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[Toroguy2004]

Hello J River,

I have been using J River Media Center since version 9 and I came to depend on it for years.

During the past year however, I have started to migrate away from windows for multiple reasons. So far I have identified applications for every purpose (even home banking) but I am unsatisfied with Linux based music databases.

It would be great if J River Media Center would enter the line of those products that can be used cross platform (Google Earth, Matrica Moneyplex, Sugar CRM, Firefox & Thunderbird, OpenOffice)

Not all features need to be the same of course. Some might be dropped for compatibility reasons. The main application however would fare extremely well under a *native* linux environment.

I have tried recent versions of Ubuntu 9.04 with Wine and Crossover Office with MC13 to no avail. The application crashes within less than a minute and performance within the compatibility layer(s) is abyssal (two albums were imported and in library view the marked row followed the cursor with a two second lag!!). Resizing the columns is also impossible due to a big black bar that hides the table headers and file actions like rename or tagging cause almost immediate crashes.

Please consider this request. A commercial product like MC would blow linux freeware in this field out of the water and make a perfect addition to the alround usability of that platform.

Best,
Sebastian K.

Tested on: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700, Asus Striker Extreme, 4GB Kingston HyperX, Asus EN8800 GTS, Ubuntu 9.04, WinXP Pro Dualboot.

PS: Google did a very nice job with encapsuling their Google Earth application. That saved them from rewriting the entire code.

[Toroguy2004]

Nope, Amarok 1.4 doesn't compare either. I tried Gmusicbrowser, Banshee, Amarok, Exaile, Rhythmbox and XMMS.

Even though these are the usual suspects with KDE or Gnome, they don't deliver well on functions that are IMHO essential to a good music collection:

- mass tagging
- renaming files from ID3 and vice versa
- fluent CD Burning of Data and audio CD
- an easy customizable frontend
- working with lots of different formats

Cheers

[pank2002]

This request comes from time to time. As always I support the request but so far it has not been successful. There is a guide Linux-guide on the wiki.
-Rasmus

[krosenqu]

Bump

I'd like to see Media Center for Linux!

Even if it was a smaller stripped down cousin that only did the basics.  I'd pay money for it because the other options that are out there now are quite limited in  quality / functionality.

[dm233]

take a look at "virtual box dot org"  allows for guest OS to be run on just about any platform... much better than wine or any of the other solutions out there when it comes to desktop virtualization and tons more stable than wine, since instead of doing emulation you are carving out bits of hardware for the guest os and doing more of a straight up virtualization along the lines of vmware/citrix and the raft of numerous virtualization technologies out there.  virtual box allows for any number of guest OSes to be launched from inside the main OS and even allows for dedicating hardware to specific guests as well so you can carve out a core cpu and dedicated memory for the VM and run a super light windows install.  just set up MC on a vista guest over the weekend and if any one is interested PM me and i can probably put together a quick guide.  so far been able to get a functioning library server running and local playback (directx) on vista home premium inside ubuntu.

my requirements are little different so anyone else mileage will very.  I have no idea how one would get full function video/audio playback in a VM scenario since i havent really looked at it.  would think going down the WASPI/EVR route is going to be a bugbear to implement if even possible since most implementations require exclusive access to the hardware to really work with out issues.  I went down this route as a quick Proof  of Concept to see if it could be done and my concerns were mainly bout centralizing the library on the same box as the files from a smb share.  other wise it gets to be a bit unwieldy having a linux box for the file repo and a separate wintel box to handle the library functions for MC and wine was crashing too much to be considered Production ready.

so far the virtualbox/vista solution has been fairly rock solid with the limited testing ive done so far but looks like it may be the best way.  only real issue i see is the huge vista footprint with a stock install.  currently ive got 1 core of a quad phenomII and 2gb mem allocated and its fairly snappy.  but resource intensive having to use a quarter of the system capacity to run the library server. perhaps when i have time will look to do custom lightweight xp install using nLite or wait to see how things shake out with the barebones win7 install direction for netbooks.  it would be nice to get the setup down to a fractional core and less dedicated memory.  only other option is to jriver to release a version or at least the basic library server server functionality native to linux.  that piece should be good to go right around the time they integrate a true relational database version...

[tunetyme]

I'm still running XP Pro and I would love to move MC into a Linux environment.  I would dump Microsoft in a heartbeat.  I too would be happy to pay for a Linux version of MC.  

[BryanC]

Virtualbox + Guest Additions + an NLite copy of XP and you're set.

[tunetyme]

Cool!  I will check it out ASAP.

[newsposter]

unless you personally OWN and have produced FOR YOURSELF that co-called 'nlite copy of XP' you are likely pirating licensed software.

Good luck with that.

[tunetyme]

newsposter:

I am not sure why you think that this is pirating software.  What Nlite does is take your own copy of XP or other version and strip out unwanted or needed parts of the software like explorer, messenger, etc.  You use your own copy of the software and it is staying on the same machine, what's the problem?

This is from their guide.

 1. nLite allows you to customize your installation of Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows 2003. You can integrate service packs and hotfixes from Microsoft directly into your windows distribution files without having to re-download and install them every time you need to re-install windows.

2. There is also the option to remove unwanted components from within windows. Many applications are automatically included every time windows is installed. Not every person needs or even wants all of these applications which Microsoft considers to be necessary. By removing these unwanted components you can free up space within your setup and ultimately save space on your hard drive after installation.

