Gave linuxMCE a chance

[ch0de]

Was hoping for more. I use IPcop and have about 10 VPN's setup for my diffrent clients.   I am not able to give that up and need to access it from most systems in the house same systems that have my media on them.  So i was not able to use LinuxMCE as the primary router.  I didn't want to spend days reconfiguring Conf files for somthing that is suposed to just "Work" out of the box.

LinucMCE did not Properly install the drivers from my Gforce fx5500.. I had to Revert to an old ATI PCI card..

It did not install my winTV-150  and even after doing what the Wiki said it didn't work.

I know i needed to make LinuxMCP my DHCP server if i wanted Bootp to work. BUT it insisted on making it's self the Default gateway to all DHCP clients... That won't work well now will it...   

From the videos i have seen on youtube. if i want linuxMCE to take over my whole network, and i want to buy all new hardware (even though Normal linux suports my hardware out of the box)   I'm sure it would be fun..

[DeadPenguin]

Or you could spend $10,000 for a proprietary system that can't do half the stuff LinuxMCE can do.

[ch0de]

After posting this.... I installed XP media center.. and was watching / recording TV in just a few hours and I still had access to all my client VPN's from all systems....  Amazing...

 My main point is there is no Reason LinuxMCE needs to take over your network.. No reason it HAS to be the router...   No reason it can't come with basic "working" drivers for Basic hardware..   Geforce fx5500… wintv-150   Seriously......   
I can understand it needing to be DHCP server.. But give options in the web interface for configuring it...   Give options for disabling the Routing.. and be able to change Gateway...     
Yes i know all this can be changed with lots of time in a command shell Editing COnf files and scripts...   But seriously.. this is advertised for beginners, and one click installs.

[ch0de]

If you watch this video which is a "demo" of linuxmce compared to XP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcNwnANrCpw

You would think OUT of the box this software works...     This is how people are fidning out about linuxMCE...    I understand why i read so many disapointed user post..   You would think this is a Plug and play system.. One click install...  Easy to configure and update...   

[tschak909]

LinuxMCE (which I do believe is badly named, because it encompasses quite a bit more than that), has to be the central system, because it ISN'T your run of the mill media center. I am SICK and tired of all these people who jump over with their uber-custom setups and expect this system to magically encompass them all.

I am sorry about your issues with the PVR-150 card. I did not have them, nor did I have a problem with the WinTV PVR-USB2 tuner, or my HDHomeRun that I currently use to record my high-definition content. As more people use and contribute to these systems, these things will be ironed out.

But please understand, that this is a LARGE system, capable of much more than Windows MCE could ever dream of, it has a lot of moving parts, and a good number of those parts (plug and play devices over the network), require that it respond to DHCP address acknowledgements (as other means of actively probing for network devices have mixed results.), and since it's kludgy to realistically poll promiscuously for these things, it's not effective to have the DHCP server somewhere else.

If something else works better for you, use it. But I can tell you, that the system DOES work out of the box, as advertised, so please, calm down... it's still early in the game, there are tons of bugs, come help us fix them!

-Thom

[teedge77]

Thom you have to admit....the working out of the box part is very hardware specific. theres very little hardware that works out of the box as opposed to the amount of hardware that can be used with some configuration. like you said...lots of bugs. i think part of the problem also comes from the video, where people (unrealistically) expect that all hardware will work out of the box. windows mce can be easy to get going...but like you said...doesnt offer a whole lot. the name LinuxMCE does seem to short change the whold setup doesnt it? i guess paul thought LinuxEverythingButTheKitchenSink was too long...maybe chode will come back when he gets his "Green Screen of Death". saw that on a  forum zaerc had a link to. linuxmce will at least give you an error with output or logs you can make sense of.

[ch0de]

I don't have a problem using LinuxMCE as my DHCP server..  The problem is it assigns it's self as the gateway  when it is not... When it is a single NIC install..  so any system that gets a DHCP address doesn’t have access to the internet or any of the VPN networks..  There is no apparent way to change the DHCP assigned gateway  address.
I don’t plan on using WindowsMCE…  I am going to keep hammering away at LinucMCE..    These are just Observations from the outside.   

[teedge77]

oh when you said you installed i guess i wrongly assumed you were going to use it for a while. i had that same issue with it doing the routing and assigning itself as the gateway. i finally gave in and used a VLAN to separate stuff. i think you can edit the dhcp file to give out the right gateway....someone else will have a better answer for that. i havent even used LinuxMCE in about a month now. i am waiting to get a rack put in the wall for all my stuff. its kind of on hold til then.

[pixelator]

It is also possible to tell the DHCP server in LMCE to give out a different gateway address.

[slice16]

I have LMCE running as the DHCP server in my network. My LMCE box is 192.168.2.2 and my Default Gateway is 192.168.2.1. LMCE gives out the correct IP address. I am guessing this is because it uses it's own settings such as DW, DNS etc.

[table9]

ch0de,
You can get this working pretty easily.  LMCE does not need to take everything over, just give out DHCP addresses to MDs.  Like the previous post just stated put the address as 192.168.1.2 with a gateway of 192.168.1.1.  The 192.168.1.1 is your gateway and turn off DHCP on that device.  You can easily assign statics to the rest of the machines on your lan or use the DHCP on MCE to assign them.  Just manually set them up using the DHCP servers.  It works fine with a single NIC.  A lot of people on this board like to flame instead of help.  Sorry about it.  I frequent this board a lot less because of a lack of maturity.  Good luck on whatever MCE you choose.  You will find that a lot of people have done great work on this project.  They tend to get overshadowed by the flamers in a lot of cases.  Besides Paul, totallymaxed is a great resource that is quite helpful.  Thanks guys for your work here.