2009-11-01, 20:40
I don't know a lot about XBMC. I have seen my friends use it on their Apple TV's and Mac Mini's, but I have yet to install it. I am technical (by trade) and am a strong linux user (RedHat Certified Engineer to say the least). Of course like the rest of everyone, I am a strong Windows guy as well (duh).
I bought an Acer Aspire Revo AR3610 with the Atom 330 processor. I plan on hooking this up to my Plasma via HDMI. In addition to using it for XBMC (it's primary 99% of the time role), I like the idea of being able to use it as a PC and occasionally browse the web using the wireless keyboard & mouse.
I thought that if I installed XBMC on the default Windows 7 install, I won't be able to play video smoothly as the version of XBMC for Windows doesn't take advantage of the NVIDIA ION GPU acceleration. So this left me with some other choices, right?
1. Install XBMC Live. This would probably seem the easiest as people have complete howto's already written for installing this on an Aspire Revo. The upside (from what I can tell so far, please correct me if I am mistaken) is that I can still reboot and run Windows 7. The downside is that I am running a really stripped down Linux OS with XBMC. I wouldn't be able to use it as a Linux server for various other tinkering tasks that I may want to do
2. Install my Linux distribution of choice (I could be talked in to Ubuntu over Fedora, why not!), then install XBMC. The downside (but kind of an upside I suppose) is that there isnt as much information tailored specifically to the Revo yet, so I will spend a bit more time getting it working (fun). The upside is that I have a full blown Linux distro I can do whatever I want with it (run squid, apache, mysql, etc. stuff and use the CPU when I am not doing XBMC stuff). I wonder though, could I adequately run X Windows on the Revo? If this is the case, then I could do my web browsing when not running XBMC perfectly using Firefox in X.
It looks like XBMC Live is about 350MB. I didn't add the repo to grab XBMC regular, but I am guessing it is much less in size.
Also, the Atom 330 (dual core) that my Revo has supports 64-bit instructions. So I am wondering if there is any reason I shouldn't go 64bit Ubuntu (but really, with only 2gb of memory, what would be my benefit in GOING 64-bit, hahah).
Do any of you seasoned XBMC users have any suggestions or advice I should consider before making a decision? Thanks for your help!
I bought an Acer Aspire Revo AR3610 with the Atom 330 processor. I plan on hooking this up to my Plasma via HDMI. In addition to using it for XBMC (it's primary 99% of the time role), I like the idea of being able to use it as a PC and occasionally browse the web using the wireless keyboard & mouse.
I thought that if I installed XBMC on the default Windows 7 install, I won't be able to play video smoothly as the version of XBMC for Windows doesn't take advantage of the NVIDIA ION GPU acceleration. So this left me with some other choices, right?
1. Install XBMC Live. This would probably seem the easiest as people have complete howto's already written for installing this on an Aspire Revo. The upside (from what I can tell so far, please correct me if I am mistaken) is that I can still reboot and run Windows 7. The downside is that I am running a really stripped down Linux OS with XBMC. I wouldn't be able to use it as a Linux server for various other tinkering tasks that I may want to do
2. Install my Linux distribution of choice (I could be talked in to Ubuntu over Fedora, why not!), then install XBMC. The downside (but kind of an upside I suppose) is that there isnt as much information tailored specifically to the Revo yet, so I will spend a bit more time getting it working (fun). The upside is that I have a full blown Linux distro I can do whatever I want with it (run squid, apache, mysql, etc. stuff and use the CPU when I am not doing XBMC stuff). I wonder though, could I adequately run X Windows on the Revo? If this is the case, then I could do my web browsing when not running XBMC perfectly using Firefox in X.
It looks like XBMC Live is about 350MB. I didn't add the repo to grab XBMC regular, but I am guessing it is much less in size.
Also, the Atom 330 (dual core) that my Revo has supports 64-bit instructions. So I am wondering if there is any reason I shouldn't go 64bit Ubuntu (but really, with only 2gb of memory, what would be my benefit in GOING 64-bit, hahah).
Do any of you seasoned XBMC users have any suggestions or advice I should consider before making a decision? Thanks for your help!