Messages

1

Users / Re: linuxMCE is still not ready for real life!

« on: June 03, 2008, 08:25:12 pm »

... Unfortunately LinuxMCE isn't for everyone, ...

This is not what the demo video says, and I'm glad that you recognize it. Not that I'm unhappy with LMCE, but I think that a version specificaly designed for professional assisted installation, configuration and maintenance would give this extraordinay system a boost.

Best regards,

Marcos Nogueira
S. Paulo - Brazil

2

Users / Re: Why I left LinuxMCE for MythBuntu

« on: May 21, 2008, 05:13:00 pm »

Hahahahahahahaha

?

Sorry but LinuxMCE IS THE "do-it-yourself" version of a payable version If you want to pay for a system look at Pluto:
http://plutohome.com/index.php?

Thanks for the info. However, I didn't find there any form to order the product.

Marcos

3

Users / Re: Why I left LinuxMCE for MythBuntu

« on: May 20, 2008, 06:35:06 pm »

Hello Thom,

UI3 is still vapourware at this point. We need more people who are willing to learn Designer to extend the _EXISTING_ UI. Why do you think I am making all the screencasts?

*hmm*

The screencasts are excellent! I'm learning the Designer by following your instructions. It's difficult, but no more than developing in CA-Visual Objects <BG>. Right now I'm working on the translation, but haven't succeeded so far.

Best regards,

Marcos

4

Users / Re: Why I left LinuxMCE for MythBuntu

« on: May 20, 2008, 06:30:03 pm »

Hello Samuel,

1. I don't believe anyone who doesnt know what windows is, Linux or MacOSX is should be installing an operating system on their own.  You say the average person would be vexed by what a "USB dingle" is?

Not vexed, but lost.

2. Not everyone is going to install LinuxMCE on their own, or Windows for that mater, many windows users I know would be lost, and don't even understand what a "driver" is! 

That's true.

I believe the devs have done well with the automated setup, thats one of the beauties of LMCE! 

Yes it is, but the problems will begin AFTER the installation.

I do agree that there needs some UI refinement and that it should be easier for contributers to assist I'm that manner, but there is work under way UI3 is in the works and will achieve this

I'm learning the Designer in order to help the development of more refined - and customizable - UIs.

Best regards,

Marcos

5

Users / Re: Why I left LinuxMCE for MythBuntu

« on: May 19, 2008, 10:40:24 pm »

LinuxMCE is far from ready for the masses.
...
The "concept" is great.... however...

Agreed.

The disappointment with Vista MCE and the LMCE demo video have made me try the product. After struggling alone for a few weeks without success I decided to hire a Linux Professional to help. Working together a couple of weeks more we've managed to put it to partially run almost problem-free for a month now. Follows my initial considerations:

1. The product is fantastic. My compliments to the dev team and contributors.
2. It isn't - by any means - a product for the masses. The responsibles might kill the product if they insist in adopting this approach.
3. IMHO too much development effort is put on wizards, automatic detections, guided installation scripts and technical questions.
4. The UIs needs a lot of refining (a work that we contributors can do).
5. Its translation and localization must be much more easy to accomplish.
6. The menus must be much more easy to edit.

IMO the time spent by the developers in trying to make a "do-it-yourself" product would be much more useful if directed to solve its known problems and enhance its functionalities.

It's IMPOSSIBLE to an average user to setup LMCE. The AV Wizard, the Setup Wizard with videos, the automatic detections with technical questions, and the technical actions of some menus (e.g. "Resend A/V Codes"...) among other stuff, obstruct IT professionals like myself to recommend the product to customers. I won't dare to install LMCE "as-is" in a client because he/she will panic as soon as prompted for an answer to an hermetic question (e.g. "A new USB dongle was detected. What should I do with it?"...), and call our support staff at 2:00 AM. Please remember also that the average user doesn't even know what "Linux" is. "KDE Desktop" means nothing to him/her, and LMCE's KDE needs a lot of customization to become "understandable" for the common user.

My suggestion is to produce a PAID version for professionals who want to work with LMCE. I'm not familiar with GPL licensing, and don't know whether this is possible or not, but I see that, in keeping this "do-it-yourself" approach, the product will remain restricted to geeks and soon be surpassed by its competitors. And this will be a pity.

Just my 2 cents,

Marcos Nogueira
S. Paulo - Brazil

6

Developers / Smaller Fonts

« on: May 19, 2008, 10:34:05 pm »

Hello All,

One aspect of LMCE was disturbing me: the texts were way too big and didn't properly fit the space available in buttons and menus. This issue is solved: I reduced by 7~8 the PixelHeight values of the StyleVariaton table and now all UIs have a much cleaner and elegant look. Tested ok in 1024x768 and 720p resolutions.

HTH,

Marcos Nogueira
S. Paulo - Brazil

7

Developers / Re: Translations

« on: May 16, 2008, 08:25:59 pm »

Hello Jeovane,

Please send your email address to marcos dot nogueira at ig do com dot br.

tks,

Marcos

8

Developers / Re: Translations

« on: May 16, 2008, 06:17:08 pm »

Hello Jeovane,

Hi! Marcos, I'm just starting to use the linuxMCE, I'm brazilian too.
If you need some help, that I can help, you can count with me.
I would like to know how to get your translation, if it is possible.
Thanks a lot.
Muito obrigado pela atenção e boa sorte nesta jornada.

Jeovane V. Sousa
Uberlândia-MG-Brasil

Welcome to the club. Be prepared for many sleepless nights... :-)

The translations issues mentioned at my previous posts are not resolved yet. Thanks to Thom and his excellent screencasts I'm playing with HADesigner more comfortabily now, but so far haven't been able to decypher this beast. Re the PTBR translation I'll send it to your email ASAP.

