Fire Comcast TV

Sudbury HP box work continues:

• XP update went OK.  Also ran virus scan.  Looks like XP is alive and well.
• Reboot Ubuntu.
• Not happy with dual screen support.  I'm running the proprietary drivers.  I can have one big screen.  Problem is that popup windows land on the seam between the screens.  BOGUS.  I can have two logical screens.  Problem is that I can't drag windows between them.  BOGUS.  Need to look into solution.
• Went back to  Twinview in proprietary NVIDIA X server.  All is well.
• Install Chrome browser.
• Used Synaptic to download and install chromium-browser.  Started OK.
• Set preferences
• Reopen last pages
• home to igoogle
• show home button
• show bookmarks
• sync bookmarks to my igoogle account
• classic theme
• All is well with chrome
• Added to panel so it's handy
• Update firefox.
• System came with 3.x.  FF is now at 5.x.
• Some issues as to support on Ubuntu 10.04 but it seems to be.  Followed directions here - http://mygeekopinions.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-install-firefox-5-in-ubuntu-1004.html
• Firefox reports 3.6.18.  Clearly not 5.
• Did
• sudo apt-get purge firefox  --- now it should be truly gone
• sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get upgrade
• Think I may have failed to upgrade earlier.
• Firefox is gone and there is no FF 5!
• Synaptic package manager now shows a FF 5.  Install it.  Firefox is now back as 5.0!
• Pin to panel.
• Setup google gmail as default mailer and other google desktop apps I typically use
• Found google desktop here, http://desktop.google.com/en/linux/install.html?dl=deb
• Downloaded and installed using package manager by clicking on download file.
• Desktop provides basic search and indexing of my computer.  Useful, but not what I'm looking for.  Turns out I need Google Gadgets.
• Found how to here, http://blog.sudobits.com/2010/05/16/how-to-install-google-gadgets-in-ubuntu-10-04/
• Choose Synaptic google-gadgets-gtk since I'm comfortable with the Gnome desktop that is standard in Ubuntu 10.04.
• Installed.  Not what I was looking for.  It seems that the interface on Windows 7 is not available on Ubuntu 10.04.  Pity, I really liked it.  I can do something with some shell scripts I suppose but I'll leave that for another time if I really find it a burden.
• Also will need to make gmail my default mailer when the need occurs.
• Install MythTV
• Installed from Synaptic.
• Noted that there were Synaptic packages for plugins.
• Tried it.  Must be member of the mythtv group.  Accepted the offer and associated logout/login.
• Started mythtv frontend again.  Processor load got the machines fans running.
• Setup and changed interface to something that I can actually see.
• It's SLOW on this machine with a browser running at the same time.
• Took a bit of mucking about to get screen so I could see it all.
• Mouse doesn't display!  Seems like it's very remote oriented with keyboard shortcuts here, http://www.keyxl.com/aaa3626/343/MythTV-keyboard-shortcuts.htm
• It works to a point but is rather disappointing.
• Install XBMC
• Time to install XBMC under Ubuntu 10.04.
• Found guide here, http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO_install_XBMC_for_Linux_on_Ubuntu,_a_Step-by-Step_Guide

• sudo apt-get install python-software-properties pkg-config
  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install xbmc xbmc-standalone
  sudo apt-get update

• xbmc is now installed
• Start it.  Takes the whole of BOTH monitors.  Not good.  It's also slow responding to the mouse.
• Used system to setup to run in window.  Much better.  Play with the configuration.  All in all not bad.

Well, I've got a working Ubuntu 10.04 on the HP box Sudbury.  Both MythTV and XBMC install though both are a bit slow.

I'll need to think a bit about the whole MythTV/XBMC thing BEFORE deciding what I'm going to do.  As a practical matter, driving the TV with a reasonably compatible laptop

• Works
• Cost nothing
• Resolution is good
• Provides access to
• Hulu
• Netflix
• Youtube
• Pandora
• All the network home pages
• Anything else that's on the net
• Can be controlled reasonably with a mouse and/or a VNC session from a very small laptop.

About the only real drawbacks are that I can't record OTA TV for later playback.  There are a handful of shows on PBS and elsewhere where that would be nice particularly news.  On the other hand it will cost somewhere around $300 to set it up.  For that price I can find another laptop with an HDMI output running Windows 7 and declare victory.

Amazon Compaq box continues:

• Configure , second drive into the FS
• Just followed the directions here, http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/mountlinux.  Actually mounted at /mnt/sdb1
• Experimented some more with getting one of the three AGP cards I have working.  No joy.  I'll just put the PCI card back and declare victory.  
• This machine is DONE.  I'll move it into the office as a play Ubuntu machine.  I'll probably upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 since there is no xbmc issue and see what the kde desktop is like.

Going forward:

• Finish Compaq.
• Start build for FreeNAS.  I've got an old DELL with not much memory that I can try.  If that's an issue I've got two others with 768MB that should work.  I've got a couple of small IDE drives (4GB and 6GB) that can serve as system disk (FreeNAS can't use the boot disk for storage).  For storage I've got a 160GB, 200GB, 80GB, and 80GB disk.  Stacked up that's a fair amount though spread across volumes is a bit of an inconvenience.  Still it should make a good file server.