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AMD Fusion based hardware for a HTPC?
Just would like to add that I have had a Fusion E35-M1 Deluxe since it was released and my headaches are non stop. If you are thinking about this board for your htpc, oh god, don't do it. I concur with every negative post on here. I have tried it all from custom compiling to different distributions, including slackware and arch, and no joy.

There is another solution beyond next gen ion for those looking for blu-ray audio formats. Look to a Zotac motherboard "Mini-ITX" that has an embedded GT430 chip on it. 50 percent of the time I look for it on Newegg its sold out. Has to be getting popular. I know its an expensive build however after living with Fusion for about 6 months now I can see the value on something that actually works. Currently hating myself for running winblows 7 with a ds player build of XBMC and I still cant get dts-ma to work. WTF ATI?

About to sacrifice usability and use MPC-HC as an external player with the supremely crappy imon driver (windows). It just gets worse and worse each and every time I try to rebuild this HTPC. Should have learned long ago that Nvidia is the only way.
A F'n Roku, cant wait to build a ryzen.
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quotaholic Wrote:Just would like to add that I have had a Fusion E35-M1 Deluxe since it was released and my headaches are non stop. If you are thinking about this board for your htpc, oh god, don't do it. I concur with every negative post on here. I have tried it all from custom compiling to different distributions, including slackware and arch, and no joy.

Oh shit, I'll receive my Zotac Fusion-ITX WiFi any day now, which is pretty much the same as your Asus E35M1-I Deluxe.

I actually mainly wanted to use it as a File Server and HTPC through XBMC on Debian or Fedora.

I've previously heard people say "Just install this VA-API thingie together with Catalyst drivers." I thought it'd be a breeze, but reading this topic makes me sweat.

But other people say stuff like this:
Robotica Wrote:the platform is ready for a HTPC with Linux. What happened?
  • AMD added support for their Fusion Platform with their closed source catalyst drivers (aka fglrx) from day one the products hit the market.
  • Open Source drivers are updated and getting better and better (not likely to outperform the closed source drivers with media playback for comming years)
  • Problems related to VAAPI and XBMC are fixed.
  • VAAPI is not enabled in XBMC 10.0 and 10.1. VAAPI is only enabled in the nightly (GIT) builds and most likely from Eden and on.

I don't know what to think or where to start.
Try Xubuntu. It's the new Ubuntu.
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Redsandro Wrote:I don't know what to think or where to start.

Robotica has a guide too:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...ight=vaapi

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Yes pretty extensive!

Although very Ubuntu-centric. I hope someone who jumped the hoops on Fedora will shed some light on this. It's provocative enough as it is without having to try and find the Fedora way. Smile
Try Xubuntu. It's the new Ubuntu.
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This community is huge on Ubuntu. XBMC Live uses it as a base, as does every other XBMC live CD. The primary XBMC repos are Ubuntu. You might want to consider Ubuntu as that is what we all know well.

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poofyhairguy Wrote:You might want to consider Ubuntu as that is what we all know well.

Hmm. Could I consider Debian too, or is that too old (for all this bleeding edge catalyst and vaapi stuff)?
Me and Ubuntu broke up. We had too many issues.
Try Xubuntu. It's the new Ubuntu.
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Redsandro Wrote:Hmm. Could I consider Debian too.

you cant try, but as explained, uBuntu is most used overall,,,
you might have better chance with it
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You might need to update a lot pf package on Debian as they are not usually the most bleeding edge package (i.e. version wise). Look for Linux Mint, I like it.
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@Balinus Linux Mint is still Ubuntu. Too much trouble. I want to use my htpc as home server also. My Ubuntu 10.04 LTS still gives me trouble.
(As I am saying this, I am still using Linux Mint 11 on a desktop machine myself. Tongue)

Anyway, speaking of Linux Mint, have you tried Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE)? I was wondering if that's a good alternative. It is based on Debian-testing (where Ubuntu is based on Debian-unstable). Sounds good. It's a rolling release like Archlinux, but I've never tried a rolling release, because I'm afraid I have to repair a broken computer every month.
Try Xubuntu. It's the new Ubuntu.
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Question 
Howsit guys just wanted to get your advice on a hardware setup of the Fusion.
Im going to be running xmbc on Windows 64bit.

