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« on: May 31, 2010, 10:50:14 pm »
I'm sorry you're so frustrated about active development. I'm a Unix expert with lots of free time who is looking for a big coding effort to jump into and I'm interested in LinuxMCE (at least as a user at this point). I've built one 8.10 beta2 hybrid so far. (I built two but switched from a Phenom II X4 box to a 1.8GHz Athlon box because the Phenom seemed overkill once I got it built). Here are some reasons I why haven't contributed to lmce yet:
#1 - lmce was extremely tedious for me to install and get "working." I spent a solid week+ trying to install it. It's partly my fault for not rtfm first. I thought putting the CD into a fresh machine and clicking "Install LinuxMCE" would at least get a basic installation ... but I was wrong ... such is the nature of a beta I suppose.
#2 - None of my existing machines have nvidia GPUs (most are ATI by strange luck). So I'm still sorting out which of my issues are "ATI isn't supported" problems and which are not. Frustrating but workable. If I like lmce enough I'll get some nvidia boards (or add ATI support to lmce if that contribution would be welcome). So, I'm still struggling to get the thing working at all and I dare not ask for help because I read the warning about ATI.
#3 - I write C code but not C++. I haven't checked the help wanted ads here but I infer from this thread that you're looking for C++ and not C.
#4 - lmce is much more like a single board computer than a linux application. I'm one of those "walk through walls" / "walk on water" unix people and I'm having trouble not breaking the system ... no I take that back ... I'm having no trouble whatsoever breaking the system -- I'm having trouble trying not to break it then figuring out how to unbreak it without doing [yet] another reinstall. I'm willing to work on such a system again but I see a steep relearning curve just to be able to tinker much less fix/maintain/augment. Heck, I'm even a very serious home theater person so that part isn't even a learning issue for me. I'm just overwhelmed (amazed actually) by the dcerouter mechanism and how it really pushes the envelope of "plug & play."
#5 - Here is the one that worries me the most ... the current "beta" is based on Ubuntu 8.10 ... which goes dark in less than six months, doesn't it? And users are told not to do release upgrades, right? I know 10.04 LTS just came out, but if it's so much work to integrate with the o/s release, why wasn't this based on an LTS release (which would have been 8.04 at the time if I understand Ubuntu correctly -- I'm new to the Ubuntu distro). Does this mean you (the LinuxMCE team) are going to do your own support for 8.10 for lmce?
Anyway, to make a long story short (too late), if I could get it to stay running, then if I could figure out how to use it, then I'd start using it (sh*t, I want to do the whole house with it or something like it). Then if I could figure out how it works internally -- or even just find a piece I could work on (and I already have a long list of things I'd like to add) -- then I'd happily jump headlong into the code effort.
But I'm really worried about this LTS thing ... I'd really hate to get neck deep into an implementation then have to switch to something else. And I am also kind of anxious about how fragile it appears to be (like alpha stability in a beta2 pack).
BTW, the only part I've even tried using so far is loading my own DVDs and CDs into the core for playback on that machine's monitor/speakers. I haven't even let the thing see my netcams or my Vista panel or even any of my amps, TVs, etc.
I'd love to help.
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