3. nLite also provides a way to customize your installation by allowing numerous tweaks to the way windows looks and operates after it has been installed. You can even bypass Microsoft's bulky unattended setup instructions and do it the easy way. The nLite way!

[newsposter]

did you not read/understand my post?

"unless you personally OWN and have produced FOR YOURSELF that co-called 'nlite copy of XP' you are likely pirating licensed software"

I use nlite all the time and am a contributor to the support and addon website(s).

The problem with nlite is that cagey users create and distribute XP iso images with license keys.  That kind of distribution with and without license keys, is indeed piracy.  Nuhi and the forum admins at msfn jump all over announcements and discussion of such distributions.

As long as you yourself are licensed for XP and own an official, Microsoft-produced copy of the OS, you can indeed use nlite to create a customized image for personal use only.

[BryanC]

Why would you not do it yourself? I wouldn't trust a downloaded copy of an OS even if it was running in a virtual environment.

With my nLite'd XP virtualbox install, I got it down to 100 megs, it starts up in 8 seconds and I can have a stand-alone MC window with active mouse seeking in Linux that is up in 10 seconds.

The VB environment is actually FASTER than a stand-alone install, thanks to kernel presentation. Best of both worlds.

[newsposter]

It's time for you to relax.

Nowhere did I advocate using downloaded images.  I'm cautioning others against doing so.

The installation advantages of an nlite-ed XP image are well known.

[tsmoke]

take a look at "virtual box dot org"  allows for guest OS to be run on just about any platform...

I'm using virtual box for various things and there is a lot of problems with this solution

License: You have to have boxed (read expensive) license for Xindows XP
USB: redirectig USB devices (Players, soundcards) does't work 100% flawlessly.
Shared folders: to slow for huge libraries.
Seamles windows: I had some problems with non-standard graphical intensive apps like MC

[dm233]

I'm using virtual box for various things and there is a lot of problems with this solution

License: You have to have boxed (read expensive) license for Xindows XP
USB: redirectig USB devices (Players, soundcards) does't work 100% flawlessly.
Shared folders: to slow for huge libraries.
Seamles windows: I had some problems with non-standard graphical intensive apps like MC

Virtualization is not an easy an easy path to follow.  wildly diverging implementations and choices made by developers leave the process fraught with many hair pulling scenarios and sleepless nights.  but so far virtualbox has been fairly stable and one of the better implementations out there, especially when it comes to a guest os residing on a functioning host.  keep in mind if you are expecting any sort of decent performance then you really need to have some decent hardware on the host to pull it off with out a lot of performance degradation.  quad core, 4gb mem+ 8gb recommended, decent video card, etc...  it helps immensely if youre using a new gen cpu with all the new bells and whistles baked in for virtualization to the bare metal.

to your points here are a few observations...
licensing, really cant get around it.  if going to use windows legally then you are going to need to have a license.  I used an old license from a retired machine that i owned, so didnt have to really pay for it.  if you dont have an old machine that no longer being used or a license from the machine you may have converted then you'll definitely need one for it to be legal.  as for re-purposing your old licenses, in the US this has been covered in case law on the "doctrine of first sale" and a discussion for another board.  so re-purposing any old licenses for hardware you own shouldnt be too much of an issue and is a great way skirt around having to buy a new license for something you already own but have since uninstalled from its original location.  keep in mind that a license really only covers one machine. so you cant really install the same license on 2 separate machines.  if you re-purpose then you have to uninstall the the software on the old hardware.

USB- usb is a bit tricky in virtualization.  this is especially true if the device is in use by the host and then needs to be used by the guest.  conflicts can arise when both OSes jocky for control of the resource.  best way around this is to have dedicated hardware for the guest os.  for example if you were going to use an usb dac for audio output, use a different piece of hardware for the host and only "attach" the dac to the guest.  the guest should then have completed dedicated control over the attached device.  try to stay away from an sort of external drive sharing between hosts/guest and dedicate them to either one or the other.  can get into some really kooky problems when either of the OSes tries to take control of the hardware...

shared folders-  did you set up an internal virtual network and look at perhaps adding iSCSI to gain some performance improvements?  Internal virtual network is the first place to start, iSCSI is a bit more advanced.  the documentation and forums are a great resource to get the answers you need to configure your system for decent performance.  but setting up a virtualized internal network should speed things up greatly...

graphics-  in all reality if looking to playback video or heavy eye candy inside MC then you are definitely going to be disappointed.  Ive been running a very stripped down interface with out a lot of eye candy and graphic flourishes that eat up precious system resources.  another thing to consider is to make sure that when youve built your guest OS that youve included the "guest additions" for windows if thats the path you are taking...  there are some optimizations in there to add support to enable hardware acceleration and enhance the directx interpretation. if still having issues then you can always run the guest OS as headless and just RDP into it. 

some things to think about.  again running a guest OS is not a trivial exercise.  takes a bit of plumbing to get it to work out right and even then it wont be the same as running natively.  sure would be great to have MC run native on linux,  but dont think its gonna happen anytime soon...  running as a guest os is by far the best way ive found out there..  unless someone has any other suggestions...  id be welcome to hear how anyone else has gotten MC to run on linux and what they are running...

[danrien]

I have had MC (back in v11 or 12, I think), running on Linux through Wine - and it was running well.  Then the new version came out that made some new system calls that weren't supported, and it broke.  Thus the neverending battle between Wine and Microsoft continued on a new battlefront .