Well, perhaps foolishly I gave it another chance. Took the risk that it might be a dodgy burn of a CD (even though it worked on my Dell) and burned another, this time at a lower speed.
A boost of hope came when the computer did finally boot from it. As a result I was able to install Ubuntu 8.10.
Much good did it do me. It took about 90 minutes for the install to complete, then I found that TVtime still wasn't available in a repository. What!? So I downloaded it direct from the Ubuntu Intrepid site and installed it. Apparently all dependencies were met, and on running the program I go no errors.
No error, but no picture either. Just the nice blue you always get when there is no signal. The menu allowed me to click an option to change the video source, but never a list of sources appeared (or any picture).
If I charged my time out at even Aldi rates, I would have earned over £100 by now.
I am once again reminded why, although Linux is looking prettier than ever these days, it is actually useless to me.
Virtually none of the software I use all the time is available for it, and, in situations like the one I am in now, there are no help files built into the program, no clue as to what I should do next.
When will I ever learn. Sometimes it is just better to buy the kit that does the job in the simplest way. You can spend an awful lot of time trying to save a few quid - and in this case, need to spend it in the end anyway.
I will try one more option before spending my spends.
Stick Windows 98SE on the old machine and simply never plug it into a network.
I bet the ATi Media Centre will work then, TVtime sure doesn't.
I will still recommend Ubuntu as the Linux distro of choice. But not for making your computer into a TV.
***
The issue it seems is that Linux doesn't have very good support of my TV card, an ATi All-in-wonder.
The big lesson then is... do plenty of Googling about your proposed Linux solution, including all intended hardware, before you spend 11 hours trying to make it work.
***
In the short term I am whacking an old Win 98SE license on the beast to get it running as a TV so the lads can play their consoles.
Longer term will get Ubuntu to recognise my card properly and have a machine that could also be used for homework online. I won't be connecting Win98 to the network for obvious reasons.
1 comment:
Oh how hard I laughed when I read that you were trying again!!! Any success at last?
Computers are bad, bad, bad. We think they are saving us time. And in the short term they probably do. But every now and again something happens that you spend simply hours and hours on, trying to twiddle it to do something it ought to do quite easily, and all those minutes you've saved have all added up and been surpassed in one fell swoop.
Does anyone know why Mozilla firefox keeps shutting down on my computer when I copy and paste from the internet? It never used to...
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