This is the setup i used before when building :

1 x Antec NSK2480B Black (380W PSU, microATX)

1 x LG 22x DVD Reader/Writer (Internal, SATA)

1 x Corsair Value Select 4GB DDR3-1333 - CL9

1 x Seagate Barracuda Green 2000GB SATA 6Gb/s (64MB)

1 x Logitech Wireless Desktop MK260 Combo

1 x AMD Athlon II X4 645 CPU

1 x Asus Radeon HD6450 1GB DDR3 Silent (LP)

1 x Asus M5A78L-M LX AM3 Motherboard



This is what im looking at doing now:

1 x Antec NSK2480B Black (380W PSU, microATX)

1 x LG 22x DVD Reader/Writer (Internal, SATA)

1 x Corsair Value Select 4GB DDR3-1333 - CL9

1 x Seagate Barracuda Green 2000GB SATA 6Gb/s (64MB)

1 x Logitech Wireless Desktop MK260 Combo

1 x AMD A6-3650 CPU

1 x Asus F1A75-M LE FM1 Motherboard

Im in South Africa so we don't always have the best selection, so just from the 2 above which do you think will be the better option
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Redsandro Wrote:@Balinus Linux Mint is still Ubuntu. Too much trouble. I want to use my htpc as home server also. My Ubuntu 10.04 LTS still gives me trouble.
(As I am saying this, I am still using Linux Mint 11 on a desktop machine myself. Tongue)

Anyway, speaking of Linux Mint, have you tried Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE)? I was wondering if that's a good alternative. It is based on Debian-testing (where Ubuntu is based on Debian-unstable). Sounds good. It's a rolling release like Archlinux, but I've never tried a rolling release, because I'm afraid I have to repair a broken computer every month.

hehehe Yeah I know it's still Ubuntu. Smile But I have far less trouble with Mint than with Ubuntu! Especially 10.04 LTS which is actually not really stable.

I didn't tried LMDE for the same reasons as you : I don't want a broken machine! As I use my laptop for my studies (which involves sometimes week-long calculations on Matlab), I can't afford something that is unstable (hence no Ubuntu for me, but Mint feels really stable).

One distro that I really liked is Mepis. Really stable (based on Debian-stable), but sadly I had some problem with installing Matlab. Anyway, imho, that would be a nice distro for a server. At the time, I wasn't using XBMC, so you might need to compile it.
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@Balinus: Yes, Mepis, never used it. I think I prefer Debian then. Mepis uses KDE by default. I know, *type type* and you have something else, but I prefer a distro that is right from the start, because it gives me the feeling that they are more prone to make choices I agree with for stuff I don't even think about.

I want to use my htpc as 1) xbmc media center, 2) home server and 3) desktop machine. Right now I'm in doubt between Debian, Mint LMDE, and Fedora.

As home server, Debian is definitely the best choice. In fact, it won the Best Open Source Server Distribution award this year.

For desktopping, Fedora is the (in my opinion) way to go. It has sweet Gnome 3, and also in my experience, it is less buggy than Ubuntu. I encounter minor bugs, but in Ubuntu 10.04 LT-frickin-S I still encounter critical bugs.

As for for Media Centering, these Fusion boards are really new. Maybe Debian is too old to support AMD Fusion based hardware. OTOH, XBMC support is more Debian based than Fedora based, so Mint LMDE might be the perfect mix of Debian here and more modern there, with the added plus of never having to dist-upgrade.
Try Xubuntu. It's the new Ubuntu.
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386938 Wrote:Im in South Africa so we don't always have the best selection, so just from the 2 above which do you think will be the better option

well your second build is using the latest new AMD APU's!
so i'd go for that between the 2...
but, make sure the CPU COOLER fits in your ANTEC case...
as of today, i dont know how big the stock coolers are..
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Redsandro Wrote:so Mint LMDE might be the perfect mix of Debian here and more modern there, with the added plus of never having to dist-upgrade.

I can see the logic here! I guess I'd try the same distro with your constraints that you list. I'm a KDE user so I can only understand that you prefer your GNOME. I respect that, as neither is better than the other.

As fas as stability goes, I never found Fedora to be really stable (at least, the current version. If you use their previous versions, the bugs are ironed out). But I did liked very much Fedora.

For LMDE, I guess the trick is to update less often your system so that buggy package are removed and corrected from the repository before you update. With this "rule", I guess it will be stable! Btw, is there a way to tell the update manager to only update packages that are X days/weeks old in the repository? Might be handy!
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I've given it some thoughts, and I think media centering is what the box will do most. So maybe I should listen to poofyhairguy and eskro and give Ubuntu another shot because it's like XBMC's daddy or something.

Not that I take back any of the previous statements, but it does itch that Ubuntu 11.10 is coming October 13th. I can try if the server part plays nice. Ofcourse I have to fix Ubuntu's mistakes:
Code:
apt-get install gnome-shell
apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar
gconftool-2 --set "/apps/metacity/general/button_layout" --type string "menu:minimize,maximize,close"

And if I keep customizing to a minimum, maybe in 6 months I can even dist-upgrade to LTS without it exploding in my face.

I have to admit I got a bit scared after reading some high-maintenance stories about people using LMDE and updates. I remember I want to use this box for entertainment, not maintenance. Sad

About your update manager question, I don't know, but (as you probably know) Linux Mint has a score (1/2/3) for the importance of updates. And you can pin certain packages to a certain repository. For example, use the testing repository for everything except for some-package-meta-pack, use stable instead. This is for all apt based distro's. Don't remember where those config files were, but I think it was called package pinning, you can google it.

Oops, ubuntu package pinning first result:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PinningHowto
Try Xubuntu. It's the new Ubuntu.
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