First time linux user

[wizardofid]

Got handed an Acer aspire one netbook this weekend, and will serve well as a small media playing device connect to standard TV(days before smart tv's).Did ran into various issues I would like some help with.

This particular model has the 8gb ZIF SSD notorious for running XP badly once it gets going it's okay no issues buffering media via the wireless network.But not 100% ideal if you want some thing responsive.

So loaded puppy linux on flash drive, did normal setup, gparted the HDD, installed linux and every thing works out of the box, sound, network and video.I have a shared folder on my main PC tried to detect the folder but fails both manual and automatic detection of shared folders on the network.

Puppy linux is quite snappy and I like it, I could probably get linux distro more suited to converting the netbook to a strictly media playing device, but I wouldn't know where to start, so a recommendation for a linux distro and links for media streaming would be appreciated.

If I were to stick with puppy linux what apps should I be looking at getting for better media playback and how can I go about detecting windows shared folders on the network. ?

*edit*
Found yassm under networking and correctly detects all shared folders on the network so sorted

Still need a all in one app that automatically checks for shared media folders on the network, if I can't get that sorted, I might download a bigger distro like mint, from what I could see it's supports the acer's netbook drivers quite well.

Some thing I noticed while gnome video player is limited, there is much less of a buffer some times none at all, unlike windows which struggled to play MKV or 1080P, which puppy handles without "barking" a sweat I think I am sold, only thing that annoys me about gnome I didn't see boosting audio volume, as some media often recorded a lower volumes.

 

[HavocXphere]

I'd try to switch to a more mainstream *nix flavour. You'll end up googling how to do sht & there are big difference in how much info is available. Mint would be good yes.

 

[wizardofid]

I'd try to switch to a more mainstream *nix flavour. You'll end up googling how to do sht & there are big difference in how much info is available. Mint would be good yes.

While mint would work well, I need to consider the crappy ZIF drive in it, looking at ordering a proper 60gig samsung HDD from Ebay, while it will probably be faster the IO is crappy it self.

Mint might just agitate the slow SDD more, will experiment with it in anyways, maybe get some thing like kodi as well and give that a bash, could always install mint directly to a flash drive and bypass the SDD altogether, mint is only 1.6gig so plently of space on the 8gig flash I have.

Alternative would be the two SD expansion slots, have a 32gig and 16gig cards, installing to that might be an option but I need to figure out how best to get that working at the start on the install, as they seem to be dependent on drivers.

 

[ODTech]

While mint would work well, I need to consider the crappy ZIF drive in it, looking at ordering a proper 60gig samsung HDD from Ebay, while it will probably be faster the IO is crappy it self.

Mint might just agitate the slow SDD more, will experiment with it in anyways, maybe get some thing like kodi as well and give that a bash, could always install mint directly to a flash drive and bypass the SDD altogether, mint is only 1.6gig so plently of space on the 8gig flash I have.

Alternative would be the two SD expansion slots, have a 32gig and 16gig cards, installing to that might be an option but I need to figure out how best to get that working at the start on the install, as they seem to be dependent on drivers.

Not all laptops/netbooks support booting from sd card.

Lubuntu is very light and uses the lxde desktop which should feel very familiar. An good alternative is LXLE. I've installed Lubuntu and LXLE on old p4's (socket 775) with a ide drives and it worked just fine. I can't comment on how well they handled 1080p video though.
Both of the above uses ubuntu as the base OS same as Mint so whichever one you try won't be wasted time as they all work the same when you use the terminal.

I'd recommend using Kodi as media manager, once your media shares is set up and have been added to Kodi your library should be automatically updated when you add new content.

 

[wizardofid]

Will have a look at them and see what the system requirements are like and then try a couple of distro's and see which one I like the best.

 

[Johnatan56]

VLC media player? You just have to open network folder.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc
Y
Done.
Then this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/50674/add-files-from-a-network-location-in-vlc (it recommends smbntfs to mount it so it handles it as though it was local)
Or if stream: https://www.howtogeek.com/118075/how-to-stream-videos-and-music-over-the-network-using-vlc/

 

[wizardofid]

VLC media player? You just have to open network folder.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc
Y
Done.
Then this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/50674/add-files-from-a-network-location-in-vlc (it recommends smbntfs to mount it so it handles it as though it was local)
Or if stream: https://www.howtogeek.com/118075/how-to-stream-videos-and-music-over-the-network-using-vlc/

Going to try kodi first, however things changed.Initially I was told the battery is dead it was replaced recently with a 6 cell battery, the older bios doesn't support 6 cell batteries so a simple bios update and presto it is charging again.In Puppy it showed it never had a charge cycle.

So I am likely to remove windows altogether and get a full distro loaded, or do a clean install of puppy and work my way from there getting apps working, once you have used yassm to mount network shares is shows up in gnome which sort off solves that issue.But I probably going to need to get a better distro if I want to pair my android tablet to use as a remote control.Will see what happens Enjoying messing about

 

[Johnatan56]

Going to try kodi first, however things changed.Initially I was told the battery is dead it was replaced recently with a 6 cell battery, the older bios doesn't support 6 cell batteries so a simple bios update and presto it is charging again.In Puppy it showed it never had a charge cycle.

