INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 21 for Linux => Topic started by: nickolsj on August 29, 2015, 08:39:07 pm
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As of right now, what version/build of MC and what distro/version of Linux is recommended to get the best experience?
Also, is there a recommended gui/desktop environment?
thx
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Media Center is developed on Debian Wheezy for 32-bit and Debian Jessie for 64-bit (I'd recommend GNOME for either one, but Xfce should work fine too) and those are the two officially supported distros. That said, Media Center works perfectly on other distros, especially those derived from Debian like Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
My personal recommendation is using the 64-bit build of Media Center on Linux Mint 17.2 64-bit (Cinnamon is my recommended flavor of Mint) or Ubuntu 15.04 64-bit. If you want to use Debian, I'd recommend Debian Jessie 64-bit. Plus it's easy to setup Media Center in any of them using my tutorials for Debian Jessie (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=99333.0) or Ubuntu/Linux Mint (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=99334.0). ;)
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As of right now, what version/build of MC and what distro/version of Linux is recommended to get the best experience?
Only Debian is officially supported so Debian is the easy answer. There are builds for Debian Wheezy and Debian Jessie. Jessie will have newer software so if you plan to use the machine for anything other than MC, Jessie may be a better bet. If it's a dedicated MC machine either one should work.
People have MC running on all kinds of distros though. If want a very "windows-like" experience, I agree with Awesome Donkey, Mint is very nice and works "pretty well" out of the box.
Also, is there a recommended gui/desktop environment?
That's mostly a matter of preference and what your hardware will bear. There are lots and lots of different DEs, but many are tied to a single distro or don't have wide adoption. Be aware that many distros effectively only ship with one or two DEs, so your distro choice can dictate your DE. Some DE's are also only packaged on certain distros, so that can limit your choice too (Unity being the main example).
Debian offers a choice of desktops (the task selector on the installer offers four, but you can install some others manually after installation). I like Gnome, alot, and it's the default desktop in Debian. It does have a comparatively big memory and processor footprint (about like a modern version of Windows might have).
XFCE is lighter weight but still has most of the things you'd want in a desktop environment. I've used it happily on older hardware. LXDE is lighter still, but is missing some things that make it less useful (to me) as a day to day desktop (like compositing/vsync).
If you're thinking about Mint, the default build ships with the Cinnamon DE which is a fork/modification of the Gnome desktop to give it a more traditional desktop experience. It has a similar resource load to Gnome. If you like Cinnamon, but want to run Debian for support reasons, you can manually install Cinnamon on Debian too.
I've run MC in all of these desktop environments, but things work best "out of the box" on Gnome and Cinnamon in my experience (fullscreen is a little wonky on XFCE sometimes).
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thanks for the replies.
How about media center itself, is MC21 ready for primetime, or is it best to stick with MC20 at the present?
Regarding Ubuntu, I am trying out 14.04, but currently experiencing problems with TV show series and season cover art (have posted regarding this issue in the MC20 for Linux section: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=99711.0 (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=99711.0)). Not to go too in depth here as opposed to my other post, but after a clean install of Ubuntu and MC20, I still do not see cover art for either series or seasons of TV shows. Thought it might somehow be related to running on Ubuntu or the DE (LXDE) I am using.
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installed MC21; it resolved my issue with tv show cover art. For the long version, see my other post linked in this thread.
As of right now, I am running MC21 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. May set up a VM with Debian to see if there is any difference in performance and functionality; but for right now, other than issues that have already been identified and yet to be corrected and/or added --all is good.