I love it when people tell us how retarded we are, without understanding that we actually do have specific reasons for doing this:So does this mean that you love me then?
LinuxMCE is not a media center.I thought that the "MCE" stood for media center edition?
It is designed to be the center of the house, the core machine being an always-on server providing:
* storage services for both media and data for the entire house
* message routing services for all other media directors, and home automation interfaces inside the house
* network booting services for the media directors connected to TVs around the house
* asterisk for telephony services
* plug and play interception of all devices in the system, connected to any media director or the core, or network devices.
the three last points are the most poignant, because they are the big reasons we need the server to be the central router.
with asterisk, we need to be at the edge of the network, because most standard VOIP protocols do not route nicely through NATwalls. This allows us plug and play installation of a VOIP line in the least painless way possible, so it just works.
with the plug and play engine, we detect a wide variety of network devices, such as IP phones, network TV tuners, and network attached storage servers the moment they come onto the network. We need direct access to the DHCP server to do this, and we use a patched DHCP server to provide the necessary notifications.
with the netbooting, I don't know if you've ever done diskless workstation booting, but network booting is directly tied to needing a working DHCP server. With our system, you drop a pc onto the network, tell it to network boot, and you have a media director. We need direct control over DHCP to do this in a plug and play manner.
All of these services come together to produce the first smart home platform, a unified control center for every single aspect of your home. Having all of those features is definitely a good thing, but not when you can't turn them off in case your system doesn't support them.
I still don't understand the need for 2 network cards. Would they both be connected to the same router? Even if you have a large number of apps that need direct access to the internet without a firewall, that shouldn't limit other services from using the same card at the same time. So, what am I still missing here?
* one disk for system
* one or more disks for media storage, attached either directly to the system, via USB, via eSATA, or via NAS storage
There is no way to use the same partition that the system is on for media storage?
btw, it would be prudent to make a list of system requirements and post a link to them on the main wiki page, so at least some people will know before committing to the download.
Now, don't you feel like an ass?Are you implying that there is a moment in time when I don't feel like an ass?