INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 20 for Linux => Topic started by: sgrowan on January 22, 2014, 10:57:19 pm
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How close is the Linux version to JRiver Windows? Any screen shots available? I know it is still in Beta. I'm wondering what the usability factor is? I believe the audio section is to be finished first. So is it ready?
Has anyone compared the SQ of JRiver versions Linux vs Windows or IOS?
I'm expecting that the Linux might be the best soundin?
Thanks for the info.
Steven
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Hi Steven,
The looks are the same except maybe for the font, which looks different. There are still issues, see the open issues thread pinned at top of the board. It's behind a few versions but still accurate I think.
I think the Linux version is usable but its not ready yet. Expect some minor annoyances, it may crash now and then and certain functionality is still missing. JRiver is hard at work making it stable first before implementing missing features etc.
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Thanks for the info.
I do have a couple of more questions.
1. Will JRemote work yet with the JRiver Linux product?
2. What is the best Linux kernal to start with? I want to use a graphical interface. The only Linux program I want to use is JRiver. But I will still need to use the internet occasionally, a browser like Firefox, printer interface, etc.
Picking the kernal is a bit confusing for there are many such as Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, and a plethora off others.
I'm thinking there may be a "best" kernal meaning it is easy to use, runs well with JRiver, and will understand the exD driver and Amanero drivers used by my Lampizator dac.
Thanks for any and all help you give.
Steven 8)
P.S. I'm more than ready to leap out of the Windows World!
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They're not called kernels - they're called distributions. All of them, however, are using the Linux kernel. I'd recommend Ubuntu or Mint, especially for first timers.
and will understand the exD driver and Amanero drivers used by my Lampizator dac.
Don't be surprised if there's no (official) driver support for your DAC on Linux - and you can't use Windows drivers on Linux. Hopefully the kernel has generic support, which should be sufficient enough. Honestly if you're jumping into Linux for the first time, I'd recommend trying a distribution in a virtual machine (e.g. VirtualBox or VMware) on Windows first to get a feel for it before jumping into it head first by installing it on your machine and/or dual-booting with Windows.
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I would echo AD's comments on a VM to test out a distro. I throw my $.02 behind openSUSE 13.1, it's stable, there is an active community, you can go bleeding edge quite easily with their repositories and installation is a breeze.
If you have AMD GPU and you want to use HDMI multichannel out or HD bitstreaming, you will need kernel 3.13+. openSUSE always has a bleeding edge kernel in their repository as well, so it's easy like Ubuntu to update the kernel (and still keep your older kernels) if you don't build your own. MC works great in this scenario.
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I've been through them all and I keep coming back to Debian with XFCE. If MC is going to be your main program to run, you need to be aware that there are potentially more problems with running it on other distributions than there are with Debian since MC is being developed on Debian.
You'll find that there are as many opinions as there are distributions; you need to try them out and find one that suits your wishes. There is no single best distribution; there are pro's and con's to each of them.
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Again, I have to recommend Ubuntu if you're using Linux for the first time. Setting up MC in Ubuntu is easier with less steps required than Debian, in my opinion. Also if you're using an AMD GPU and you need kernel 3.13 for HDMI audio, it's really simple to install in Ubuntu via this tutorial (http://linuxg.net/how-to-install-kernel-3-13-on-ubuntu-linux-mint-pear-os-and-elementary-os/) where-as in Debian you have to compile it from scratch.
Once you're used to using Linux, then look into other distros like Mint, Debian, openSUSE, Fedora, etc. if you want to.
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Thanks for all the info and help. I'll probably try Debian first and yes install from thumb drive or disc to try it out.
Steven 8)
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I can confirm that JRemote works perfectly with MC for Linux.
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Gizmo also works perfectly with MC for Linux.
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An earlier posting from Awesome Donkey indicated: Setting up MC in Ubuntu is easier with less steps required than Debian,. I am new to Linux and I tried Ubuntu on an older PC. When I attempted to install MC I got the following error: "Dependency is not satisfiable: libcurl3 (>=7.26)." I tried the install on both versions 10 and 12.04 with the same result. Does MC require version 13?
