LinuxMCE - User contributions [en]

User:Samme/Hardware

2009-03-23T18:34:47Z

Samme: Removing all content from page

User talk:Samme

2007-10-16T17:31:16Z

Samme: /* moving all development-related information */

*If you want to add a new '''topic''', '''[http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php?title=User_talk:Samme&action=edit&section=new click here]'''.
*If you want to '''add a post''', click on [<font color="blue">edit</font>] by the header of the topic.
*'''Sign''' your post with 4 tilde <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>
*'''Preview''' before you submit!

== If you're the wiki admin, block the spammers ==

The spammers are running wild on this wiki. Ban them from doing it. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 15:14, 14 September 2007 (MST)

:I'm working on it. Please do sign when you leave a message. You know how, don't you? [[User:Samme|Samme]] 15:52, 14 September 2007 (MST)

:Yes, of course I know how to sign comments. If you need help with admin, I volunteer. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 11:32, 15 September 2007 (MST)
::Good, then as soon as I get admin rights from Paul I'll also add you as admin. [[User:Samme|Samme]] 13:59, 15 September 2007 (MST)
:::Okay, it looks like you've got it now. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 17:23, 24 September 2007 (MST)
::::How about that admin access for me? [[User:Trout|Trout]] 12:44, 25 September 2007 (MST)
:::::Please block all the spammers. I've set a category on them Categories: Spammer [[User:Trout|Trout]] 17:30, 25 September 2007 (MST)

:What's the hold up? We need some spammers banned. People are getting frustrated. Look at the decline in participation. Tired of dealing with spammers. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 09:26, 18 September 2007 (MST)

::I know Trout, but I haven't got any response from Paul yet regarding admin-rights, as soon as we get them then we can start cleaning up. [[User:Samme|Samme]] 09:39, 18 September 2007 (MST)

:Yeah! Thanks for blocking the spammers! [[User:Trout|Trout]] 05:37, 24 September 2007 (MST)

::This was just the first step, I'm thinking of implementing some other measures too. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 23:18, 24 September 2007 (MST)

== Needs to be fixed ==

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

Every page needs to be fixed. This is not helpful unless you say how it is to be fixed. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 09:56, 25 September 2007 (MST)

If <strong>categorization</strong> is one issue and <strong>weak content</strong> is another, maybe we could have two or more different ones. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 10:55, 25 September 2007 (MST)

:Good point, what I mean the most with those are that they need to be categorized and wikified and often make them more readable. Maybe we should start by setting up some guidelines how articles should look etc? What do you think? Maybe we could somehow gather the ones that edit the wiki most and agree on some rules/guidelines, maybe via irc? --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 13:44, 25 September 2007 (MST)

::IRC is fine. server/room/time ? [[User:Trout|Trout]] 17:31, 25 September 2007 (MST)

I am not sure why the need to make so many changes. Pluto did most of the work for us. Take a look at there site to see how the pages were originally laid out and connected. http://plutohome.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

There are many pages that are excellent that are not being linked to currently and I think that most of the information needed is already here it just needs to be found. [[Getting Started]] is packed full of good useful information that just really needs to be better organized. [[Features]] and just looking at http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php?title=Special:Uncategorizedpages reveals numerous pages that contain content that needs to be made available. IMHO --[[User:Rwilson131|Rwilson131]] 21:20, 25 September 2007 (MST)

::Rwilson, do you have any ideas on categories? I've made a little proposal, but it's far from complete and may change alot, take alot, make additions, make changes. [[LinuxMCE Wiki:Community Portal:Category Proposal|Categories, proposal]] --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 23:49, 25 September 2007 (MST)
:::Samme, I think the Proposed Categories are excellent. My commit was more about not reinventing the wheel. Pluto has put together a pretty thorough set of documentation and most of needs to be documented is already documented. The biggest problem I can foresee is re-organization and clean up/updating the content on these pages. Another problem I see is we need someone who can confirm that the programming information is still indeed correct. Take for instance the very difficult task of building from source. There is no good page for this. I am not a coder. I am someone who has been using this software for almost 18 months when it was pluto. There have been alot of changes since the migration from pluto, so we need to make sure that we are able to get the ''correct'' information out on the wiki.--[[User:Rwilson131|Rwilson131]] 17:10, 26 September 2007 (MST)

== Request for comment ==

I'm having a discussion with Zaerc about how categories should be organized. Please could you take a look at his talk page at [[User talk:Zaerc]] and comment? [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 07:00, 7 October 2007 (MST)
:The idea that Zaerc is pressing on with will result in a hardware category with ''every piece of hardware'' listed in the hardware root category - creating a mess with dozens of unidentifiable pieces of hardware lumped together. How is it helpful to have [[RCA HC60RX]] and [[Caddx NX-8E]] in the same category? It isn't even obvious WHAT they are!! In fact, one is an alarm panel and the other is a piece of automation equipment. But you certainly wouldn't know this from looking at the root hardware category!!

:This is complete madness and the antithesis of what the designers of MediaWiki intended the category function to be used for. I have pointed this out on several occasions only to receive a response such as (to paraphrase) "well this isn't wikipedia - we do things differently here". Why on earth can't they create a list?! [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 18:23, 8 October 2007 (MST)

== New Users ==

Can you honestly expect someone who has NO experience in Home Automation, or Media Center PCs to actually be able to look at the system without being confused by a mixture of both introductory and architectural technical texts? --[[User:Tschak909|Tschak909]] 17:45, 12 October 2007 (MST)

== moving all development-related information ==

[[user:danielk|danielk]] and [[user:chriss| I]] are working on setting up a public SVN along with a Trac environment. What do you think about moving all the development related sites into the Trac-wiki? I.e. this wiki would be a "user wiki" while the Trac-wiki becomes a "developer wiki" --[[User:Chriss|chriss]] 01:11, 13 October 2007 (MST)

:I think this sounds like a good idea, this will make users less confused when coming to this wiki. I'm positive, have you talked to someone else about this? --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 00:14, 16 October 2007 (MST)

::Nope, I just made the suggestion right here. I will open a discussion in the forum as soon as we can make the systems public, i.e. as soon as the sources are in sync with the current releases --[[User:Chriss|chriss]] 04:36, 16 October 2007 (MST)

:::Alright, but I think it's better to put the discussion on the community portal here at the wiki, since not all is active on the forum. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 10:31, 16 October 2007 (MST)

User talk:Samme

2007-10-16T07:14:15Z

Samme: /* moving all development-related information */

*If you want to add a new '''topic''', '''[http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php?title=User_talk:Samme&action=edit&section=new click here]'''.
*If you want to '''add a post''', click on [<font color="blue">edit</font>] by the header of the topic.
*'''Sign''' your post with 4 tilde <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>
*'''Preview''' before you submit!

== If you're the wiki admin, block the spammers ==

The spammers are running wild on this wiki. Ban them from doing it. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 15:14, 14 September 2007 (MST)

:I'm working on it. Please do sign when you leave a message. You know how, don't you? [[User:Samme|Samme]] 15:52, 14 September 2007 (MST)

:Yes, of course I know how to sign comments. If you need help with admin, I volunteer. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 11:32, 15 September 2007 (MST)
::Good, then as soon as I get admin rights from Paul I'll also add you as admin. [[User:Samme|Samme]] 13:59, 15 September 2007 (MST)
:::Okay, it looks like you've got it now. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 17:23, 24 September 2007 (MST)
::::How about that admin access for me? [[User:Trout|Trout]] 12:44, 25 September 2007 (MST)
:::::Please block all the spammers. I've set a category on them Categories: Spammer [[User:Trout|Trout]] 17:30, 25 September 2007 (MST)

:What's the hold up? We need some spammers banned. People are getting frustrated. Look at the decline in participation. Tired of dealing with spammers. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 09:26, 18 September 2007 (MST)

::I know Trout, but I haven't got any response from Paul yet regarding admin-rights, as soon as we get them then we can start cleaning up. [[User:Samme|Samme]] 09:39, 18 September 2007 (MST)

:Yeah! Thanks for blocking the spammers! [[User:Trout|Trout]] 05:37, 24 September 2007 (MST)

::This was just the first step, I'm thinking of implementing some other measures too. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 23:18, 24 September 2007 (MST)

== Needs to be fixed ==

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

Every page needs to be fixed. This is not helpful unless you say how it is to be fixed. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 09:56, 25 September 2007 (MST)

If <strong>categorization</strong> is one issue and <strong>weak content</strong> is another, maybe we could have two or more different ones. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 10:55, 25 September 2007 (MST)

:Good point, what I mean the most with those are that they need to be categorized and wikified and often make them more readable. Maybe we should start by setting up some guidelines how articles should look etc? What do you think? Maybe we could somehow gather the ones that edit the wiki most and agree on some rules/guidelines, maybe via irc? --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 13:44, 25 September 2007 (MST)

::IRC is fine. server/room/time ? [[User:Trout|Trout]] 17:31, 25 September 2007 (MST)

I am not sure why the need to make so many changes. Pluto did most of the work for us. Take a look at there site to see how the pages were originally laid out and connected. http://plutohome.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

There are many pages that are excellent that are not being linked to currently and I think that most of the information needed is already here it just needs to be found. [[Getting Started]] is packed full of good useful information that just really needs to be better organized. [[Features]] and just looking at http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php?title=Special:Uncategorizedpages reveals numerous pages that contain content that needs to be made available. IMHO --[[User:Rwilson131|Rwilson131]] 21:20, 25 September 2007 (MST)

::Rwilson, do you have any ideas on categories? I've made a little proposal, but it's far from complete and may change alot, take alot, make additions, make changes. [[LinuxMCE Wiki:Community Portal:Category Proposal|Categories, proposal]] --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 23:49, 25 September 2007 (MST)
:::Samme, I think the Proposed Categories are excellent. My commit was more about not reinventing the wheel. Pluto has put together a pretty thorough set of documentation and most of needs to be documented is already documented. The biggest problem I can foresee is re-organization and clean up/updating the content on these pages. Another problem I see is we need someone who can confirm that the programming information is still indeed correct. Take for instance the very difficult task of building from source. There is no good page for this. I am not a coder. I am someone who has been using this software for almost 18 months when it was pluto. There have been alot of changes since the migration from pluto, so we need to make sure that we are able to get the ''correct'' information out on the wiki.--[[User:Rwilson131|Rwilson131]] 17:10, 26 September 2007 (MST)

== Request for comment ==

I'm having a discussion with Zaerc about how categories should be organized. Please could you take a look at his talk page at [[User talk:Zaerc]] and comment? [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 07:00, 7 October 2007 (MST)
:The idea that Zaerc is pressing on with will result in a hardware category with ''every piece of hardware'' listed in the hardware root category - creating a mess with dozens of unidentifiable pieces of hardware lumped together. How is it helpful to have [[RCA HC60RX]] and [[Caddx NX-8E]] in the same category? It isn't even obvious WHAT they are!! In fact, one is an alarm panel and the other is a piece of automation equipment. But you certainly wouldn't know this from looking at the root hardware category!!

