May 11, 2005
Build Your Own Linux Home Theater PC
By Dave Salvator
Linux is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the recent history of personal computing. In some ways, it's similar to the original homebrew PC movement of the late 1970s and early 80s. Equal parts cool kids club and grass roots revolution, Linux in its many different forms has proven itself a force to be reckoned with.
A highly configurable OS that can both scale up to big enterprise iron and down to handheld devices, Linux can do almost anything. It even powers the most well-known PVR on the planet, TiVo. Now that we've heaped that glowing praise on this modern computing wonder, we have to throw a rock or two at it.
A number of distributions like Xandros, Linspire, and Lycoris have made very big strides toward making Linux easy to install and use by less technical users who just want to get their stuff done, and not twiddle with source code, .conf files, and kernel modules.
Linux has also made some good strides toward being an interesting alternative to Windows Media Center Edition (MCE). But obstacles remain--lots of them. So, before you embark on trying to build a Linux-based Home Theater PC (HTPC), you have to ask yourself a question: "How much time do I have to dedicate to bringing up a Linux-based HTPC?"
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