What OS/frontend would you use?

[rembetis]

I'd like to build a simple mp3-player machine into an old radio, as a house-warming present for a friend of mine. I have a 5" LCD from a broken portable DVD player that I can use, but to keep costs low, I'll be using an old P3 500 machine that's been sitting around gathering dust, plus assorted other parts. My question is, if I strip it to its barest essentials, will Xlobby even run on this machine? (I guess I need to determine first if XP will run).

If not, what OS/frontend would you guys recommend? I know nothing about Linux, but I'd be willing to learn if I knew of a simple Linux frontend for music playing and nothing else.

[dalanik]

It'll run, I have an P3/500 machine at home, so i tried it, but it'll be a bit slow... you have to try for yourself, for me it was way to slow... (moving around screens, etc)

[Colby]

For an mp3 machine I wouldnt even mess with xp, unless xlobby wont run on anything else. If so, I would strip XP way down. I used to have an mp3 machine that was win98 and p3 333mhz mmx, and it did music beautifully. But that was all it did. It didnt rip, burn or anything, just played music in winamp.

[abobader]

Hi,

Why not run it on win2k WS?

My best.

[Marbles_00]

I'm running XLobby on a PIII 550 with 178Meg of RAM and Win2k (SP4). It is running the KISS skin at 800x600 (max res for the S-Video on the ATI Rage Pro card) and it is running the core of XLobby fine. Plays music no problems, even runs milkdrop pretty smoothly at full screen (but I think I lowered the fps down from 30). Oh, and it is running Winamp 2.95.

Though not a concern for an mp3 machine, the only thing I haven't tried is running a movie via Zoomplayer (outside of Xlobby, video plays fine).

I do have a PIII 500, which I was going to try as well when I get a chance. I'm predicting that it will not be a problem.

Hope this was helpful.

David

[rembetis]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Good to know Xlobby has been run on comparable machines. No idea why I assumed XP was necessary. I'll be sure to post when/if I get it running -- this is shaping up to be a very unique rig.

[Marbles_00]

Last night I tried Xlobby out on a PIII 500 w/128 Mg of RAM, Win2k (sp4) and Winamp 2.94, and trying out a WIFI connection. Once loaded it ran fine...a slight pause going from screen to screen. It accessed the XNet server okay and played music fine. The only drawback is that it took a little bit to load up Xlobby (kinda slow, but to me still acceptable), more memory may help (but I'm not considering it at this time). I didn't try Milkdrop (though on its own it works fine as I have used the system before when having a party), or run a movie (not really your concern for an mp3 player), but none the less, it ran.

Actually, I was thinking of using this computer for one of the kid's rooms (when they get older), and have this setup as a fat client, where they will be considered a "zone" so it was a good opportunity for me to try it out.

Hope this was helpful.