:This is complete madness and the antithesis of what the designers of MediaWiki intended the category function to be used for. I have pointed this out on several occasions only to receive a response such as (to paraphrase) "well this isn't wikipedia - we do things differently here". Why on earth can't they create a list?! [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 18:23, 8 October 2007 (MST)

== New Users ==

Can you honestly expect someone who has NO experience in Home Automation, or Media Center PCs to actually be able to look at the system without being confused by a mixture of both introductory and architectural technical texts? --[[User:Tschak909|Tschak909]] 17:45, 12 October 2007 (MST)

== moving all development-related information ==

[[user:danielk|danielk]] and [[user:chriss| I]] are working on setting up a public SVN along with a Trac environment. What do you think about moving all the development related sites into the Trac-wiki? I.e. this wiki would be a "user wiki" while the Trac-wiki becomes a "developer wiki" --[[User:Chriss|chriss]] 01:11, 13 October 2007 (MST)

::I think this sounds like a good idea, this will make users less confused when coming to this wiki. I'm positive, have you talked to someone else about this? --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 00:14, 16 October 2007 (MST)

LinuxMCE talk:Community Portal

2007-10-09T07:09:12Z

Samme: /* Comments */

==Moved from Zaerc's talk page==
=== Categorization ===

Hi Zaerc,
I have noticed that you have moved a number of hardware articles from more specific categories, such as [[:Category:TV tuner cards]] to the more general category [[:Category:hardware]] and that you have nominated the more specific categories for deletion. Why was this? Surely the more specific categorization is helpful, especially when product codes often do not explain the nature of the equipment [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 00:37, 7 October 2007 (MST)
:Can we please hold fire on further re-categorization until further community consensus is sought. Many thanks [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 00:59, 7 October 2007 (MST)
::Why did you de-categorize everything from the TV tuner card category? [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 01:05, 7 October 2007 (MST)

Because I wanted to get back to where I was with organising things before people started to re-organise everything. See also the "community-proposal" page. I suppose I went a little overboard as I had to go through just about all the pages under "hardware" again anyway, which I wasn't to happy about in all honesty (I was getting tired, having to put everything back, and obviously didn't gave it enough thought).

The original idea was to dump hardware into the main categories untill there is a bunch similar and then put them into their own sub-category as well. When I went through all the pages again I felt that would leave the "video" category as good as empty but now I realize I could have just added the tv-cards to both "video" and "tv-cards".

My thought also was that categories with 1 or 2 pages in them wouldn't be very usefull and spread them out to much (the video category would be almost empty with the tv-cards removed) but now I see that wouldn't be a problem if they remain in the parent categories as well. So I agree with you on putting (at least) the TV-cards category back in, that makes it a lot easier to specificly find them.

Unless you want to take categories away from pages again, I see no reason to hold fire, we can just add new (sub-)categories to the pages wherever suitable. And if anyone feels that a page really does not belong in a certain category they can just remove it with a little note on the talk page (see Nokia770 for example).
<br>--[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 05:16, 7 October 2007 (MST)

:Firstly, yes I agree with you that there needs to be a critical mass of articles in a certain area before a sub-category is created.

:Secondly, yes, I do want to make sure that articles do not appear once in a category and then again ''in a more general category''. This would involve, as you put it, 'taking categories away from pages'. I understand that this is not Wikipedia and I'm not suggesting that we should do everything the same. But the Wikimedia projects have conventions which have been subjected to a large amount of thought and debate and can be very useful guides for less mature documentation projects such as this.

:Wikipedia sets the de-facto standard for how wikis should be organised - especially when we are using the same software (MediaWiki). Regardless of that, I think that having article A in one category and then a more general category is confusing and runs counter to the intention of how the category function was designed. It makes for general categories which are needlessly cluttered with articles which should be (and are) also categorized more specifically higher up the tree.

:Having a list of articles in one place (so they are as you claim) may be appropriate for a small number of articles but this is not scalable for a large amount of documentation like we have. To quote directly from the Wikimedia guidelines:

:''Each page is typically in at least one category. It may be in more, but it may be wise not to put a page in a category and also in a more general category.''[http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_Categories#Category_considerations]

:I do not think you have given a good enough reason to deviate from this. Of course, articles can be in more than one category. You give the examples of phones and orbiters. With the following category structure

-Hardware
|-Phones
|-Orbiters

: A device as you describe (which is not exclusively a phone or an orbiter) can appear in both the phone and orbiter category - but ''not'' hardware as this is a more general category. Pleas can we hold fire on further changes in this area until there is more agreement. I will ask others for comment. Cheers [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 06:55, 7 October 2007 (MST)

===Succinctly===
In my opinion (and following established conventions) this is fine:

-HARDWARE
|-PHONES --> Cisco smart phone article
|-ORBITERS --> Cisco smart phone article

This is not fine and makes for clutter:

-HARDWARE --> Cisco smart phone article
|-PHONES --> Cisco smart phone article
|-ORBITERS --> Cisco smart phone article

[[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 07:05, 7 October 2007 (MST)

::A phone is just as much hardware as it is a phone or an orbiter. And it is extremely convenient to have a category listing all the known hardware. As for the other more general categories, they make it easy to quickly find related solutions. Apart from that it is a lot easier to remove tags from pages then to add them, should they prove to be unecessary.

::I see no reason to comply with policies of unrelated wikis, and: ''but '''it may be wise not to''' put a page in a category and also in a more general category'', does not seems like a very convincing argument. Even if it is an "established convention" elsewhere.

::I just wish we could focus more on expanding and organizing instead of endless re-organization and debate on how it should be done. And why exactly do we need to have several threads discussing this on my talk page and not the forum or the hardware-category's talk page? --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 08:45, 7 October 2007 (MST)

:::Okay I've now moved everything here. Forget other wikis for the time being. There is still obviously some disagreement here which we need to resolve by coming to some kind of consensus decision. Can we ''please'' hang fire on further changes in this area for the time being? [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 10:19, 7 October 2007 (MST)
::::You are completely correct to say "A phone is just as much hardware as it is a phone or an orbiter." But this is accounted for in the example below because both phones and orbiters are '''subclasses''' of hardware. It doesn't need to be repeated again in the hardware category - this is implicit.

-HARDWARE
|-PHONES --> Cisco smart phone article
|-ORBITERS --> Cisco smart phone article

::::As a compromise, how about we have a list of all hardware as an article in itself? This would surely satisfy your requirement for a complete hardware list in one place? [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 10:24, 7 October 2007 (MST)

::I'm in favor with Lozzos proposal at the top here, I think this makes sense and also as Lozzo says we could have a long alphabetical list with all hardware that's easy to search through if it's needed. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 11:03, 7 October 2007 (MST)

Unless somebody comes up with some good reasons to remove all the pages describing hardware from the hardware category, I see little reason for me to stop organizing the hardware section as I have been doing since before you came along (no offence intended). I'm really not that interested in acedemic debate on grouping theory, whether something "isn't needed" or "implict" seems hardly worth the discussion. As for pages with lists, that simply does not work, you can find a whole bunch of attempts in the "hardware lists" category. --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 11:30, 7 October 2007 (MST)

:Zaerc, I'm not saying we should necessarily go one way or the other for the time being. But I think it would be reasonable and proper to have a little bit of a discussion with a few of us to get some group consensus before we press on in any particular direction with regards the way we categorize/list things. I'd be very interested to hear your further thoughts on why you believe a hardware list is unworkable.

:Also, what do you reckon should be the minimum number of articles to justify a category?

:[[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 14:20, 7 October 2007 (MST)

::I think the absolute minimum would be one, but ideally the more the merrier. If you look at the [[RCS TXB16]] for example, it is the only thermostat we have (afaik) in the wiki. Still I think it is a good idea to give this device a Thermostats category so that the people looking through automation subcategories (for example) will find it there. And somebody looking for info on that particular device instead will be able to find it in the hardware category without having to go through sub-categories first.

::Now if you want to make and maintain a seperate list that is fine with me, I'm not having that discussion again. And so far I still haven't seen any good argument to remove all the hardware from the hardware category. --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 15:53, 7 October 2007 (MST)

:::Zaerc, as far as I am aware, you don't have executive fiat on this wiki. With all due respect, what I'm hearing from you at the moment is: "I've decided what's going to happen with regards categorization, I don't care what anyone else says and I'm not going to debate the matter further". I've outlined my arguments at length and in a civil manner. This has included a compromise proposal (supported by Samme) and I do not feel you have given a proper explanation of why you don't think it's workable. You have instead responded by saying you won't discuss the matter further ("I'm not having that discussion again"). [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 11:18, 8 October 2007 (MST)

==Lozzo's compromise proposal==
Re-iterating the above...

===Current situation===
# Zaerc wants somewhere where there is "a category listing all the known hardware."
# He has achieved this as follows by listing articles in one category and also in its more general parent category as follows:

-HARDWARE --> Cisco smart phone article
|-PHONES --> Cisco smart phone article
|-ORBITERS --> Cisco smart phone article

===Disagreement===
#Lozzo believes that this:
##Violates the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_Categories#Category_considerations generally accepted convention for how categories should be structured]
##Goes against the elegant principle of categories - the whole reason the function was added to MediaWiki
##Makes for very cluttered general categories the further down the category tree you go
##In the more general categories, for example harware, the user is presented with an arbitrary list of product names which do not necessarily describe what a product is. How are we supposed to know what an ''LG 42LB5D'' is or a ''Leadtek DTV1000T'' if they are in one big homogenous general category?

===Proposed compromise solution===
*'''To satisfy Zaerc's requirement for a single place to list all known hardware, we can maintain a single list article'''. I (lozzo) am very happy to help construct this in partnership with Zaerc. In fact, this would be better than putting all harware in the general hardware category because it would allow notation.

*The articles should be tagged with categories as follows and according to convention:

-HARDWARE
|-PHONES --> Cisco smart phone article
|-ORBITERS --> Cisco smart phone article

This compromise is supported by Lozzo and Samme (see above).

