Recommended Linux flavour for Media Server

[paul_o]

Hi,

Appreciate the title may prompt some noob bashing, but please read on.

I am looking to ditch M$ XP MCE and go Linux (running TM of course!) for better performance/reliability. Have played with Linux a little and am after advice on "best" flavour of Linux. The machine will simply be to serve media to Win XP laptops and to stream movies/music to Xbox 360 (used Tversity and Blaze previously). Will also want to occaisionally access legacy files from lappys (Office, etc.) and will only access the machine via VNC if I have to perform any maintenance.

Having read this forum (and also googled around for advice on the never ending "which version best" debate), I am interested in current user's experiences - especially in this use scenario. Was considering Ubuntu or Mandriva as they "appear" to be pretty straightforward. A final factor is that I have a wireless card in the PC (Xbox hardwired) as I want to sit it in a closet so that the whirring doesn't become a PITA - and don't want to be drilling for CAT5 runs. Therefore if any version is particularly bad with wireless, I want to avoid it.

Thanks in advance!


Paul

[Eddy5]

Whilst not directly answering your question, I've just moved to Ubuntu 7.10 on my laptop and found that really very good (Especially after trying a year ago with v6, they have made some big improvements in usability).
Wireless also seems to work very well out of the box on Ubuntu, especially with WPA security (Which Kubuntu it's sister product can do, but not seemingly very easy out of the box).
There is also an Ubuntu server version, which may be more use than the desktop version, but I've not used that.

[mshilly]

Can't say which version of Linux is best but I know it will run on Knoppix 4.0.2. I was going to try it with DSL-N but it would not run properly on it.

[tankerkevo]

My TM is running on Fedora 8, 2.4 gHz P4 w/ 1gB Ram. Using two 500GB Seagate drives for my media storage. I have two PS3's, 1 Fedora 7 Laptop, and one Vista Laptop as clients. The server is wired into a D-Link Wireless G router, all clients are wireless. This setup runs smooth. When transcoding with VLC I do see some noise every now and then, but for the most part it just runs.

I administer an Ubuntu Feisty server as well for one of my neighbors.

I personally prefer Fedora, but I've been with RedHat (Fedora) since RedHat 7. I installed Ubuntu for my neighbor because I heard it was more linux newb friendly and he is for sure a newb. I think it may have helped a little.

I prefer the package management (RPM) natively used by Fedora, and I already know where to find top notch support for it...which is probably the most important aspect when choosing a distro.

Good Luck.

[Reeferjon]

Having a spare box and being a linux newbie I decided to give this a go...managed to install Fedora 8 ok....but here the problem starts
My TM server is running under XP, all other MS machine see it ok and use Nero as the client.

On the Linux box I attempted to install TM for Linux.....and was unable to install because 'the script was not in a folder'....anyone any idea's.

Again on the Linux box Samba is running but I was unable to mount the MS network driver from the TM server...so could not even play the files directly...any idea's.

Again on the Linux box I installed VLC and was unable to see the stream from the XP box or directly access any files.

All Firewalls were down for the above tests and access to the XP box was granted to everyone...
You thoughts would be apreciated...thanks.

[shreaded_teddy]

i've got a headless Xubuntu box running with TM right now. just 'sudo apt-get install vino' to get vnc working easily.