Smart Home Blog

A few days after LinuxMCE 0810 beta2 was announced the development team released the first update. There are following main changes:

• fixed issue with broken dependencies for packages pluto-orbiter and pluto-mythtv-scripts. Actually it should be added a new repository URL in the /etc/apt/sources.list:
  deb http://www.avenard.org/files/ubuntu-repos intrepid release
• AV Wizard was improved a bit to produce better xorg.conf and better support of audio over HDMI;
• Wake-On-LAN has been fixed;
• web admin has received some stream lining.

All existing installations can be updated via apt-get. Just don’t forget to add repository mentioned above. Please, submit all found bugs and issues via LinuxMCE Trac (be sure that your issue wasn’t already submitted!) and ask help on the forum. Good luck with new beta!

Today the second beta version of LinuxMCE 0810 was released. I’d like highlight following changes there. The first one is very important for non English spoken countries. It’s support of UTF-8 (I participated in that task too). Thanks to that addition of new translations in the system will be simpler.

Another interesting change is improving of setup of graphic card drivers and adding of VDPAU support to the MythTV and Xine. So, I hope it’ll allow to playback MKV files using Xine and not Mplayer (I don’t oppose to Mplayer but the pause doesn’t work during MKV playback under my LinuxMCE 0710 installation).

The DVD with new 0810 Beta2 can be downloaded from the official LinuxMCE torrent. Note that you still use installation scripts to setup the latest version of LinuxMCE 0810.

Finally the DVD ISO for LinuxMCE 0810 Beta can be downloaded from official torrent or via HTTP from download page. Also new article was created in the wiki to help install beta version, solve common problems and inform about upcoming changes.

Yesterday the LinuxMCE development team announced the beta version of 0810. The installation DVD is ready. We just have to wait a bit till it’ll be uploaded to the official torrent and project’s mirrors. The installation using install script will also work. Current alpha users can just upgrade their systems via apt-get. But it’s suggested to make a fresh installation if somebody will experience difficulties to avoid situation when the problem is related to old functionality.

The DVD installation of 0810 will be different then 0710. First of all the Kubuntu will be installed from DVD. And then you should run LinuxMCE installation by clicking on desktop icon. Nothing complicated at all.

Not sure that Russian language is already added to that beta. If not it’ll be added soon as well as my fixes for translation of UpdateEntArea menu entries.

As you may know LinuxMCE community is working hard on the new version. The 0810 is based on Kubuntu 8.10 and currently it’s near to beta. Let’s see what’s new we’ll see in the LinuxMCE 0810:

• Games. In 0810 we’ll able to play in arcade games using MAME plugin. It allows to list, play and pause as well as retrieve metadata from the game packages.
• Z-Wave interface. During preparation a new version Z-Wave interface was improved a lot. It becomes faster and more stable and supports more devices and PC interfaces.
• PVR. MythTV and VDR uses the same directory to store recorded data. The PVR section on the Orbiter contains list of channels, EPG, recording program and more.
• UPnP. The UPnP server in 0810 was changed to Mediatomb which provides better functionality then fuppes used in 0710.
• New IP phones. Two new IP phones were added to the 0810 as PnP devices: Cisco 7910 и Aastra.
• New HID. It’ll allow to use devices such remote control Gyration 3101 to control your system.
• Video adapters. Identification of nVidia and Intel graphic adapters was improved to avoid manual installation of needed drivers.
• Bug fixes. During the preparation of the new version many old bugs were fixed as well as unnecessary packages were deleted from the system.

The latest 0810 alpha 2.24 is usable. Sure it has some problems but it’s already ready for beta. I suspect that delay is cosing by missed DVD installation. But I hope it’ll be released soon. If you’d like to contribute a new functionality or some patch be free to contact with core developers in the IRC channel #linuxmce-devel.

Also design of LinuxMCE site was changed. Now it looks more professional and fresh.