Please comment below. [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 11:18, 8 October 2007 (MST)

==Comments==
I am actually in agreement with Zaerc on this one. As the system is now. the Subcategories show up first, so the initial impression is to click the subcategory. I think a list would be to difficult to maintain as more and more people start adding content to the site. I vote for putting the articles in as many categories as they fit, including Hardware.

Do you know why there is a Category: Hardware List and Hardware?
--[[User:Rwilson131|Rwilson131]] 14:49, 8 October 2007 (MST)

:I still see no valid argument whatsoever to remove all the hardware from the hardware category, no matter how often you repeat your opinions. And "my requirement" is perfectly satisfied the way things are now. --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 16:08, 8 October 2007 (MST)

::Yes, but ''mine isn't''. I am trying to propose a reasonable compromise where we can both achieve what we want. Please find below stuff from RWilson form my talk page. I will respond when I have time. [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 17:03, 8 October 2007 (MST)

I think we always need to start at the Main Page and determine how is the person most likely going to get to the proper information. Currently, we are confusing ourselves. Take for instance

Person wants to find out if his system is going to work?(Try and imagine your first visit here were you confused?)
* [[Main Page]]
::The only link for the main page is to
* [[Hardware]] an article about the basics
::Here there are several links to Information about hardware.
**[[What hardware I will need]]
**[[:Category:Hardware]]
::I logical next choose is [[What hardware I will need]]
*[[What hardware I will need]]
::Now this page has several links including [[Tested good hardware]] [[Tested bad hardware]] and [[Suggested hardware]], but the Category at the bottom is [[:Category:Hardware Lists]]
::The [[Suggested hardware]] has items that state they do not work (this should not be there in my opinion)

I think if we are going to have lists, then there should only be two, Bad Hardware and Suggested Hardware.
Currently we also have [[Recommended Accessories]] which is essentially worthless.

I can really see no need for [[:Category:Hardware Lists]] as the Categories page is already a list, which is self generated. I am a firm believer in KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). The software is complicated enough, so our wiki should be simple and reflect the most common problems people are currently facing. ie Display issues, MythTV issues.
Just my two cents worth!
--[[User:Rwilson131|Rwilson131]] 15:01, 8 October 2007 (MST)

:: I agree with you on this one, it feels to me that this category (Hardware lists and Recommended accessories) isn't necessary at all, I also agree with you that we should keep things simple and also we should make this wiki a simple place to navigate, nopt clutter it up with loads and loads of unnecessary categories etc. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 00:09, 9 October 2007 (MST)

:'''A category system is a tree-structure'''. If categories ANTS and SPIDERS are in category CREEPYCRAWLIES then the red ant can be put in the ANT category and it will follow logically that it is ''also in the category CREEPYCRAWLIES''. What you are effectively doing is listing things twice. The MediaWiki category system was never intended to be used in this way - i.e. to create large lists. This is what list articles are for!

:To pick up on the point made by RWilson, a new user may click on the hardware category. Under the scheme you advocate he will be presented with a page that includes every single piece of hardware entered into the wiki. This includes many brand names and product numbers/codes which will make no sense at all - they didn't to me when I arrived which is why I set about working out what they were and categorizing them (as per nearly every other wiki on the planet). With respect, suggesting that an exhaustive list of hardware will be helpful to a new user is analgous to reading a book by starting at the index: needlessly confusing and overwhelming.

:'''I am not suggesting that the current lists we have on board are any good''' - they aren't. But that doesn't mean that they have to stay that way. If you want an exhaustive list of hardware then create one in an article. If it has proper sections then it shouldn't take long to keep it up to date - just compare categories with sections in the long list [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 17:50, 8 October 2007 (MST)

::To emphasise once more, a category is not an "automatically generated list" as has been claimed above; they are two distinct concepts - go and ask anyone on another wiki using the MediaWiki software. If anyone is interested, take a look at this[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories%2C_lists%2C_and_series_boxes]. I am only linking to it because we are using the ''same software'' for our wiki, which is designed to be used in a particular way.

::Another relevant point, each category page can only hold 200 articles before you have to start going through them page by page. [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 18:05, 8 October 2007 (MST)

:::This is worth noticing, cause I doubt someone will go through endless amount of pages to find there make/model of a tv in the articles listed under hardware category, it's much simple going like "hardware > tv > my model". --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 00:09, 9 October 2007 (MST)

LinuxMCE talk:Community Portal

2007-10-07T18:03:07Z

Samme: /* Succinctly */

Talk:Main Page

2007-10-01T08:45:52Z

Samme: /* Section with icons */

This information needs to be much more user friendly and less geek oriented. No slight intedned, I'm a geek too, but to popularize LinuxMCE, we will need docs that address concerns of regular users.

For instance, there is no discussion about which TV's are supported. Is an HDTV a requirement?
*Agreed - think project should look to also cover categories and build up templates for such. Will look at developing Wiki Templates for things such as hardware items to make it easier (and more presentable) for public to browse such things.--[[User:Tomwebbnz|Tomwebbnz]] 20:59, 2 August 2007 (MST)

== Wiki licence? ==

Hi. I'd like to put some information from this wiki on Wikipedia. Is this wiki under the GFDL? I can't find any licensing information. [[User:McLurker|McLurker]] 11:38, 16 August 2007 (MST)

==Major redesign==

I've redesigned the front page, no information is gone, just moved around some stuff. I will continue to straigthen things up and organizing, do you wanna help? [[User:Samme|Samme]] 03:36, 15 September 2007 (MST)
* Looks nice, big improvement. [[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 12:57, 15 September 2007 (MST)

== Section with icons ==

I've changed the support section to have some icons. Basically the idea is cribbed (in the best spirit of the free software movement!) from the [http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page MythTV wiki]. Obviously, it links to the same things as we had before.

It would look a lot nicer if we had SVG/PNG support as we are currently using GIFs for these.

What does everyone think? [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 13:45, 29 September 2007 (MST)

:Basicly I like it, but there's a huge white spot - it seems kinda empty, maybe we could fill it with something. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 01:45, 1 October 2007 (MST)

== Capture card?? ==

I am new to Linux MCE and I'm excited to dive in. I have a pc that I am going to use but I need a 2 port video/capture HDtv card.
Can you guys give me your ideas of what you think is the best please?

Talk:Main Page

2007-10-01T08:45:32Z

Samme: /* Section with icons */

This information needs to be much more user friendly and less geek oriented. No slight intedned, I'm a geek too, but to popularize LinuxMCE, we will need docs that address concerns of regular users.

For instance, there is no discussion about which TV's are supported. Is an HDTV a requirement?
*Agreed - think project should look to also cover categories and build up templates for such. Will look at developing Wiki Templates for things such as hardware items to make it easier (and more presentable) for public to browse such things.--[[User:Tomwebbnz|Tomwebbnz]] 20:59, 2 August 2007 (MST)

== Wiki licence? ==

Hi. I'd like to put some information from this wiki on Wikipedia. Is this wiki under the GFDL? I can't find any licensing information. [[User:McLurker|McLurker]] 11:38, 16 August 2007 (MST)

==Major redesign==

I've redesigned the front page, no information is gone, just moved around some stuff. I will continue to straigthen things up and organizing, do you wanna help? [[User:Samme|Samme]] 03:36, 15 September 2007 (MST)
* Looks nice, big improvement. [[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 12:57, 15 September 2007 (MST)

== Section with icons ==

I've changed the support section to have some icons. Basically the idea is cribbed (in the best spirit of the free software movement!) from the [http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page MythTV wiki]. Obviously, it links to the same things as we had before.

It would look a lot nicer if we had SVG/PNG support as we are currently using GIFs for these.

What does everyone think? [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] 13:45, 29 September 2007 (MST)

Basicly I like it, but there's a huge white spot - it seems kinda empty, maybe we could fill it with something. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 01:45, 1 October 2007 (MST)

== Capture card?? ==

I am new to Linux MCE and I'm excited to dive in. I have a pc that I am going to use but I need a 2 port video/capture HDtv card.
Can you guys give me your ideas of what you think is the best please?

User talk:Lozzo

2007-10-01T08:42:19Z

Samme:

Hi Lozzo.
You're doing a lot of great stuff! [[User:Trout|Trout]] 14:53, 30 September 2007 (MST)

Nice work Lozzo! --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 01:42, 1 October 2007 (MST)

LinuxMCE:Community Portal

2007-09-28T07:21:10Z

Samme:

__NOTOC__
<div style="padding:40px 25px 40px 25px; border:1px solid; border-color:#C0C0C0;">
<div align="center">
<h1>'''[http://linuxmce.org LinuxMCE]''' community portal</h1>
</div>

==News==
*'''27/9-07''' - [[User:Lozzo|Lozzo]] and [[User:Trout|Trout]] are now also admins.
*'''24/9-07''' - New template added, [[:Template:Delete]], add this to pages that you propose for deletion, these pages will also be added to the category [[:Category:Delete Page|Delete Page]]. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 06:09, 24 September 2007 (MST)
*'''24/9-07''' - I have now blocked the known spammers, another thing I've done is that I've added the category [[:Category: NeedsToBeFixed|NeedsToBeFixed]], look at the page for further information. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 02:48, 24 September 2007 (MST)
*'''22/9-07''' - Is there somebody out there who knows how to make templates? If so we need you're help!!!
*'''15/9-07''' - [[User:Trout|Trout]] has now also volunteered as admin.
*'''14/9-07''' - I, [[User:Samme|Samme]] is now administrator of the wiki, after a discussion with Paul, other interested in helping, mail me, you'll find my adress under the [[Contacts|contact page]].

==To do==
#<strike>Spam prevention</strike>
#<strike>Recruit a second admin and also volunteers, up for the task? Contact me!</strike>
#<strike>Delete garbage pages all can be found in the category [[:Category:Delete Page|Delete Page]]</strike>
#Set up rules & guidelines for the wiki
#<strike>New first page</strike>
#Fix hardware pages
#[[LinuxMCE Wiki:Community Portal:Category Proposal|Categories, proposal]], very important
#Various guides maybe replace FAQ?
#Dictionary?
#Join associated pages by unision or cross-referencing (if they are definately in different cathegories) exampe: [[Nokia_770]], [[Nokia_770_Orbiter]], [[Building_Orbiter_for_the_Nokia_770]]

Feel free to add things to do, after all it is a wiki :o)

==Some useful links==

*[http://LinuxMCE.com LinuxMCE homepage]
*[http://forum.linuxmce.com LinuxMCE Forums]
*[http://ubuntuforums.org/ Ubuntu Forums]

User:Chewi

2007-09-28T07:12:22Z

Samme: /* Guestbook */

I'm new to LinuxMCE and everything...

