Re: [tlug] Ubuntu / EPIA / Media Player

[Edward Wright <edw@example.com>]

Caveat: I don't have an EPIA box and don't use Ununtu...

Not sure exactly what your aims are, but some thoughts...

On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 12:15:35AM +0900, Curt Sampson wrote:
> 
> So, I spent some time this afternoon installing Ubuntu 7.04 on my little
> EPIA box, in the hope that I can turn this into a media player. Some
> questions:
> 
> 1. Is it running KDE or Gnome? How does one tell, in general?

Why does one care, in general? Trash it and use fvwm2....

> 2. The graphics chip is a Trident CyberBlade/i1. What's the best
> approach for starting to play with full screen video output on this, via
> either the S-Video connector or at 1280x720 on the VGA output (which I'd
> send directly into my projector)? Is there some clever tool, or should I
> just get to hacking on the X11 config file directly?

Wouldn't the (whatever X you're using) config script get you set up? I
would think it would detect the chip and set up the timing stuff and
you could feed it the "monitor" info you wanted it to use... then
tweak if necessary.

> 3. What do I want to be using to play movies, music, etc? I installed
> the MythTV package, and the music player accessory for it

Why not mplayer?

> 4. I'm going to be running the thing headless, but I'm thinking it would
> be nice to do a remote-desktop kinda thing on it. What's the best way to
> set this up, do you think? Let it run the default desktop on the VGA,
> and remote into it and share it? (I noticed some KDE thing for this in
> the packages.) Set up a separate vnc X11 server without a real screen,
> and use the vnc client on that? Log in remotely somehow? The first two
> options would seem to have the advantage of being able to disconnect
> from that session when I wander off with my laptop and reconnect later
> on when I come back, which seems as if it would be nice.

I think it really depends on what works best for you. If you want to
set up a desktop and have it "be there" when you log in, then maybe the
vnc choice. If you just want to occasionally run an app, then maybe
just an X server, and run the app remotely on your local desktop. (I'm
guessing you don't need to connect over the Internet, so security isn't
a big concern....)

> 
> A few impressions, while I'm at it:
> 
> 1. It's very resource intensive; it really crawls on an 800 MHz VIA CPU.
> It's probably doing a lot more stuff than my typical NetBSD setup (where
> I use fvwm2), but it doesn't feel anywhere near as snappy.

If it's the desktop, see 1. above :)

> 2. The dmesg sucks: it's hideously verbose, gives you a lot of crap
> that's extremely low-level debugging information ("sanitize start",
> "Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)") and
> doesn't even bother to give you things such as the CPU ID string.

dunno...

> 3. No ssh server installed by default. Is it just me, or is that getting
> fairly silly?

That sounds unbelievable, but if true, then silly is a gross 
understatement!

Ed