We were pretty impressed by the demos of LinuxMCE, so we decided to give it a try. More details on that, when my wife decides to stop being lazy. The end result was pretty disastrous and we decided to switch back to Freevo. Since I keep hearing good things about Ubuntu, I decided to use that at the base of my Freevo install. This is by no means a detailed walk-though, it just describes the steps I took to try and get it working.
- Install Ubuntu
- Install restricted formats
- Attempt to install Freevo, but get stymied by a python dependency error
- Search internet for a list of dependencies and install those
- Check that mp3s, dvds, and movie files play in xine or mplayer
- Compile and install Kaa, install any dependencies you didn’t catch earlier
- Compile and install Freevo
- Marvel about how not bad that process was
- Install lirc (remote control package) from repositories
- Scratch head over the non-existence of lirc modules
- Discover that package was just source, and compile it using the directions
- Load module, gawk at strange IRQ related error
- Add boot option, recommended by the strange IRQ error, to grub
- Reboot
- Load module, get same error
- Search google, find hack, and try the last to steps again, repeatedly
- Break down in tears
- Reach for OpenSUSE disk
