ajkidle wrote: > I'm running SqueezeCenter on a dedicated WinXP computer right now. It's > very underpowered, but generally gets the job done. I'm wondering if I > could expect better performance by using some variant of Unix rather > than WinXP, which seems to be way overkill for what I need this machine > to do. > > The computer needs to be able to: > Run SqueezeCenter > Store 200GB of music (trivial requirement) > Cycle through photos in screen saver mode > > The hardware: > VIA 600mhz mini itx (ME6000G) > 256mb RAM > Connected to network via ethernet > > The system is not very responsive, as you might expect. It works, but > it's not uncommon for my SBC to pause as I go through the menus, > presumably it's waiting for the computer. I'm also concerned that when > I get a second Squeezebox I'll run into issues sync'ing playback with > this level of hardware. > > Can I expect to gain significant performance efficiencies by ditching > all of the unneeded overhead associated with WinXP and installing some > flavor of Unix? Or would such a change just be a waste of time? (Or > will a Unix install also have all kinds of overhead I don't need???) > > Thanks, > Andy > > > I run squeeze center on a linux box and find it works fine. You have several options.
1. If you have enough disk space, you can install linux on your computer and dual boot to either windows or linux as you need. I run openSuse, and the newest version 11.0 will easially help you make a seperate partition on your dirve to install to, leaving windows there and bootable. I have an server with a PIII and 256MB ram running opensuse 10.3 very nicely, does file sharing, email, web, and squeezecenter with no problems at all. 2. If you don't have enough disk space for a second OS install, you can wipe out windows and install linux clean, but be careful to not wipe out your music files. 3. As one responder mentioned, you probably have your music files on an NTFS partition. Before you do a clean linux install, you need to copy that data (as well as any other data you want to keep) to somewhere else, an external drive or something. If you do a dual install, your linux install will easily read your NTFS partition (including your music files), but writing changes, updates will probably be a pain. You would have better luck moving the files to a linux based partition. Again, openSuse has all the stuff you need to make new partitions easily. 4. Another option you could try is to download SlimCD. This is a linux boot CD that will boot your PC with SqueezeCenter running. This does not change your hard drive, but runs linux straight from your CD drive. Once booted, you will have to point SqueezeCenter to your music files and it should let you run your squeezebox off of that. It should read your NTFS music files, but again, it most likely won't let you add music(write to that partition). This option would give you a better feel as to how SqueezeCenter will run on your particular machine without making permanent changes. Remember that running off a CD drive is slower than running off a hard drive, but this should give you a good feel for how it would work. But, being a CD boot disk, you will have to point SquezeCenter to your music files every time you reboot (but you don't have to reboot often). You can get the iso image of slimcd here http://www.herger.net/slim/detail.php?nr=763 5. There looks like there is another option where someone has made a particular linux install CD that will install a version of linux on your hard drive, already set up to run SqueezeCenter. I have just read this myself and have no idea as to how well or not this works. If you try this backup your data first (always a good thing), this will install linux on your hard drive. The SlimCD (boot CD) should give you a chance to see if this works better without changing your hard drive. If you like that, you could then try a more permanent solution. At that point you could do a backup, do a clean install of openSuse 11.0, load your data, either to a directory or different partition (I have mine on a separate partition) , install SqueezeCenter, and your set. Jim F _______________________________________________ unix mailing list unix@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/unix
