I just got a hold of an old cd player and planning on putting in a maidboard, hard drive and a dvd/cd-rom player, I would like to have it play flics, games and music on the tv, but I want it to be limited to those things only and not have a full blown operation systom. I would also like smooth playing of video’s and be shut-off without powering it down. I got a few question.
Will turning off linux without shutdown cause harm to the operation systom and will it mention it when it turns on ?
What will be the smoothest method of playing videos, games and music ?
Is there a way to create these fuction without the uneeded files in Linux ?
There’s always such a possibility… When it turns on, it will run the fsck program to see if there’s any problem and fix it if possible…
I don’t actually know…
It depends on what you mean by this… You can have a minimum linux installation and still have a functioning os, but you will definately need to have all the necessary files…
Either way you will have to have a whole operating system to run anything. What it comes down to is to what extent and what output method.
As for the powering off, it is never a good idea to power any filesystem off without shutting down properly. If the OS does not sync properly you could have data corruption. Though the journaling filesystems (ext3, reiserFS, etc…) can is much more sturdy and does not need to fschk when it restart, it is still not recommended. The best thing to do would be to find a system that can either start/stop really fast (integrated linux) or even Linux BIOS. Then make sure all the program you will be needing will run from a lower runlevel with minimum other programs running. It does not take long to get the kernel up and running, what take the most time is getting through the BIOS posts and starting up the different processes through runlevels.
As for getting the smoothest playback, it depends on your setup. Get good hardware, and make sure your apps aren’t buggy. Also you have to really make sure the specs on the drives, such as ATA, are set right. If not, your data throughput will really suck, even with decent equipment.
There is a way to do anything in Linux without bunches of uneeded files. If there is tons of uneeded files there, it is because someone either dosn’t know how to, or dosn’t want to, get rid of them, or set it up right from the beggining.
THANKS !!! All this info is really helpfull, I’ll give it a go later on, I know of a mini itx page and they have all sorts of project, even got it to fit in a playstation case. I’m hoping there’s mini itx with sata at least, think 100 would be fast enough.
