relevant information. Nothing from more than several months old at least.

You say there are easy workarounds for all the problems and I'm sure there are. If you are an experienced user, you probably know some of those solutions or at least know what to do when the "common workarounds" don't work. For all the problems I listed, I have tried all the relevant/latest common solutions I could find. Best I could do is partial solution and or another issue arises as a result.

Another thing that makes this difficult is contradictory information. One person on another forum has suggested I use chomium with a different plugin - meanwhile someone else on this forum, whom I believe to be quite knowledgeable with Linux, via email has suggested Firefox with pipelight works better.  

As you'll see from the list, there are quite a few issues and many which are probably interrelated. 

 

9

I would help if i can but i have only gotten as far as remote access and the remotes setup. Yet to try the streaming side. I am too much of a linx noob but will keep your issues in mind when doing research on the streaming side.

10

From what it seems it's the display drivers causing headaches. Also as a sidenote if you have the flashplugin installed, uninstall it and never install it again. Enable HTML5 in your browsers.

You could try out “Minitube” from the repos, it's a FOSS YouTube browser which isn't nearly as demanding on resources as Chromium or Firefox. (You can also subscribe to channels without logging in to Google ;)

And meh, Pipelight for Netflix, I doubt there's any alternatives.

Fix your drivers, remove the proprietary catalyst humbug and install the FOSS drivers instead. 

Removing nasty sh*t: $ sudo pacman -Rns fglrx

Install the free drivers: $ sudo pacman -S xf86-video-ati

Also install the mesa plugins and ati-dri to actually enable hardware acceleration. Log out and back in after all installations are complete.

If performance is still poor, you need to edit your display settings. All you need to do is create a configuration file named 20-radeon.conf for the GPU and place it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/

Type in the terminal $ sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf

 #Here's a template, you can just copy-paste it

Section "Device”

Identifier "Radeon"

Driver "Radeon"

Option      "AccelMethod"      "EXA"

Option      "EXAVSync"           "on"

Option      "EXAPixmaps"        "on"

Option       "AccelDFS"           "on"

Option      "RenderAccel"       "on"

Option       "ColorTiling"         "on"

Option       "EnablePageFlip"   "on"

EndSection

 

Then save it. To edit settings just change the values between on and off and save. If you need more configurations, check out VDPAU in the wiki.

Restart X by logging out and back in for changes to take effect.

If Steam keeps crashing with the free drivers you need to delete some of Steams out-dated libraries as explained here. (Throw away bad folders)

 

11

Thanks for taking the time to help. :)

Couple things...

-I've been told the open source GPU drivers don't perform as well as the proprietary, but I'll give it a shot. Which is actually better? 

-To install the mesa plugins and ati-dri, do I simply install those through add/remove, or through bash? If through bash, are those the exact module names?

-As for flash, I have it enabled in pipelight plugin along with silverlight (needed for netflix).

 

Just for an update, I tried streaming several games this evening (castle crashers, day of defeat: source, amnesia, and Metro last light) and all seemed to run not too bad (still on proprietary drivers) with frame rates in the high 50's most of the time. The only issue is the sound, which was crackling horribly. I tried changing the audio device but nothing helped.

12

The free drivers are on par with catalyst when it comes to 2D acceleration, in 3D applications the free drivers are at the moment only a tad behind proprietary drivers, so there's no reason to use proprietary drivers on a HTPC.

The FOSS drivers has gotten major improvements during the last year and still keeps getting better thanks to rapid development for radeon cards, kernel 3.16 which will ship later this summer will boost the performance once again a bit. I don't know what the situation is for nvidia is tho. Check your kernel version by typing in the terminal “uname -a” without the quotes.

You can install the mesa plugins (ati-dri is part of the mesa plugins, so you shouldn't need to install it separately) via the package manager or via the terminal, whichever suits you best, the output is the same. Just search for “mesa” in pacaur or you can search it in the terminal “pacman -Ss mesa”.

13

Ok thanks, I will give the FOSS drivers a try. I like to do as much as possible through terminal - to learn how to use it better and see exactly what it's doing. 

 

FYI - tried Ubuntu 14.04 in virtual box last night and managed to break it - to the point where I can't even open terminal (tried ctrl + alt + T). It just shows the desktop background and nothing else. Requires  a hard shutdown to kill. All I did was follow the pipelight installation instructions for Ubuntu exactly and enabled flash and silverlight through pipelight-plugin. *scratched head* lol. I'm assuming it has something to do with the graphical drivers in virtual box or something. 

14

Ok, so I ran: pacman -Rns fglrx and it said: target not found "fglrx"

After following the fglrx uninstall instructions on archwiki and rebooting (when it told me to) it now will not boot and gets stuck after the grub menu. There was no "nomodeset" or "blacklist radeon" in the command line to remove either. >_<

Tis the story of my life when it comes to working in Linux for me. This happens all the time with a lot of things I try to do...lol.  

I'm now in the process of re-installing the whole OS but with the FOSS driver option this time. 

15

Don't take this the wrong way - with all the problems you've encountered using linux - perhaps windows would be a faster solution so you're spending less time problem solving and more time being entertained.

I'm sure you're just about pulling your hair out by this stage.

     "FYI - tried Ubuntu 14.04 in virtual box last night and managed to break it"


How is that even possible? lol.

As an Aside, you could look into a MythTV/XBMC combo, or openElec just to get up and running.

 

 

16

Just try something like Xubuntu or Elementary. 

17

Well, I don't just want to be entertained, I want to learn how to do this and get it working. What's most frustrating is there are lots of other users out there who have all this working on their machines (same distro) and when I try to use or follow the instruction they used to fix it, it doesn't work for me for one reason or another. Hence the title of this thread. :P

Yeah I don't know how what I did broke Ubuntu 14.04 either. I explained what I did in my other post and I'm assuming it's because I'm working in a virtual box environment vs bare metal.

The problem with XBMC and other media-center oriented distros is they don't or can't run netflix and or steam. I've been trying to "just get up and running" for several weeks now. lol.  

 

I've moved on to SteamOS now - which the in-home game streaming works great except the sound crackles horribly. I have yet to find a solution to fix the sound and while there are instructions on the steam community to get netflix working in steamOS (on the desktop via weezy) yet, once again, I can't get past a particular step because it needs a certain dependency and of course, that dependency will not install for some reason and the walkaround does not work because - it needs that dependency! lol. I'm currently waiting for a reply on how to get around this, and I have a few more things to try to fix the bad audio. 

If I can't get any of this to work, I just may have to cave and buy windows. -_-

I really like Linux and I think I'm getting the hang of how to work with it, but how long should one spend on trying to get something to work before your efforts become futile? Is it typical to spend 4 weeks+ just trying to fix one thing?

18

Thanks, I'll give those a try.