Smart Home Blog

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.

The new alpha of LinuxMCE 0810 was released yesterday. The third one. The installation procedure is not changed. You still should have the Kubuntu 8.10 installed on your PC. Then alpha2 installer will download and install LinuxMCE 0810. Just follow that simple instructions.

According to 0810 alpha wiki page a lot of bugs was fixed since alpha 1 and 2. So, if you’d like participate to LinuxMCE by fixing bugs or just submitting bugreports fell free to install Alpha3. But note that this is still alpha version and it can be unstable. So, do not use it in production systems!

LinuxMCE development team announced 0810 alpha1. That build is done from the 0810 SVN branch and it’s the first community release. The installation procedure is the same as for previous alpha0 but a bit improved and stable.

Do not upgrade your 0710 installation because it’ll beak your system. But it’ll help a lot if you install it on the test machine or on the different partition, play a bit with it and report about working and not working parts.

Personally I’m waiting two things: a new motherboard for my core/hybrid and setup of Internet connection in my new flat. Hope that both will be done next week.

LinuxMCE development team decided to pass version 0804 and release 0810 to synchronize with Kubuntu releases. A few days ago was announced a 0810-alpha0. It can be installed on the Kubuntu 8.10 using installation script. That approach is good if you already setup Kubuntu Intrepid and fast Internet connection.

The brief instructions show to install 0810-alpha0 can be found in the wiki. You can ask help or post bug-report on that topic on the LinuxMCE forum.

I already installed LinuxMCE 0810-alpha0 on the VMWare to play a bit. The installation passed fine from the first try. I didn’t have a time to play with it. Will do it tomorrow.