But I hope to have finally found the perfect system to build my home of the 3rd millenium... ;)

== Guestbook ==
Feel free to leave greeting or whatever:

Welcome to the wiki. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 00:12, 28 September 2007 (MST)

LinuxMCE talk:Community Portal:Category Proposal

2007-09-28T07:03:11Z

Samme:

I am concerned about one thing with regards to the follow categories and that is continuity of terms.
* 1 Core
* 2 Orbiters
* 3 Media Directors
* 4 Network Attached Storage
* 5 Security
* 6 Telecom
* 7 Home Automation
* 8 Multimedia
* 9 Personal Computing
are the list of options one gets by selecting the read more button on the main page. This is the terminology that was used by Pluto, so the documentation is going to have references to these different aspects of the LinuxMCE software. My thoughts would be to work out from the above main categories, because not everyone is going to use the Home Automation, or the Security features built in. My example:
* 1 Core
* 2 Orbiters
* 3 Media Directors
* 4 Network Attached Storage
* 5 Security
* 6 Telecom
* 7 Home Automation
* 8 Multimedia
* Audio Sources
o Recievers
* Video Sources
o Set-top boxes
+ Satellite boxes
+ Cable boxes
+ Digital terrestrial boxes
+ PVR boxes
o VCR
o DVD
o Blu-ray
o HD-Dvd
o Cameras
o TV-cards (also in computer hardware)
* Video Displays
o LCD
o Plasma
o Projectors
* 9 Personal Computing

just my 2 cents worth.

I think this looks real good. Thumbs up from me. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 00:03, 28 September 2007 (MST)

Play the same media in multiple rooms simultaneously

2007-09-26T07:10:53Z

Samme:

<p><h1>How to set it up</h1></p>
<p>You need to upload a floorplan of the house in LinuxMCE Admin on the Wizard, Devices, Floorplans page. Use drag and drop to position all the entertainment areas (ie rooms with media) on the map.</p>

<p><h1>How to use it</h1></p>
<p>Start playing the media in one room as explained in [[Watch/Listen to media stored on the Core]]. Then from any Orbiter choose the media map. In the default UI it's the leftmost media button with the picture on it. On the map, or floorplan, you'll see all the media playing in the house and all the entertainment areas color coded with the media playing in there. Touch all the entertainment areas to indicate which ones you want to play the same thing. They should all have a square around them as shown below. *** Then touch the media you want them all the play.</p>

<p><h1>Programmer's guide</h1></p>
<p>The Orbiter will send the Media_Plugin a MH Move Media command telling it what stream to move and into which entertainment areas. Media Plugin has to then figure out how to get it to all those rooms based on the information that the media handlers (like Xine_Plugin) provided when they registered with Media_Plugin. Media_Plugin will first try to find one media handler that has m_bMultipleDestinations true (ie can play the same thing in multiple places synchronized). If there is no appropriate media handler, it tries to find one that is at least able to support devices in all the entertainment areas. If there is none, then Media_Plugin will split the stream into multiple streams and pass it off to different media handlers. For example, the user started the media in one room on a media director with Xine, and is moving it to three rooms. In one room there is a Squeeze Box, and in another a Linux media director with Xine and VLC, and in the last room a media director with some other media player that cannot play streaming audio. In this case Media_Plugin may switch from using the Xine_Plugin media handler to the VideoLan_Plugin since that can handle playing the media in the first two rooms. Then for the third room it will make a copy of the stream and send that off to another media handler for playback. Once the stream is split like that the user will see two streams on the media map, and the two streams will no longer stay in sync.</p>

<p>LinuxMCE uses a text string to define media position, such as "TITLE:2 CHAPTER:4 POS:19282" to indicate the 2nd title, 4th chapter, 19,282 seconds into the block. We encourage developers of media players to translate internal position information to/from this simple text string using LinuxMCE's format so that the user can move media between media players and each will resume where the other left off.</p>

[[Category:Tutorials]]

Xine

2007-09-26T07:06:40Z

Samme:

'''Xine''' is a multimedia playback engine used by LinuxMCE.

Talk:Quick Start Guides

2007-09-26T06:51:41Z

Samme: Reverted edit of WneMdb, changed back to last version by Samme

User talk:Samme

2007-09-26T06:49:02Z

Samme: /* Needs to be fixed */

User talk:Avajon

2007-09-25T20:51:52Z

Samme:

==[[EIB]]==

Good work on EIB, keep it up :o) --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 13:51, 25 September 2007 (MST)

User talk:Samme

2007-09-25T20:44:26Z

Samme: /* Needs to be fixed */

User talk:Samme

2007-09-25T06:18:15Z

Samme:

Talk:What To Expect

2007-09-24T18:33:51Z

Samme: /* I think this page is still needed */

== I think this page is still needed ==

This page is a nice list of steps with commentary. Especially about the video. IMO, it has a place, somewhere on this wiki. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 11:32, 24 September 2007 (MST)

:Good work Trout, but I think it needs some more work, it's whole lotta text, but it's a good start :o) --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 11:33, 24 September 2007 (MST)

Talk:Serial Hack

2007-09-24T16:49:51Z

Samme:

When you figure out a better way, edit the article. Until then this is just discussion. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 08:06, 21 September 2007 (MST)

:When you have something usefull to add for a change, edit the article. Otherwise, quit pestering the people that do --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 12:59, 21 September 2007 (MST)

I am at a loss to understand this battle. The original commit was another way to accomplish the same thing. There are a lot pages on this site that have very similar issues. What is the harm in giving people more than one option even if that option is one in the same. If nothing else it offers all of us an opportunity to learn something different. The second option (perl) is another example. Personally I feel both should be left on the page and just remove the editorial commitments as these are truly the things that belong in discussions.

*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Good_practice Good Wiki Practices]
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Behavior_that_is_unacceptable Behavior that is unacceptable]
--[[User:Rwilson131|Rwilson131]] 09:27, 23 September 2007 (MST)

I'm sure AVJohn is very happy with you pissing all over his page just to prove a point Trout. And how nice of you to make it personal. So thanks for the lessons on properly maintaining a wiki, you're a real champ. --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 02:50, 24 September 2007 (MST)

:Keep the articles clean and use the discussion-pages for...ahh, discussions! And when you reply, please indent, it's so much easier to follow a discussion that way. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 02:58, 24 September 2007 (MST)

:Zaerc, you keep making it more clear that you don't understand how a wiki works. First of all, I tried to be nice by just moving the discussion piece of the page to the discussion area. This was not acceptable to you, and you moved it back with a nasty comment. I tried again with the same result, and a worse comment from you. So, IMO you are the one who made it personal. Second, when you sait "... all over <strong>his</strong> page", you are completely wrong about page ownership. The page belongs to the wiki and it's not personally AVJohns, this misunderstanding of yours is exactly what caused you to be upset to see "your text" moved to the discussion page. Having the discussion moved to it's correct place is not something to take personally. BTW: you're welcome for the wiki lessons. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 04:50, 24 September 2007 (MST)

::So I'm the one putting a personal rant aimed at you on that page? Have some respect for the people who actually contribute, because it seems more like all the pages here belong to you. --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 07:40, 24 September 2007 (MST)

:::Yes, this is an insult to me "please don't edit pages unless you actually have something to add". I feel that I am adding clarity when I move your comments to the discussion page. You are personally attacking me when you imply I am not adding anything. "go find something usefull to do, instead of pestering people that actually add information" Again another insult, implying that I have nothing better to do than mess with your addition for no purpose. Also discounting my contributions as though they are somehow less important than yours. I don't think that all the pages belong to me and I have stated so. I am sorry if you perceived that, it was not my intent.
:::I really think that the page is better served without different options of editing a file. The page is about detecting serial ports, not how to create a text file. It should be enough to say "create a file like this ..." IMO this would serve the users best. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 09:07, 24 September 2007 (MST)

::'''Hey hey hey!''' No you have to stop, both of you, we're in this together, work with each other, not against each other, now we end this discussion and continue the work with the wiki - '''and''' from now on discussions goes on to the pages that are designated for discussions so we can stick to the facts in the articles. Do we have a agreement? --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 09:49, 24 September 2007 (MST)

Backup and Restore

2007-09-24T13:33:37Z

Samme:

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

LinuxMCE 0704 includes a new update mechanism which will make it automatically update itself in the future. If you are currently using LinuxMCE 1.0 or a recent Pluto version they cannot be upgraded to LinuxMCE 0704. However you can follow the process below to make a backup of your settings and configuration in LinuxMCE 1.0 or Pluto .44 '''before''' you install LinuxMCE 0704. Save this backup on a CD or on another PC. Then install 0704, which will clean out the hard drive and do a fresh install, and then restore the backup. LinuxMCE 0704 will see that it is restoring a backup from a prior version and import the data into the new format.

'''Backup and Restore process'''
<p>
You can back-up your system and later restore it to that earlier configuration. The process works by saving a file and then later restore it. That file contains icons for users, rooms, scenarios and floor plans, devices list and settings for each; which are restored using a database dump.
</p>

'''How it works'''
<p>
Using web-admin site go to the Upper menu > Configuration > Backups

To create a restore point you have to press 'Backup' and then save the file somewhere safe. Remember: download the backup and save it to another pc. Don't let it on your Linux MCE machine because you'll lose it.

Later after reinstalling the system or in case of failure you can restore the system to that previous state.
</p>
<p>
Use 'Browse' button to locate the backup file and then press 'Restore'.
</p>
<p>
At this time there is a note what tells me that I have to reboot the system i order to install my configuration.
'Backup file uploaded, please reboot the machine and be patient, since it will take longer than a normal reboot.'
</p>
<p>
Reboot the machine and wait for the whole process to finish. After the interface loads you should see your icons and floor plans.
</p>
<p>
I used the restore successfully from a '''Pluto 2.0.0.44''' to a '''LINUX MCE 1.1'''.
What it didn't restore was the bookmarks created for media and the play lists.
</p>
<p>
The restore from '''LINUX MCE 1.0''' to '''LINUX MCE 1.1''' was not complete. I have all the devices working but it didn't restore my icons for users, rooms and floor plans; and neither the bookmarks and play lists.
</p>
<p>'''Note'''
<br>
If you use 192.168.80.1 for Pluto 2.0.0.44 or Linux MCE 1.0 internal network address and you later installed Linux MCE 1.1 with 192.168.80.1 you don't need to do anything else.
<br>If you use on internal network an address not like '''192.168.80.1''', (i.e. 192.168.86.1) you need to go to Upper menu > Advanced > Network > Settings and hit 'update' button. I installed Pluto 2.0.0.44 and Linux MCE 1.0 with 192.168.80.1 but I used 192.168.86.1 instead when I installed the Linux MCE 1.1 and I got TFTP timeout when booting the media directors.
</p>

Image events

2007-09-24T13:33:12Z

Samme:

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

Because Image is a non focus-able control, it will have standard events that any control has.

