Well i am buliding a HTPC/media server using old parts,and i am trying to decide what OS to run.
It is going to have a 2TB drive for videos and stuff recorded using a tv tuner i have,it is also going to have a 160gb&120Gb sata drives for music& cd backups and pictures.
Other than that it is an am2+ board,and if i can sell off some of my old ide drives i will pick up a athlon II X4 640 and mabye a cpu cooler,so i can overclock.i have a friend who says he will give me a 450w psu,and he has 2x2gb 1066mhz DDR2,and for a video card i will be using a ati AIW x800xl,if it does not work i will use a 7900GS.
Well my goal with this is to have it hooked up to my 1080i HDTV,and right now it will mainly be used for media playback(cause i am living with my sister and she has a dvr with cable),but when i get my own place i want to use it as a DVR also,but other than media playback on the tv,i want to not only let people in the house be able to stream off of it,but i would love to be able to also stream to my phone(GS2) while i am at work on my lunch.
Now with windows i know just enough to fix most of the problems i have had myself,but with linux,i used it once,i tried to use ubuntu(and wine) to run a game server on a old dell poweredge server,and i never got it running,cause i could not even get wine running lol.So i am a major linux noob.
But i know linux will most likly suit my needs better lol.
So what do you guys think i should use for this project?
Linux will work well for your intended task, but there are no quick fixes, you'll have to plan for 2 month of learning linux (assuming 1h/day dedication). You will have to learn the basics before you can start your project. If you are not willing spend time on stuff that isn't directly related to your project, go with windows.
The downside with noobfriendly windows solutions is that they aren't as customizable.
Only one factor determins whether you're best off running windoze or GNU/Linux on your media server: DRM.
Is your media acquired through DRM-infested channels, go for windoze, is your media DRM free, go for GNU/Linux.
For GNU/Linux, XBMC requires little configuration, custom Myth-based solution require a lot of configuration, but they offer a lot of benefits (like unscrambling DVB channels for free if that's legal in your country).
If you don't require DVB, a simple distro that pre-includes bad and ugly codecs is the way to go, like Manjaro Linux, which already has a DLNA server preinstalled I think, and if not, it's really easy to install.
It all depends on whether you've bought the media to use freely or whether you've walked into a DRM honey trap and have given money to some big corporation to acquire media you can't use freely.
Even if you're running windoze on it, you can still get free and/or open source clients to playback on devices without any configuration, like Twonky for Android.
Well a lot of my media is either DVD's that i just downloaded copys of,cause i always have trouble ripping them,and don't want to switch disks a lot,and the music was all ripped off cd's i have,so i don't think i have any DRM,idk about the DVB.
just put on a ubuntu version with a nice UI and be happy.
Something like Mint for example which has a UI that is quite similar to windows 7 etc should work well for you, and the overhead for linux mint as far as machine requirements is light. I would recommend something like Lubuntu but that requires a few additional installs for a easy to use desktop environment, where as Mint is more or less point and click.
Apps and Media codecs can be installed easily as it prompts you on setup if you want to do that, and then the software update feature on mint allows you to easily get VLC and any other HTPC type program you may ever need.
As for server hmm, you could make the drive with your media on it shared over your network easily enough and you will be able to stream to almost any device.
