14 DAY TRIAL // Mythbuntu team proudly presents today the new version of their Gutsy Gibbon-based operating system, Mythbuntu 7.10: "The Mythbuntu team is proud to present the first stable release of Mythbuntu. This release is based upon Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). We would like to thank everyone that has volunteered to help make Mythbuntu reach where it is today." Among the new features included in this release, we can mention:
? The frontend can be run from the live CD. ? Complete installations were included (backend, frontend, backend/frontend, etc). ? Xfce4 Desktop Environment is now included. ? You can now easily upgrade from Ubuntu Gutsy to Mythbuntu (see homepage for instructions). ? A custom Mythbuntu MythTV theme is now included. ? GUI setup of LIRC was added. ? You can now setup MythTV optimizations through MCC.
What are the changes from Mythbuntu 7.10 RC? Let's have a quick look:
? Custom Mythbuntu MythTV theme was included. ? BulletProofX is functional after installation. ? XMLTV is installable from Ubiquity. ? On-CD repository within Ubiquity. ? Fixed MySQL service activation failure within Ubiquity. ? Gracefully fail if fglrx doesn't install properly. ? Fix Mythbuntu Control Centre crashes on AMD64.
The minimum system requirements for Mythbuntu 7.10 are a 1.0 GHz x86 or x86_64 CPU, 192 MB of RAM, 2 GB of disk space for the frontend and 20 GB of disk space for the backend, a video card capable of 1024x768 resolution and a supported TV Tuner Card for the backend.
However, the Mythbuntu team recommends the following system requirements:
? 2.0 Ghz x86 or x86_64 Processor (a 3.0 Ghz CPU is recommended for frontend installations using HD video due to the increased load upon decoding). ? 1024 MB of system memory (RAM). ? 10 GB disk space for the frontend. ? 80 GB+ disk space for the backend (however with HD Format it is recommended to use 160 GB HDD or larger). ? nVidia 128MB Graphics Card w/ TV-Out or equivalent (ATI, VIA, or Intel graphics cards are also supported and will work). ? Supported TV Tuner Card for the backend.
Please note that this would be a good estimate for converting hard disk space to hours of recording:
? Standard Definition (Analog) 2.2 GB / Hour ? High Definition (HDTV) 7 GB / Hour
What is Mythbuntu?
Mythbuntu is an operating system, based on the very popular Ubuntu OS that includes the MythTV system. Mythbuntu uses the XFCE4 desktop environment and includes the following features:
? Basic ?live-tv? functionality. Pause/Fast Forward/Rewind "live" TV. ? Support for multiple tuner cards and multiple simultaneous recordings. ? Distributed architecture allowing multiple recording machines and multiple playback machines on the same network, completely transparent to the user. ? Completely automatic commercial detection/skipping ? Grabs program information using xmltv. ? Displays basic program information on channel change using a themeable semi-transparent on-screen display. ? Electronic Program Guide that lets you change channels and select programs to record. ? Scheduled recordings of TV programs, and playback and deletion of those programs, all through a themeable UI. ? A nice web interface to let you select programs to record remotely. ? Rip, categorize, play, and visualize MP3/Ogg/FLAC/CD Audio files. (FLAC, Vorbis, and MP3 encoding). Create complex playlists (and playlists containing playlists) through a simple UI. ? An emulator frontend. (MAME, NES, SNES, generic PC games) ? An image viewer/slideshow application. ? A weather module. ? A generic video player module, with automatic metadata lookups ? A DVD player / ripper module. Make perfect backups, or transcode down to smaller file sizes. ? An RSS news feed reader module.
You can download Mythbuntu 7.10 right now from Softpedia.