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sunfizz98 · 2012-04-07, 16:26

I have an ion2 shuttle xs35gt and I am looking for a good solution for my torrenting needs. I want to use rtorrent within a linux environment while having the capability to run xbmc to watch my tv shows/movies. However, I'm not too fond of ubuntu and prefer debian sid. Would I lose anything (performance, addons, etc) if I go the debian sid route and install xbmc via the apt repositories?

Also, how is the performance of ion2 machines with xbmcbuntu or debian machines with xbmc? I have primarily been using openelec prior to eden release.

chilli · 2012-04-07, 21:57

I don't have any experience with xbmcbuntu, but I have a dual-boot with Debian Squeeze (#!/Xfce)/Dharma and Ubuntu Oneiric/Eden/Gnome 3 and where I've noticed the difference in performance has been on the desktop and not within XBMC itself. The addons themselves should probably work fine in either. Our hardware is pretty different so don't know about the performance of ion2 in general. On the Ubuntu install it's set up out of the box with an XBMC session in LightDM so you can log straight into it and bypass the desktop which should cut out some of the overhead if you go that route.

darkscout · 2012-04-12, 02:42

Sid Sid Sid!

XBMC is now in the official repositories and .... it's like Magic. I had non-stop problems with XBMCUbuntu (jack of all trades, master of none). Sound, Crashing, etc. I previously had Sid but thought. "Ah, this is the official release. It'll work." Not quite.

I reformatted with a bare bones system.

"apt-get install xbmc" and tada!

It also seems to boot much faster now too. I made some small adjustments to the init.d script found on the wiki (I put xbmc in a while loop in .xinitrd instead of in the initd script so that if it crashes it restarts iself).

I did make some tweaks:
Grub with an XBMC background. Added a plain plymouth background with plain XBMC. Changed it so that plymouth didn't get killed until after XBMC started. Changed it so that Wifi was bought up in the background so it'd boot faster. Also had to tweak LIRC with my LIRC tutorial. (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1754719)

LastCoder · 2012-04-12, 10:14

^ sounds promising .. I never understood why XBMC devrs prefer ubuntu .. I compiled XBMC for debian squeeze and it runs and performs very well .. I guess a pure stable debian would have been a better choice for a live system.

Atm my main HTPC runs still Xubuntu [11.10] but compared to debian squeeze or sid it's slow and buggy like hell ..

One question: which version of xbmc was added to sid ? I guess there are different sources - some with or without vdpau, vaapi, xvba, pvr - is the version available over the repositories a full featured xbmc ? And is - for example - TVHeadEnd available too, in a version that could be used with XBMC ?

Greetz

LastCoder

darkscout · 2012-04-17, 06:30

http://packages.debian.org/sid/xbmc

2:11.0~git20120403.ec33f1f+repack1-5

Supposedly there is a bug report that VDPAU doesn't work. There's a bug report out.

It's definitely from mainline so no PVR. But I think that VDPAU, VAAPI, etc are all enabled. I know NFS and libshareport are.

wilson.joe · 2012-04-18, 00:04

according to xbmc.org

decss support (encrypted dvd playback) is disabled unless libdvdcss2 has been installed from a third-party repo. libav is used rather than ffmpeg, as Debian unstable has gone this direction.
AFP (Apple File Protocol) support is currently disabled due to packaging issues.

darkscout · 2012-04-19, 17:18

What's a DVD?

**joethefox** · 2012-04-19, 20:57

please guys, do not treat me badly ubuntu in his minimal incarnation. As name suggest contains the minimal to start to build a perfect htpc appliance. at least this is what's happen to me.