An important note is the old box is a 14 year old Pentium 3 with only 250 MB of RAM. It does run, but is so slow it is not useable. When I upgraded from 10 to 12, it seemed to slow down more and the upgrade took many hours to run. I don't think I want to try to upgrade the version any more on the old box.
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Hi there! It seems that MC requires newer dependencies that are only available on Ubuntu 13.04 and above. Fear not however, the next 14.04 LTS release is only two months away which will satisfy MC's dependencies! :D
I might be looking into 12.04 LTS soon - maybe there's a PPA with backports to help satisfy those dependencies.
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Thanks for your help. How much memory should one have to adequately run Ubuntu 13.04?
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This topic may help: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements
I'm not sure how well it'd run though. In that case I'd probably look into an alternative like Elementary OS.
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An important note is the old box is a 14 year old Pentium 3 with only 250 MB of RAM. It does run, but is so slow it is not useable. When I upgraded from 10 to 12, it seemed to slow down more and the upgrade took many hours to run. I don't think I want to try to upgrade the version any more on the old box.
Most of that slowness is the hard disk. Ubuntu is a little heavy on the memory so it will swap. Because the drive is so slow, it will only get slower because it needs to access that drive for swapping too while its reading and writing for the upgrade. It basically gets in the way of itself if that makes sense.
Seriously you should try Debian Wheezy with XFCE. The install is easy enough and while it may be a few more steps to install MC that's all there is to it, it isn't harder per se. If I remember correctly a clean install used only around 160MB. It will look a bit spartan but its no less functional 8). You can make it look prettier once you're happy with how it runs.
The problem is with modern programs (on every distro). Mozilla intstantly uses like 160MB with no tabs open. My current session is like 350MB with 3 tabs and a few addons. MC idling is using about 60MB here, so as long as you're not running anything else, it should run fine.
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An earlier posting from Awesome Donkey indicated: Setting up MC in Ubuntu is easier with less steps required than Debian,. I am new to Linux and I tried Ubuntu on an older PC. When I attempted to install MC I got the following error: "Dependency is not satisfiable: libcurl3 (>=7.26)." I tried the install on both versions 10 and 12.04 with the same result. Does MC require version 13?
An important note is the old box is a 14 year old Pentium 3 with only 250 MB of RAM. It does run, but is so slow it is not useable. When I upgraded from 10 to 12, it seemed to slow down more and the upgrade took many hours to run. I don't think I want to try to upgrade the version any more on the old box.
Ubuntu would be close to unusable on that system. Try a debian minimal install and only apt-get a very light DE like XFCE (light) or LXDE (lighter, but uglier). Also install a login manager like lightdm. You can install lubuntu or xubuntu but you will be getting a ton of software packages included that you may or may not use.
Compared to most 'advanced' distros, installing debian minimal is nearly as easy as Ubuntu.
Here's a link to the Debian testing minimal installer: https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
Those DEs might even be too much for that computer. You can try Puppy debian, though I don't know how trivial it is to get MC setup on that system.
After completing installation, you'll be at a command prompt. Login as root and run
apt-get install xfce4 lightdm
You can install sudo, etc, too at this point so that you can drop back to the user-level account you created during the installation routine.
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I'm a little late returning to this thread. I appreciate the feedback from all of you.
The old Pentium III will probably soon go to the recycle bin. I decided to replace my 8 year old box running Win XP with a new one. I now have an Asus Z87 board, Intel core i5 4670K processor, and 16 GB of RAM. I set 2 partitions on the drive, 1 for Windows 7, and 1 for Ubuntu 13.10. I select either Windows or Ubuntu when I boot up, but I do not run them simultaneously. Now there is plenty of power to run Ubuntu. Windows and everything else with it runs much faster than the old box.
Tonight I attempted to set up Ubuntu for Media Center installation. I got errors when I tried to set the dependencies as described in "How-to: Setup Media Center 19 in Ubuntu" that Awesome Donkey started. I posed the results there.
Thanks again to all for the feedback.