So I am likely to remove windows altogether and get a full distro loaded, or do a clean install of puppy and work my way from there getting apps working, once you have used yassm to mount network shares is shows up in gnome which sort off solves that issue.But I probably going to need to get a better distro if I want to pair my android tablet to use as a remote control.Will see what happens Enjoying messing about

Look at Droidmote for that.

 

[garyc]

Used to have one of those AAO netbooks. It ran Lubuntu fine, although upgrading the RAM helped a lot. Normally used VLC as the media player.

 

[porchrat]

Is OpenElec not an option?

Or is that too focused on being a media player?

 

[wizardofid]

Is OpenElec not an option?

Or is that too focused on being a media player?

No not at all, could always dual boot, but with the battery working, Definitely want more out of it out.So will likely install mint, and then look at media player OS.Some sniffing about on the web I found BartPE would help in speeding up XP a lot.Also found that I likely need to look at forcing the CPU to use full power instead of the more conservative states, I could change the state in puppy out of the box, windows XP not so much.

 

[wizardofid]

Decided on sticking with slacko puppy for the time being.Downloaded Mint KDE, will install that once I have upgraded the ram and the HDD.Raided the puppy mint repository so good to go, puppy has VLC so will give it a go, but the combination of gnomeplayer and yassm makes it pointless as I have added a bookmark with all the file shares.

Yay !

 

[wizardofid]

lol
Love to experiment, and happened to come across crunchbang, and have totally fallen in love, it's now called hydrogen with a open box window manager.The less resources it uses the better.

 

[Kloofvreter]

I had an Asus EEE PC (Netbook), loaded various flavours of Linux on it (32 bit of course), and they were all MUCH slower than Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 I previosuly had on it

 

[wizardofid]

I had an Asus EEE PC (Netbook), loaded various flavours of Linux on it (32 bit of course), and they were all MUCH slower than Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 I previosuly had on it

Luckily this acer has a bit more punch then the original asus EEE, however XP runs so damn slow on it but that is entirely due to ZIF SSD I think, I have tried a couple of distro's already, crunchbang is okay definitely runs bit slower then puppy but I managed to get VLC install among other things for a trial run.

While I definitely enjoy the openbox window manager, quite similar to what blender would use for example it does require more hands on approach having to learn commands and such it's the only drawback, puppy was pretty simple and straight forward.Going to give mint a go today and see what the result it, running all of them on live CD without affecting initial installs of XP and puppy.The live CD experimentation is actually great allows you to find the right fit without having to wait for the install to be complete.

I think I am going to try out a few media player distro's as well and see before wiping the XP install.It's like being in a candy store and it keeps throwing free candy at you so will need to stop at some point

 

[Kloofvreter]

Luckily this acer has a bit more punch then the original asus EEE, however XP runs so damn slow on it but that is entirely due to ZIF SSD I think, I have tried a couple of distro's already, crunchbang is okay definitely runs bit slower then puppy but I managed to get VLC install among other things for a trial run.

While I definitely enjoy the openbox window manager, quite similar to what blender would use for example it does require more hands on approach having to learn commands and such it's the only drawback, puppy was pretty simple and straight forward.Going to give mint a go today and see what the result it, running all of them on live CD without affecting initial installs of XP and puppy.The live CD experimentation is actually great allows you to find the right fit without having to wait for the install to be complete.

I think I am going to try out a few media player distro's as well and see before wiping the XP install.It's like being in a candy store and it keeps throwing free candy at you so will need to stop at some point

XP was also much slower that Windows 8.1 on mine.

 

[ODTech]

Luckily this acer has a bit more punch then the original asus EEE, however XP runs so damn slow on it but that is entirely due to ZIF SSD I think, I have tried a couple of distro's already, crunchbang is okay definitely runs bit slower then puppy but I managed to get VLC install among other things for a trial run.

While I definitely enjoy the openbox window manager, quite similar to what blender would use for example it does require more hands on approach having to learn commands and such it's the only drawback, puppy was pretty simple and straight forward.Going to give mint a go today and see what the result it, running all of them on live CD without affecting initial installs of XP and puppy.The live CD experimentation is actually great allows you to find the right fit without having to wait for the install to be complete.

I think I am going to try out a few media player distro's as well and see before wiping the XP install.It's like being in a candy store and it keeps throwing free candy at you so will need to stop at some point

Mint Cinnamon and KDE is kinda heavy, you'll probably want to try mate or xfce.. The feel of LXLE that i suggested earlier is very similar to Mint cinnamon it's just less refined and feels a little cluttered but it's super light.

 

[ponder]

lol
Love to experiment, and happened to come across crunchbang, and have totally fallen in love, it's now called hydrogen with a open box window manager.The less resources it uses the better.

Bunsenlabs is quite nice, installed it on my laptop today but god apt is fscking slow. Once you have used pacman from arch nothing compares except maybe alpine linux' apk as it's very similar to pacman.