See [[non-focus events]].

Automation

2007-09-24T13:29:31Z

Samme:

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

There are several types of automation products available that are compatible with LinuxMCE. Usually, they work by sending signals through the home's power lines.

{| class="wikitable" width="300" style="text-align:center; background:#efefef; width:75%; border:1px solid black"
|+'''Sections'''
|-
! [[Automation]]
| [[Lights]]
| [[Appliances]]
| [[Thermostats]]
| [[Irrigation]]
|-
! [[X10]]
| [[X10 Hardware Installation]]
| [[X10 LinuxMCE Configuration]]
| [[X10 Troubleshooting]]
|-
! [[Insteon]]
| [[Insteon Hardware Installation]]
| [[Insteon LinuxMCE Configuration]]
| [[Insteon Troubleshooting]]
|-
! [[Z-Wave]]
| [[Z-Wave Hardware Installation]]
| [[Z-Wave LinuxMCE Configuration]]
| [[Z-Wave Troubleshooting]]
|}

How to install a new software package to LinuxMCE using Add Software Screen

2007-09-24T13:29:08Z

Samme: Category ???

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

At first to add descriptions of the available packages to the database you must run

/usr/pluto/bin/getxmls

or add it to the cron (to get this descriptions periodically).

Also if you have some installed packages from the downloaded descriptions you should to run

/usr/pluto/bin/instcheck PK_Device

where PK_Device is primary key of this media director PC in the table "Device" of the LinuxMCE db.
You can find it by calling the follow query to pluto_main database

SELECT PK_Device FROM Device WHERE IPaddress="your_ip_address"

Then

1. In the Orbiter main screen go to LinuxMCE->Add Software

2. Select some package and answer "Yes" on the next question

3. After some time the package will be installed

[[ Category : Testing ]]

Main AVWizard

2007-09-24T13:28:37Z

Samme:

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

The step 2 has that normal flow:
- every event (SDL_Event, network event) is translated into a WM_Event
- the WM_Events will change the look behavior, and at the end the screen is redrawn

Leadtek WinFast TV 2000 (bttv driver)

2007-09-24T13:25:15Z

Samme:

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

This page to follow soon.

AVWizard properties

2007-09-24T13:22:13Z

Samme:

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

One AVWizard property may be defined as:
PropertyName = String
If you have spaces in name you may use ' (apostrophe character) like 'Hello world!'. For inserting apostrophe character itself, you may double use it like:
'It''s me!'.

The array list of items is written in that way:
PropertyName = (
Item1,
Item2,
...
ItemN
)

Alarms

2007-09-24T13:17:56Z

Samme:

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

Include here a list of alarm panels that have been tested with LinuxMCE.

{| class="wikitable" width="300" style="text-align:center; background:#efefef; width:75%; border:1px solid black"
|+ Alarm Panels
|-
| [[Caddx NX-8E]]
|-
|}

==Interfaces==

==Security==

--Zones--

==Respond to Events==

The Respond to Events page:

==Active Sensors==

This page provides the "Reaction to sensors" table.

If 'Monitor Mode', aka Baby Sitter Mode, is checked, then when the house is is Monitor Mode you will be notified on your phone whenever the sensor is tripped and shown a picture.

* Check the boxes under "N" column if you want to receive notifications for this alert

==Security-Video Links==

==Cellphone Notifications==

Xine

2007-09-24T13:16:16Z

Samme:

{{Delete}}

What is Xine ?

Nintendo WiiMote

2007-09-24T13:15:21Z

Samme: Needs update

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

This device is not (yet?) supported by LinuxMCE, but it is known to work [http://forum.linuxmce.com/index.php?topic=1246.0].

[[Category: Input]]
[[Category: Hardware]]

Software components

2007-09-24T13:13:19Z

Samme: Delete or move/merge?

{{Delete}}

'''LinuxMCE''' is often called a platform for developing smart home modules constructed by a variety of open source projects. The integration of these open source projects, such as [http://xinehq.de Xine], [http://www.mythtv.org Mythtv], and [http://www.asterisk.org Asterisk], can be found in the LinuxMCE Software Documentation.

*[[Documentation by Device Templates]]
*[[LinuxMCE Software Components]]

LinuxMCE is an open source project and uses open source software. More information regarding LinuxMCE's relationship to open source can be found on the [[Open Source Info|open source information]] page, the [[License| license information]] page, what to do if you're an [http://LinuxMCE.com/index.php?section=developer open source developer], and LinuxMCE's [http://LinuxMCE.com/index.php?section=letter open source strategy].

LinuxMCE:Community Portal

2007-09-24T13:09:20Z

Samme: /* News */

__NOTOC__
<div style="padding:40px 25px 40px 25px; border:1px solid; border-color:#C0C0C0;">
<div align="center">
<h1>'''[http://linuxmce.org LinuxMCE]''' community portal</h1>
</div>

==News==

*'''24/9-07''' - New template added, [[:Template:Delete]], add this to pages that you propose for deletion, these pages will also be added to the category [[:Category:Delete Page|Delete Page]]. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 06:09, 24 September 2007 (MST)
*'''24/9-07''' - I have now blocked the known spammers, another thing I've done is that I've added the category [[:Category: NeedsToBeFixed|NeedsToBeFixed]], look at the page for further information. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 02:48, 24 September 2007 (MST)
*'''22/9-07''' - Is there somebody out there who knows how to make templates? If so we need you're help!!!
*'''15/9-07''' - [[User:Trout|Trout]] has now also volunteered as admin.
*'''14/9-07''' - I, [[User:Samme|Samme]] is now administrator of the wiki, after a discussion with Paul, other interested in helping, mail me, you'll find my adress under the [[Contacts|contact page]].

==To do==
#<strike>Spam prevention</strike>
#Recruit a second admin and also volunteers, up for the task? Contact me!
#Delete garbage pages all can be found in the category [[:Category:Delete Page|Delete Page]]
#Set up rules & guidelines for the wiki
#<strike>New first page</strike>
#Fix hardware pages
#[[LinuxMCE Wiki:Community Portal:Category Proposal|Categories, proposal]], very important
#Various guides maybe replace FAQ?
#Dictionary?

Feel free to add things to do, after all it is a wiki :o)

==Some useful links==

*[http://LinuxMCE.com LinuxMCE homepage]
*[http://forum.linuxmce.com LinuxMCE Forums]
*[http://ubuntuforums.org/ Ubuntu Forums]

Motorola KRZR

2007-09-24T13:05:02Z

Samme:

{{Delete}}

This is a super popular phone from Motorola.

This phone really should get some attention.

[[Category: Hardware]]
[[Category: Phones]]

Template:Delete

2007-09-24T13:04:20Z

Samme:

{| style="background: beige; border: 1px solid #aaa; margin: auto; padding: .2em; width: auto;"
|-
| rowspan=2 style="padding: 4px;" |
| '''This article is proposed for deletion.'''
|-
| <span style="font-size: 90%;">You can find more pages that are proposed for deletion in this [[:Category:Delete Page|category]].</span>
|}
<includeonly>[[Category:Delete Page]]</includeonly>
<br>

Talk:Aspect Ratio

2007-09-24T12:51:50Z

Samme:

Maybe we should move these questions to FAQ or another page. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 05:51, 24 September 2007 (MST)

Aspect Ratio

2007-09-24T12:51:10Z

Samme: Move questions to FAQ?

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

Is LinuxMCE capable of 16:9 or only 4:3 ?

If there are black bars does LinuxMCE strech the screen to fit?

Can I get letterbox to work on a 4:3 TV ?

Contacts

2007-09-24T12:30:00Z

Samme:

LinuxMCE is a hot new open source project. It's stable, practical and usable, and really cool. Just check out the [[Screenshots|Screen Shots]] to see for yourself. [[I]]'m looking for developers and maintainers to '''[[Contribute|join the team]]'''. New LinuxMCE team members, please add your name, contact info, and a brief bio or description of what you're working on. Thanks!

----
'''Paul Webber''' -- contact: webpaul1 -at- gmail (.com)<br>
Responsibilities: Installer, Ubuntu packaging, build system, linuxmce.com site<br>
I launched LinuxMCE on March 15, 2007. [[History|'''History of LinuxMCE, why I started this project, and the goals''']]
----
'''Justin Burdine''' -- contact: justin -at- cyburdinehosting (.com)<br>
Offering: Hosting/Bandwidth, Graphic Design (see [[http://cbvfx.com cbvfx.com]]), Video Editing/Promotion (see [[http://cbvfx.com cbvfx.com]]), install/testing<br>
----
'''John Botte''' -- contact: qualityinterfaces -at- gmail (.com)<br>
Offering: Forum moderation help. Conceptual ideas, help with firewire support, UI help and testing<br>
----
'''Jonathan Iannone''' -- Contact: thorn168 -at- yahoo (.com)<br>
Offering: Help with documentation
----
'''Michael Stepanov''' -- Contact: stepanov.michael -at- gmail (.com)<br>
Offering: Build and test SDL Orbiter for Linux-based PC and Nokia770/N800.
----
'''Paul D''' aka Trout -- Contact: linuxmce.gqn@gishpuppy.com<br>
Offering: Help with documentation, Wiki participation, Testing and feedback.
----
'''Pete Kalogiannis''' -- Contact: pkalogiannis -at- gmail (dot) com<br>
Offering: [[Insteon]] Integration
----
'''Nat''' -- Contact Paul Webber to relay messages to Nat
Offering: Nat has some access to some free or low-cost hardware, like TV Tuners, Video Cards, etc., which he can make available for developers actively working on a project.
----
'''Pierre Hansson''' aka Samme -- Contact: 316097 at gmail dot com<br>
Offering: Wiki-admin