Thanks for your help offering - I'll certainly need it since I'm not a Linux expert at all. Let's keep in touch.

Best regards,

Marcos Nogueira
S. Paulo - Brazil

9

Developers / Re: Translations

« on: May 06, 2008, 07:54:43 pm »

Hello All,

The Brazilian Portuguese translation is 90% done. First I created a Portuguese BR language in the Languages table (code 9). Then I exported the Text_LS table to a .ods file and opened it with OO Calc (in OO Calc is very easy to add lines, sort, substitute, compare, check spelling etc.). Finally I saved the file in CSV format and imported it to the pluto_main db using phpMyAdmin. After correcting collation and character encoding, following the instructions above on this thread, my LMCE is - partially - speaking Portuguese. Very easy and straightforward. However, some issues remain:

1. Some strings are not translated (e.g. items of the Lights, Media and Security menus);
2. Since most of the strings in Portuguese are much bigger than in English, their font sizes need to be adjusted in order to fit the available space in buttons and menu items.

Any help re the issues above will be greatly appreciated.

Finally, if someone is interested in this work, please send me the instructions on how to upload the file.

Thanks in advance,

Marcos Nogueira
S. Paulo - Brazil
LMCE 7.10 RC1 - UI2

10

Installation issues / Re: Linksys WVC200 Camera

« on: April 25, 2008, 09:58:09 pm »

someone will correct me here if I'm wrong as I haven't played with IP cameras yet - but I thought that LMCE only "played with" cameras that have a URL to still images (that are updated regularly) - it looks like you are pointing it to a video stream which is a different thing altogether...

I'm interested in a reaply to this question too...

Thanks for the tip,

Marcos

11

Installation issues / Re: Linksys WVC200 Camera

« on: April 25, 2008, 05:28:14 pm »

Hello Bulek,

(...)
can you give more details ? Content of /etc/motion files, what exactly you did, which instructions you followed, etc...
Giving help on "doesn't work" without any details is a bit hard..
(...)

I agree... <G>. Here goes the details:

- Lenovo P4 1.4GHz - 1GB RAM - 150GB SATA HD - GeForce 8500GT 512MB - LG Flatron L1740PQ - LMCE 7.10 B4
- Linksys WVC200 V1.1 IP Camera

After the initial difficulties for a Linux newbie I've finally got LMCE running in UI2 and the KDE fonts problem resolved. Next I decided to add the camera device to the orbiter (core/hybrid). Before proceeding, I successfully tested the camera connection in both MPlayer and VideoLAN, using a variety of URL strings. Then I followed exactly the instructions in the IP Cameras chapter of the documentation (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/IP_Cameras). After regenerating the orbiter, a "HVC200" (the camera name I've given) item was added to the Security menu.

When I click this HVC200 item, a transparent blue background with a darker centered rectangle screen is shown. It has also the name of the room at the top, the camera control buttons and the title "Single camera view" at the bottom, and the Exit button at the top right corner. Nothing happens then: no image and no error message.

The /etc/motion directory contains two files: motion.conf and thread0.conf. I've opened both files, but don't know what to do next.

Thanks for your reply,

Marcos

12

Installation issues / Linksys WVC200 Camera

« on: April 24, 2008, 10:20:33 pm »

Hello All,

I've installed a Linksys WVC200 IP Camera following the instructions of the "IP Cameras" topic on the documentation, but haven't got it to work so far. Googleing for tips I've found its proper URLs at the Ubuntu forum:

http://<camera_ip>/img/video.asf, or
http://<camera_ip>/img/mjpeg.cgi

Both URLs work fine in VideoLAN and MPlayer. Any tips to get this camera working under the orbiter would be very appreciated.

TIA,

Marcos Nogueira
S. Paulo - Brazil

13

Installation issues / Re: KDE fonts/resolution problem (SOLVED)

« on: April 20, 2008, 04:20:57 pm »

Hello Seth,

I've finally solved this problem by setting the option "UseEDID" to "true" in both "Device" and "Screen" sections of the xorg.conf file. Thanks for your hekp anyway.

Regards,

Marcos

14

Installation issues / Re: KDE fonts/resolution problem

« on: April 15, 2008, 06:45:48 pm »

Hello Seth,

No it didn't - the -dpi 100 is still there. After reading many posts regarding this subject I inspected my xorg.conf and noticed something that seems strange: its Section Files is empty, like this:
Section "Files"
EndSection
In other xorg.conf examples there are many paths to fonts between these statements.

Suspicious about it, and in order to learn something, I've installed only Kubuntu 7.10 in another machine. Wow! Its fonts, graphics and icons are crystal clear, much more than in my XP. I've managed to set its resolution to 1440x900 in a 22" monitor and am stunned with its visual effects and quality. Now I have to understand what LMCE is doing behind the scenes that is causing my problem.

Thanks a lot for your interest,

Marcos

15

Installation issues / Re: KDE fonts/resolution problem

« on: April 15, 2008, 05:04:20 pm »

Hello Seth,

Thanks a lot - your tips partially solved my problem. Now, no matter the dpi I set (75/100), the fonts in KDE are very sharp but I can't change its resolution: it's fixed at 640x480. If I select "change video resolution" at the orbiter menu and select 1024x768 in the AVWizard, the font problem returns. Please note that this is my first contact with Linux, so my questions are necessarily very dumb <g>.

Thanks again for your help,

Marcos