[clue-tech] Low-memory laptop for a jukebox

[Matt Gushee]

Chris wrote:

> I've ripped my CD's to MP3 and have them stored centrally on my main
> machine here at home.  I can export the directory they are stored on as
> NFS or SMB, it doesn't matter to me but I would probably use nfs since I
> don't have any windows machines.

I think you will have issues with network latency if you try to play the 
tunes directly from the network drive. I don't have much experience with 
network file systems, but offhand I think you'll probably want to do 
something like copy the song to a temp directory on the jukebox before 
playing it.

> The machine that I want to use as the jukebox (and that will be
> connected to my main stereo) is an older laptop that I have.  It's an
> IBM iSeries, which I believe is an old pentium 266MhZ machine with
> around 128MB of ram.

Ouch. And what kind of sound quality are you expecting? Audio is one of 
the most CPU-intensive things you can do on a computer. You can 
certainly play MP3s on a 266MhZ machine, but it won't be a perfect 
listening experience.

> Any suggestions?  What distro should I throw on here (no need for it to
> run X),  any suggestions for a jukebox, etc?

You might try AGNULA/DeMuDi (http://www.agnula.org/). It's a 
Debian-based distro that is specialized for audio. You probably don't 
need a lot of the music software that comes with it, but what you really 
want is the AGNULA kernel, which is configured by serious audio 
developers who I think know what they're doing--at least, more so than 
any of us here. I haven't used it myself, because I don't have a 
dedicated audio box, but it seems to be the main distro used by people 
who are serious about working with music on Linux. I imagine it includes 
some kind of jukebox software.

-- 
Matt Gushee
: Bantam - lightweight file manager : matt.gushee.net/software/bantam/ :
: RASCL's A Simple Configuration Language :     matt.gushee.net/rascl/ :