I'm a Linux user already. Should I use LinuxMCE's distribution

2007-09-24T10:12:02Z

Samme: Not up to date

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

<p>Yes, LinuxMCE is based on a standard Ubuntu distribution. We only added to it--we didn't take away. So you can still use your Core as a normal Ubuntu PC. And the additions we made can be bypassed if they get in your way, explained below. DCERouter and the other devices, like the home automation modules, all run in the background in screen sessions and won't interfere. While you could try to run LinuxMCE on your own distribution, it's not really recommended. LinuxMCE has lots of scripts and utilities to facilitate various tasks. Plus LinuxMCE embeds many other open source projects, like Xine, Asterisk, etc., with our own "wrappers" that allows them to work together seamlessly. These wrappers are only tested against the versions we maintain in our Ubuntu mirror. And before we upgrade anything on our mirror, we thoroughly test the new packages in our system to be sure it still works. Also remember you only need to install LinuxMCE's software on 1 PC to be able to use it on all the PC's in your home. The Core exposes a network boot service for every other PC so they become dual purpose--hard drive boot to use them like you do now, or net boot them to use them as media directors. So you don't need to dedicate any PC's to be [[media directors]]; only the one PC running the Core which provides this service needs to be left always running LinuxMCE's software. Here's what we changed:</p>

<p><strong>Configuration scripts</strong></p>
<p>LinuxMCE includes lots of scripts that automate all aspects of maintaining a Linux system. For example, when you add a new user with the LinuxMCE Admin site, it automatically creates a new media directory, exports a samba share, creates an email and voicemail accounts, and so on. There's also scripts to do lots of low-level things like setup ip network prioritizing so your VOIP calls are clear. By default, LinuxMCE overwrites and re-creates many Linux config files at each boot so LinuxMCE acts like a black box appliance. However, once you install LinuxMCE you can go to the LinuxMCE Admin web site, click "Advanced", "Boot Scripts", and disable any or all of these scripts. Then you can still maintain your LinuxMCE Core like any other Linux PC and it won't overwrite your config files.</p>

<p><strong>Our Ubuntu mirror</strong></p>
<p>We maintain our own mirror based on Ubuntu. The reason is that we have "wrappers" for many open source projects like Xine, Asterisk, etc., which is what makes them all work together seamlessly. Whenever updates are posted to Ubuntu's repository, we need to test the new versions to be sure the changes did not break anything in our wrappers, and that the auto-configuration scripts still work. In very rare cases, we need to make our own version of a package that replaces the one in Ubuntu. But we avoid that whenever possible, and instead will re-work our wrappers so that we can stay current with the "stock" version. Any such changes are trivial, and therefore you should see no difference between LinuxMCE's Ubuntu mirror and the official one.</p>

<p><strong>Window manager</strong></p>
<p>The media directors use our own modified version of the Ratpoison window manager. All applications appear as full-screen, with no borders, and our Orbiter GUI becomes the XWindows desktop. This is the desired behavior in an appliance-like set-top box; we completely isolate the user from anything computer-like. However, you will likely not want this as your main desktop. So, we recommend you run 2 versions of X on separate terminals: one with LinuxMCE's window manager, and the other with your own preferred choice.</p>

<p>See also: [[Overview of the software modules]]</p>

Talk:FOSS 0704

2007-09-24T10:09:49Z

Samme: Merge?

Maybe we should merge this page with [[History]]. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 03:09, 24 September 2007 (MST)

FOSS 0704

2007-09-24T10:09:12Z

Samme: Merge with History?

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

LinuxMCE is a fork from Pluto. Pluto is a commercial company releasing their software as open source, but it only worked as part of their own proprietary distro and wasn't therefore too useful to the general LinuxMCE community. LinuxMCE was to be a FOSS community-driven project with no commercial ties.

In March, 2007 I completed a rough integration with Ubuntu which I released as version 1.0 along with a crude demo video. It generated a lot of interest, with millions of visitors, and the demo video was downloaded over 300,000 times. However only 27% of people reported they succeeded in installing it. I started receiving hundreds of emails a day. Many were from volunteers offering help, but first they always wanted help getting their own systems going. So after spending more than 1 month providing non-stop tech support, but without getting any of the bugs fixed or code improved, I decided to withdraw long enough to get a stable release out that was fully integrated into the Linux desktop and thus could be used by normal Linux users, and wouldn't require tech-support to get going. Pluto's solution was already reasonably stable with their own distro, but my integration with Ubuntu was still too rough.

A commercial company wanting to sell LinuxMCE also contacted me offering to provide significant resources to get a stable release out so they could start selling it. I have no invested interest in it. Pluto also offered to help because they knew that their software wasn't of much real benefit to the FOSS community when it was tied to their own proprietary distro. So, instead of working on my fork as originally planned, I merged all the changes I made for LinuxMCE 1.0 back into Pluto's svn, and used their svn and build server, with help from their IT team, the past couple months to get this new release out.

This was only a temporary diversion because it seemed the most efficient way to get a new release out which was solid and usable. Now LinuxMCE 0704 is out and the feedback is very positive. There's a more polished demo video that's a complete walk-through including all setup, documenting all the hardware I used and every step that goes into setup starting with a clean PC. So any serious Linux user who wants to get a LinuxMCE system going should be able to do so without needing tech support. Therefore my intention is to go back to the original plan now and re-fork from Pluto as a community-driven project, and re-engage looking for volunteers wanting to join the project. This 0704 release seems pretty stable and to work well so we can focus on the roadmap, the community, and not spend all the time doing tech-support to help others get LinuxMCE installed.

My apologies for withdrawing for a while. It was a catch-22 situation, and this seemed the best approach. If you contacted me previously and I didn't respond, I encourage you to do so again. My forum id is webpaul1, and my email is the same @gmail.com

What To Expect

2007-09-24T10:06:38Z

Samme: This page is a mess! Is it needed?

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}

There was a lot of skepticism on digg that LinuxMCE really did what I said it did. The fact is that there was no smoke and mirrors, everything worked exactly out of the box, was entirely plug and play, and I never had to touch a keyboard or a mouse to setup a total home system with media in every room, lighting and a/v gear automation, and a phone system. However, the caveat is that the compatibility list is limited now; this is only version 1.0 remember. So to manage expectations, here is exactly what I did, step-by-step, to setup my LMCE system, and what hardware I used. Since LMCE's hardware compatibility list is quite limited, I try to give full disclosure with liberal '''Warning''''s in bold every time you are likely to run into a problem or not get the same results.

Time needed to install LMCE and get to the point in the demo, assuming you have the cd's already:
{|
| 30 minutes || Install Ubuntu 6.10. It's only 1 minute to complete the setup wizard, the rest is just waiting for the cd to install
|-
|1hr 30 mins || Install LinuxMCE. 1 hour (with broadband) is the time it takes me to upgrade Ubuntu from the cd to the latest version using Ubuntu's online upgrade, and will vary because it's pulling the update from Ubuntu over the internet. The other 30 minutes is the time to install the LMCE software, which doesn't use the internet
|-
| 2 mins || Complete LMCE's AV Wizard to pick your screen resolution and audio connection
|-
| 10 mins || Complete the LMCE's Setup Wizard and have it setup your a/v gear, myth pvr, voip provider, lighting automation, surveillance cams, etc., so you're all ready to go. This assumes you have only LMCE plug-and-play compatible devices like in my demo sequence. If you don't, which is probably the case, you won't be able to do it all with only the remote control and 10' UI, and will need to use the built-in web admin panel, which takes quite a bit longer.
|}

Here are the steps I went through and what equipment I have, and what warnings I can offer:

1. My PC has an Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard, which has an nVidia 6150 chipset. The onboard video works great with LMCE with UI2 and alpha-blending + 3D. I have 2 network cards, one connected to my cable modem, the other to my home's ethernet switch. '''Warning''': Lots of motherboards don't work well under Linux due to lacking drivers, nVidia 6xxx or greater cards are more likely to work with alpha blending, although earlier cards (Such as the Ti4200SE are known to work) as support for legacy cards improves.

2. Boot up off the Ubuntu 06.10 live cd, install it, and reboot per the installation instructions.

3. In Ubuntu's desktop, bring up Firefox and go to linuxmce.com, click the download link, download the installer, click 'open' to run it, and 'install package'. This will add an 'Install LinuxMCE' icon to the desktop. Run it, and accept all the defaults, except choose 'Dedicated LinuxMCE' instead of 'Primarily PC'. That way you can leave it connected to a TV and LMCE will run automatically without needing a keyboard/mouse.

4. When the LMCE install finishes, before rebooting, press Ctrl+Alt+F1, and enter your username and password to log into a terminal. Run this command:
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh
It's easiest to do this at this stage because LMCE's install will have added the required source.list entry so the command works, and once I choose to reboot, my system won't come up to the Ubuntu desktop again because I choose to make it a dedicated LMCE. Press Alt+F7 to get back to the Ubuntu desktop, choose System, Quit and Restart.

5. LMCE's AV Wizard comes up. I chose 720p resolution, DVI connection (actually using DVI->HDMI cable), reduce the size of the UI to fit the screen, chose 'spdif coax' sound, choose 'I can hear it' for both the dolby digital and dts tests. '''Warning''': you don't actually hear anything with the dts test because there's no dts sample clip. Note: You can rerun the AV Wizard again by rebooting and holding down SHIFT while the system boots up.

6. When Orbiter comes up, answer 'no' to reload the router. On the 'welcome screen', make note of this device's IP address. '''Warning''': http://dcerouter doesn't seem to work, but http://ip does. Note: For my setup I didn't use the web admin panel, I did it all within the 10' UI with a remote using the setup wizard. Chose the button on the orbiter using keyboard arrows + enter, or a mouse. Or what I did is plug in a USB UIRT i/r receiver. You will see a message in the upper-left corner that it's installing the drivers, and about 30 seconds later it will start to work and you can control it with a Windows infrared remote.

7. From the main menu, choose Advanced, Setup Wizard. '''Warning''': The setup wizard is vague and unintuitive because it's designed to work with live video clips that explain all the options and show you how to do things like pair lighting modules. The videos haven't been shot yet, and the on-screen text isn't explicit enough to stand on it's own. Here I'll explain what I did at each step:

8. At the 'can you see and hear me', you won't see the video clip, just click 'next'. If you didn't connect an i/r receiver you may be prompted to do so now, just skip this.

9. At the 'names' tab, enter your name, and also the names of your other family members. Do not skip this step.

10. On the location tab confirm your location. it uses ip-to-location lookups to guess your default city, and in most cases is correct. If not, choose your city manually. The city is used for many purposes, including calculating longitude and latitude for sunrise/sunset events.

