A Beginner's Review of Mythdora 10.21

The linux operating system has been around for quite some time. One of the best features of this operating system is that it is free to anyone who wishes to use it. Several different builds are available and one of the most popular additions to linux has to be the MythTV project.

What myth TV essentially does is give a highly customizable personal video recording system that works in a similar fashion as Microsoft's Media Center application. The trouble with Microsoft's version is that you either have to buy a new system with it preinstalled or spend the money buying either Windows Vista or the highly touted Windows 7 operating system. I have heard of people installing modified versions of Windows XP Media Center, 2002 or 2005 on to their non-authorized systems but this practice is highly illegal and should not be attempted.

Mythdora is a hybrid operating system between Fedora version 10 and the MythTv package. This allows easy integration as opposed to installing a plain vanilla version of Fedora on your system and then having to install Mythtv, which can be a tedious task for an inexperienced user. Even though there are many other versions of linux that has Mythtv built in, I chose Mythdora for its supposed ease of use.

The installation time took about a half an hour on my AMD duel core system. Towards the end of the installation, you have to configure the Mythtv settings. Since I had planned to use MythTV on only one system, I chose to setup my computer as both the front end and back end for the PVR application. The backend part of the system is designed to handle all the hard work and controls your added accessories such as capture cards and storage, while the front end will handle the user interface.

If you have other computers in your home that you would like to have Mythtv, you can setup multiple frontends to allow multiple users. The front end settings can be customized to your taste and needs. MythTv comes prepackaged with several themes to liven up the user experience and in my opinion, rivals that of Microsoft's version.

Running a Linux system for the first time can be extremely intimidating especially if you have issues like I had experienced. I had major issues with getting my duel tuner setup to work with Mythtv. Specifically my Nvidia 9600GT graphics card created a conflict with one of my Hauppauge Win TV HVR 1600 tuners. After many reinstalls and head scratching, I found a solution that required programming modifications to the operating system files.

Compiling drivers and software to work with your existing hardware is a common task. You must learn how to do a little programming and debugging on linux in order to get everything running smoothly. Many common configurations will have a basic set of drivers that come with Mythdora but as the linux community comes up with bug patches and updates, you must learn how to apply them.

Linux is not for the faint of heart but luckily the open source community provides a plethora of information for you to learn from. You can often get quick responses to issues on the Internet whenever you have a problem.

There are definitely huge possibilities for this system; one of the neatest features that caught my eye was the ability to play old console games such as Nintendo, Sega Genesis, N64 and many other old school games while in the MythTv user interface.

The best attribute for linux based operating systems has to be the security factor. You do not have the virus threats you would have with a Microsoft Windows system and you also do not have the "bloat" software issues that comes along with it as well.

Sadly, I was not able to get the system to work right with all of my hardware so I decided to give up until more support by the Linux community is supplied. I admire all the effort that has been put into Mythdora and hopefully sometime in the near future I will get the system to work for me. I am sure an experienced user and programmer could get the job done of making the system work, however in my particular situation and system, the newbie would have an extremely difficult time.

Even though my experience with Mythdora was quite frustrating at times, I learned a great deal about Linux that I can apply in the future. Distribution versions of Linux such as Fedora, Ubuntu and many others can be an awesome alternative to Microsoft Windows. If you desire a secure system that can offer a wide variety of available productivity software, Linux may be a good alternative for you.

I will be trying out other various distributions on my older computer systems that can't keep up with Microsoft's demands in order to get a little more life out them. As always, Linux is free to anyone who wants it!