mature Linux Frontend please

sergeifranco · 09-10-2007, 04:58 PM

Hello there, this is my first post.
I am building a car puter based on VIA EN15000 series mainboards and 7" generic touch screen.
I have successfully installed Kubuntu 7.04 distro on it and got most of the things working (openchrome video driver and touchscreen).

Now I am stuck with what front end to use...

I have tried PyMedia, well it got me lost there, hell how do I suppose to use it??
I have tried nGhost, it looks very incomplete...
I will try Silverwolf AES (screenshots look promising, but it did for PyMedia, but I got nowhere)...
I might create a theme with MythTV, but MythTV is not really right application.

I don't care at this stage about navigation/video/whatever. What I need is a music player with good playlist management.
The perfect thing would be Amarok with skin for CarPC.

kev000 · 09-10-2007, 06:56 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by sergeifranco

I have tried nGhost, it looks very incomplete...

Sorry your experience with nGhost gave you the impression that it is wanting. Currently nGhost is under heavy development. What would you want to see in a frontend that nGhost lacks? Your feedback will help us be able to improve nGhost for others too.

Thanks,
Kev

sergeifranco · 09-10-2007, 08:53 PM

I do not care about how well it looks, the comunity can fix that with new skins anyway. As in usability => I could not figure out how to add files from different folder (other than what it is scanning for). Maybe it was misconfigured for me, but playlist seemed to be broken, how do I remove files from playlist or add them?
It definetily needs clickable progress bar for songs, time remaining/past display,
winamp or amarok is good example of what controls need to be there.
Unless I was doing something wrong and my nGhost was broken...
Also if I click options in settings, it would open firefox with server not found page. Probably misconfiguration there aswell...
As for playlist editor, there should be some basic navigation, as well as playlist window so it would be possible to drag (double click, click add button) files in the play list window...
Oh and other thing, when I set it to scan the entire collection, it crashed with segmentation fault after a while. If there would be some form of navigation, there would be no need in scanning...

kev000 · 09-10-2007, 11:41 PM

What version of nGhost are you running? At this point I would get it from svn, either the main or unstable branch (depending on how brave you are). I'm slowly building the framework for playlist management. It probably won't be ready until 0.95+1 though.

The gui is receiving lots of work so playback info will be available soon. Also in the works is an extensive plugin architecture that will allow for plugins such as voice recognition and other types of input and output controls.

As for your problems this should help:
http://nextabyte.com/wiki/index.php?...ace_.28RAWI.29
Otherwise you'll need to edit your options.conf file (also covered in the starter's kit).

sergeifranco · 09-11-2007, 01:25 AM

Thanks for your help, I will give it a second try.
I was lazy so I used .deb package...

mm_202 · 09-28-2007, 12:49 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by sergeifranco

Thanks for your help, I will give it a second try.
I was lazy so I used .deb package...

sergeifranco, what is your opinion on LinuxICE / nGhost now?

sergeifranco · 12-09-2007, 02:31 PM

Sorry I have not replied earlier, I have put the project on hold for a few month, but recently resumed. I will be running OS from 4GB 266x card with SATA adapter (I have installed kubuntu there - works really fast) as I believe that normal HDD will not survive very long, before I try nghost, does it has ability automatically add the USB Pen drive to the playlist? As far as I remember it used MySQL to generate collection, and as far as I understand you have regenerate collection to add new content, which obviously is painfully slow. Also is there any possibility to add progress bar to the main player, as I would like to have ability to seek within a song...

sergeifranco · 12-25-2007, 12:07 AM

Right, I have installed nGhost 1.0.1 and I have a few questions that I have asked here:
http://www.nextabyte.com/nanonymous/....php?f=4&t=336

intuitionsys · 05-08-2008, 06:05 PM

Hi guys, sorry Silverwolf2 AES has been stagnant for so long. I've just been swamped with other things. In the coming weeks I'm hoping to ramp up development again and make the installation process less painful...