11. On the rooms tab, add all the rooms in your home. For example, if you have 1 master bedroom and 2 other bedrooms, go to master bedroom and add it once, and go to other bedroom and add it twice. Hit next to confirm or edit the default names. '''Warning''': Nothing will work until you specify the users and rooms and tell the system which room this core is in, per step X below. This is because most plug-and-play devices ask you questions like "which room is this in?" or "who does this belong to?", so until you specify rooms and users, pnp and a lot of functions are disabled. As soon as you confirm the room names, pnp is enabled, and you will start seeing messages about devices as they're detected.

13. When I get to the lighting tab, I connect an ACT USB->ZWave dongle. It asks me if I want to use it, I say 'yes'. The setup video is supposed at this point show how to pair light switches with the ZWave remote. Do this now according to your ZWave remote instructions, and choose Next. The next screen is supposed to show you how to tell your ZWave remote to copy the pairing information to the LMCE core. Without the setup videos it's easy to get lost on which screen is which, but at this include screen, it's waiting for your ZWave remote to send this data. On an Intermatic this means holding down include until it says 'copy', and then pressing '1 on'. About 15 seconds later, the ZWave remote says "Successful" and you will see a message about listing the lights you added, and it will start flashing them one at a time asking you what room each is in and what type of light/blind/etc. it is. This is done so it can create a bunch of activities for you automatically, like the 'Showtime' activity which will be in every room that has a TV and which lowers the ceiling lights to 10%, and the 'house to sleep' activity which will be in any 'master bedrooms', which turns off all lights in public, interior rooms. '''Warning''': At this moment only ZWave automation is plug and play. You can add X10, EIB, and some others using the admin web panel. Insteon is not yet supported.

14. When asked for my Alarm Panel, I choose none. The alarm panels aren't yet plug and play, you'll need to add them in the admin web panel, and it's a bit more tedious since you have to list all the sensors in your home.

15. When asked for my VOIP provider, I choose teliax, and put in my username, password and phone number.

16. This is the end of the "House setup wizard", where you specify global settings for the whole home. Chose next to go to the "Media player wizard" where you specify options for this media station. Note: If you chose to installed the Core (ie backend) software only, you won't go to the media player wizard. You will be taken to this wizard for every new media station you add, including the Core if you choose the default option of having your Core be both a back end and front end system.

17. Choose the room this core is in.

18. At the TV tab, I connect the RS232 cable from my pc to the Sharp Acquos LCD I have. Note: When you connect a serial device like this it can take LMCE up to a minute to figure out what it is because unlike usb, serial devices don't conform to a standard protocol so LMCE just needs to keep trying lots of init codes until it figures out what it is. '''Warning''': Only certain Sharp, Pioneer, HP, Runco and Mitsubishi TV's are plug and play, and only TV's with serial, usb or ethernet control can ever be made plug and play. All other TV's can generally be controlled with i/r, but you need an I/R transmitter. If you have one, you can choose the option in the setup wizard to control the device with I/R. However, the I/R database is very limited and you'll probably need to use the admin panel to learn the codes by hand. You will then pick the input from a list of known inputs, and the wizard asks "if you connected the video cable directly to the tv or to a receiver". I choose 'directly to the tv'.

19. At the receiver tab, the missing video clip will ask "How did you get the sound going?" at which point you choose the option of saying you use the tv speakers or a receiver. I choose 'receiver' and connect the serial cable to my Yamaha receiver. '''Warning''': Only Denon and Yamaha receivers are plug and play for now.

20. At the 'add other devices' tab you can add all your other a/v devices, like vcr's, etc. '''Warning''': The compatibility list is small right now, and in most cases you have to learn i/r codes with the admin panel.

Also see the Important concepts about A/V distribution and sharing in [[Usage_Intro]]

21. While still at the A/V Devices tab, I plug-in my Squeeze Box audio player. Once I tell the squeeze box whether I use ethernet or wireless and to get an IP automatically, the LMCE core will detect that the Squeeze Box has come on the network (based on the mac address in the ip request), and will ask you what room it's in. At this point you don't need to use the Squeeze Boxes remote anymore. Just use any orbiter (mobile phone, web pad, etc.), say it's in the same room as the Squeeze Box, then choose music with the media, audio menu. It will automatically play on the squeeze box if that's the only device in the room capable of playing audio. '''Warning''': I don't know if any devices but SqueezeBoxes are plug and play.

22. Next I connect my Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB2. Don't connect it until you get to this point. It asks me if I want to set it up automatically, I say yes, and it takes me to the next tab, providers, where I put in my data direct username/password (a free tv listing service in the U.S.). You don't need to run myth setup; MythTV is configured automatically. '''Warning''' #1: If you have a Hauppauge 150/250/350/500, LMCE also says it's plug and play. But for me it's crashing all the time, deep in the ivtv drivers. I don't know why, they are stock ivtv drivers. '''Warning''' #2: I've found that although Myth is more stable with the WinTV-PVR USB 2, it's still crashing a lot, either with "Error displaying video" messages, or a gray screen, or it just freezes. I don't know why. LMCE uses the stock pre-built Myth / Ubuntu .20 packages so I'm not sure why it's crashing. If you heed the on-screen to wait at least 20 minutes (during which time mythfilldatabase is using a lot of cpu), and then do a full reboot, it usually works. Note: In my case I'm not done with the setup wizard, so I'll keep going for now and reboot later. I skip add software.

23. At the 'done' tab, I plug in the rest of my devices. First I connect a Panasonic IP camera. You have to use Panasonic's software to tell the camera to get an ip address automatically from DHCP--it's annoying that it doesn't do this by default. But once you do LMCE will auto-detect it, ask you which lights and security sensors are in proximity to it, and then add a button on all your media stations, mobile phones, webpads and other controllers to view it. When you view the camera, it will turn on whatever lights you said are near it, and return the lights to their prior state after 30 seconds. If the sensors you indicated are close to it are tripped and your home's alarm system is triggered, and if you have paired bluetooth mobile phones, it will notify you on the mobile phone and show you the camera. If you give the camera a username/password, choose: dceadmin, dcepass.

24. Next I turn on Bluetooth discovery on my mobile phone. It's detected, and I say 'yes' to use it, and an applet is fed to the phone to use it as a remote control. '''Warning''': The list of compatible phones is frustratingly smal right now. Only MS Smart Phones and the older Symbian Series 60 v2 and v1 models. Note: Each time LMCE detects a new bluetooth device it will ask if you want to use it, ignore it once, or permanently ignore it. If this gets on your nerves, in the admin site, go to advanced, configuration, devices. Choose Core, DCE Router, Orbiter Plugin in the tree. And check the "Ignore State" box and click save. It will ignore all Bluetooth mobile phones from now on. Under Advanced, Unknown devices, you can remove a previously ignored mobile phone to redetect it.

25. Next I bring up the internet explorer web browser in my Samsung Q1 web pad, and navigate to the LMCE core: http://192.168.80.1 in my case. Click the link to install the orbiter software, choose X86/Windows, and run the installer. I chose the simplest options, basic skin, 640x480, etc. from the installer on the Samsung. Wait until it's done generating the gui for this device, and say 'no' to reload the router. You'll have an icon on the desktop to start the orbiter.

26. I power on a Buffalo NAS which has a bunch of movies and music on. When it requests an ip address, LMCE asks me if I want to use it. I do, and I choose the option to "make all the media public". LMCE scans and catalogs the music. '''Warning''': LMCE does't do audio fingerprinting like the new Vista Ultimate does (ie listen the music to figure out what it is and retrieve cover art). If you have the cover art and other meta data stored in the id3 tags, it will pull it, and if you ripped the cd in lmce in the first place it will be there. But if not, you'll need to go to the admin panel and choose Files & Media and cover art and activate the 'scanner', which does lookups on amazon and let's you match the cover art+attributes to the audio file. DVD's ripped within LMCE will be stored as a .dvd file, which is an .iso, and an .id3 file which has actors/genres/cover art/etc. If you ripped the dvd's in a windows ripper, LMCE should pick up the xml file that WMCE uses and import all the attributes and cover art. If not, use the cover art scanner.

26. Normally you should be able to click 'start using the system', answer 'yes' to regenerate the orbiters, and you're finished. '''Warning''': Since I added a pvr tuner, and as mentioned above, the MythTV that comes with LMCE is kind of picky for some unknown reason, I found it best to leave it here for about 20 minutes to let mythfilldatabase finish before proceeding to 'start using the system', And if choosing Media, TV, doesn't make MythTV come up within about 20 seconds, try rebooting by choosing Advanced, Advanced, Reset the Core/Hybrid. If that still doesn't work, go into the admin panel, choose Core, DCERouter, MythTV Plugin, check the box "Don't auto-configure", hit save. Then run mythsetup from the Advanced, Computing options and try using the normal mythsetup. For me it's 50/50 whether myth tv works out of the box with auto configuration, even though lmce sets up the mythconverg.settings exactly the same way each time. Hopefully some folks from MythTV can help with this. All other subsystems, like the phones, i/r control, cameras, webpads, etc., work flawlessly for me and I'm not experiencing any crashes even with constant, all day usage.

27. '''Warning''': Although the media playback LMCE does in Xine for movies and music is quite stable, and has really nice trick play and smooth playback controls, there is some video tearing when using the UI2 with alpha blending. It seems to be a bug in the nVidia's drivers composite extensions as far as I can tell. When watching 1080i HD content, and 480i content, LMCE doesn't do de-interlacing by default. In the admin panel go to Wizard, Devices, Media Directors and pick a de-interlacing setting to enable this. None of them are up to the standards of a commercial de-interlacer, and some of them make xine very unstable. I've had most success with the 'Good' setting. Hopefully in the next release, which will be for Ubuntu 7.04, the integration within Ubuntu will be improved, the Myth problems and the Xine de-interlacing will be resolved, and the videos for the setup wizard will be included. At that point the only major weakness in LMCE, imho, will be that it needs greater hardware compatibility so more users get the same experience as those with compatible gear.

Template:NeedsToBeFixed

2007-09-24T10:04:55Z

Samme:

{| style="background: beige; border: 1px solid #aaa; margin: auto; padding: .2em; width: auto;"
|-
| rowspan=2 style="padding: 4px;" |
| '''This article needs to be fixed and/or categorized.'''
|-
| <span style="font-size: 90%;">Please contribute by fixing this article or other [[:Category:NeedsToBeFixed|that needs to be fixed]].</span>
|}
<includeonly>[[Category:NeedsToBeFixed]]</includeonly>
<br>

LinuxMCE:Community Portal

2007-09-24T10:01:41Z

Samme: /* To do */

__NOTOC__
<div style="padding:40px 25px 40px 25px; border:1px solid; border-color:#C0C0C0;">
<div align="center">
<h1>'''[http://linuxmce.org LinuxMCE]''' community portal</h1>
</div>

==News==
*'''24/9-07''' - I have now blocked the known spammers, another thing I've done is that I've added the category [[:Category: NeedsToBeFixed|NeedsToBeFixed]], look at the page for further information.
[[User:Samme|Samme]] 02:48, 24 September 2007 (MST)
*'''22/9-07''' - Is there somebody out there who knows how to make templates? If so we need you're help!!!
*'''15/9-07''' - [[User:Trout|Trout]] has now also volunteered as admin.
*'''14/9-07''' - I, [[User:Samme|Samme]] is now administrator of the wiki, after a discussion with Paul, other interested in helping, mail me, you'll find my adress under the [[Contacts|contact page]].

==To do==
#<strike>Spam prevention</strike>
#Recruit a second admin and also volunteers, up for the task? Contact me!
#Delete garbage pages all can be found in the category [[:Category:Delete Page|Delete Page]]
#Set up rules & guidelines for the wiki
#<strike>New first page</strike>
#Fix hardware pages
#[[LinuxMCE Wiki:Community Portal:Category Proposal|Categories, proposal]], very important
#Various guides maybe replace FAQ?
#Dictionary?

Feel free to add things to do, after all it is a wiki :o)

==Some useful links==

*[http://LinuxMCE.com LinuxMCE homepage]
*[http://forum.linuxmce.com LinuxMCE Forums]
*[http://ubuntuforums.org/ Ubuntu Forums]

Talk:Serial Hack

2007-09-24T09:59:34Z

Samme:

When you figure out a better way, edit the article. Until then this is just discussion. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 08:06, 21 September 2007 (MST)

When you have something usefull to add for a change, edit the article. Otherwise, quit pestering the people that do --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 12:59, 21 September 2007 (MST)

I am at a loss to understand this battle. The original commit was another way to accomplish the same thing. There are a lot pages on this site that have very similar issues. What is the harm in giving people more than one option even if that option is one in the same. If nothing else it offers all of us an opportunity to learn something different. The second option (perl) is another example. Personally I feel both should be left on the page and just remove the editorial commitments as these are truly the things that belong in discussions.

*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Good_practice Good Wiki Practices]
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Behavior_that_is_unacceptable Behavior that is unacceptable]
--[[User:Rwilson131|Rwilson131]] 09:27, 23 September 2007 (MST)

I'm sure AVJohn is very happy with you pissing all over his page just to prove a point Trout. And how nice of you to make it personal. So thanks for the lessons on properly maintaining a wiki, you're a real champ. --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 02:50, 24 September 2007 (MST)

:Keep the articles clean and use the discussion-pages for...ahh, discussions! And when you reply, please indent, it's so much easier to follow a discussion that way. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 02:58, 24 September 2007 (MST)

Talk:Serial Hack

2007-09-24T09:58:47Z

Samme:

When you figure out a better way, edit the article. Until then this is just discussion. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 08:06, 21 September 2007 (MST)

When you have something usefull to add for a change, edit the article. Otherwise, quit pestering the people that do --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 12:59, 21 September 2007 (MST)

I am at a loss to understand this battle. The original commit was another way to accomplish the same thing. There are a lot pages on this site that have very similar issues. What is the harm in giving people more than one option even if that option is one in the same. If nothing else it offers all of us an opportunity to learn something different. The second option (perl) is another example. Personally I feel both should be left on the page and just remove the editorial commitments as these are truly the things that belong in discussions.

*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Good_practice Good Wiki Practices]
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Behavior_that_is_unacceptable Behavior that is unacceptable]
--[[User:Rwilson131|Rwilson131]] 09:27, 23 September 2007 (MST)

I'm sure AVJohn is very happy with you pissing all over his page just to prove a point Trout. And how nice of you to make it personal. So thanks for the lessons on properly maintaining a wiki, you're a real champ. --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 02:50, 24 September 2007 (MST)

:Keep the articles clean and use the discussion-pages for...ahh, discussions! --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 02:58, 24 September 2007 (MST)

Talk:Serial Hack

2007-09-24T09:58:26Z

Samme:

When you figure out a better way, edit the article. Until then this is just discussion. [[User:Trout|Trout]] 08:06, 21 September 2007 (MST)

When you have something usefull to add for a change, edit the article. Otherwise, quit pestering the people that do --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 12:59, 21 September 2007 (MST)

I am at a loss to understand this battle. The original commit was another way to accomplish the same thing. There are a lot pages on this site that have very similar issues. What is the harm in giving people more than one option even if that option is one in the same. If nothing else it offers all of us an opportunity to learn something different. The second option (perl) is another example. Personally I feel both should be left on the page and just remove the editorial commitments as these are truly the things that belong in discussions.

*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Good_practice Good Wiki Practices]
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Behavior_that_is_unacceptable Behavior that is unacceptable]
--[[User:Rwilson131|Rwilson131]] 09:27, 23 September 2007 (MST)

I'm sure AVJohn is very happy with you pissing all over his page just to prove a point Trout. And how nice of you to make it personal. So thanks for the lessons on properly maintaining a wiki, you're a real champ. --[[User:Zaerc|Zaerc]] 02:50, 24 September 2007 (MST)

Keep the articles clean and use the discussion-pages for...ahh, well, maybe discussions? And when you reply, please indent, it's so much easier to follow a discussion that way. --[[User:Samme|Samme]] 02:58, 24 September 2007 (MST)

LinuxMCE:Community Portal

2007-09-24T09:49:18Z

Samme: /* To do */

__NOTOC__
<div style="padding:40px 25px 40px 25px; border:1px solid; border-color:#C0C0C0;">
<div align="center">
<h1>'''[http://linuxmce.org LinuxMCE]''' community portal</h1>
</div>

==News==
*'''24/9-07''' - I have now blocked the known spammers, another thing I've done is that I've added the category [[:Category: NeedsToBeFixed|NeedsToBeFixed]], look at the page for further information.
[[User:Samme|Samme]] 02:48, 24 September 2007 (MST)
*'''22/9-07''' - Is there somebody out there who knows how to make templates? If so we need you're help!!!
*'''15/9-07''' - [[User:Trout|Trout]] has now also volunteered as admin.
*'''14/9-07''' - I, [[User:Samme|Samme]] is now administrator of the wiki, after a discussion with Paul, other interested in helping, mail me, you'll find my adress under the [[Contacts|contact page]].

==To do==
#<strike>Spam prevention</strike>
#Recruit a second admin and also volunteers, up for the task? Contact me!
#Delete garbage pages all can be found in Category:Delete Page
#Set up rules & guidelines for the wiki
#<strike>New first page</strike>
#Fix hardware pages
#[[LinuxMCE Wiki:Community Portal:Category Proposal|Categories, proposal]], very important
#Various guides maybe replace FAQ?
#Dictionary?

Feel free to add things to do, after all it is a wiki :o)

==Some useful links==

*[http://LinuxMCE.com LinuxMCE homepage]
*[http://forum.linuxmce.com LinuxMCE Forums]
*[http://ubuntuforums.org/ Ubuntu Forums]

LinuxMCE:Community Portal

2007-09-24T09:48:48Z

Samme: /* News */

__NOTOC__
<div style="padding:40px 25px 40px 25px; border:1px solid; border-color:#C0C0C0;">
<div align="center">
<h1>'''[http://linuxmce.org LinuxMCE]''' community portal</h1>
</div>

==News==
*'''24/9-07''' - I have now blocked the known spammers, another thing I've done is that I've added the category [[:Category: NeedsToBeFixed|NeedsToBeFixed]], look at the page for further information.
[[User:Samme|Samme]] 02:48, 24 September 2007 (MST)
*'''22/9-07''' - Is there somebody out there who knows how to make templates? If so we need you're help!!!
*'''15/9-07''' - [[User:Trout|Trout]] has now also volunteered as admin.
*'''14/9-07''' - I, [[User:Samme|Samme]] is now administrator of the wiki, after a discussion with Paul, other interested in helping, mail me, you'll find my adress under the [[Contacts|contact page]].

==To do==
#Spam prevention
#Recruit a second admin and also volunteers, up for the task? Contact me!
#Delete garbage pages all can be found in Category:Delete Page
#Set up rules & guidelines for the wiki
#<strike>New first page</strike>
#Fix hardware pages
#[[LinuxMCE Wiki:Community Portal:Category Proposal|Categories, proposal]], very important
#Various guides maybe replace FAQ?
#Dictionary?

Feel free to add things to do, after all it is a wiki :o)

==Some useful links==

*[http://LinuxMCE.com LinuxMCE homepage]
*[http://forum.linuxmce.com LinuxMCE Forums]
*[http://ubuntuforums.org/ Ubuntu Forums]

Category:NeedsToBeFixed

2007-09-24T09:41:26Z

Samme:

Articles in this category needs to be fixed in some way or another.

On pages you that you think needs to be fixed, place the following on the top of the page.

<pre>{{NeedsToBeFixed}}</pre>

Label properties

2007-09-24T09:39:03Z

Samme:

{{NeedsToBeFixed}}
<table width="100%"> <tr><td bgcolor="#FFCFCF">This page was written by Pluto and imported with their permission when LinuxMCE branched off in February, 2007. In general any information should apply to LinuxMCE. However, this page should be edited to reflect changes to LinuxMCE and remove old references to Pluto.</td></tr> </table>'''Top''' : '''''Integer'''''

If that page is the first page in the wizard, that is the specified width that display screen (or wizard) will run.

'''Left''' : '''''Integer'''''

If that page is the first page in the wizard, that is the specified height that display screen (or wizard) will run.

'''Width''' : '''''Integer'''''

If the text is larger than one specified width size, the control will be cut to the specified size, else the size will be exactly the render text size

'''Height''' : '''''Integer'''''

If the text is larger than one specified Height size, the control will be cut to the specified size, else the size will be exactly the render text size

'''FontHeight''' : '''''Integer'''''

Font size in pixels

'''FontName''' : '''''String'''''

Name of specified font.

'''FontColor''' : '''''String'''''

Color in web format of specified font.

'''Caption''' : '''''String'''''

That property will specify the label's text.

'''Style''' : '''''String'''''

Where string may be Regular, Italic, Bold or Bold-Italic

'''Align''' : '''''String'''''

Where string may be Left, Center or Right