Written by Steve Lawson
Posted on: 06.16.2008 at 02:08pm
Section: Reviews
It could be argued that one of the things holding back the spread of Linux on home computers is the difficulty users encounter in integrating it within their increasingly digital lifestyles. I'm talking about things like digital TV, audio systems and video cameras. We all know that Microsoft Windows Media Centre PCs act as a hub for home entertainment systems and, heck, even the Xbox 360 and PS3 can do it. If you're dedicated, patient and experienced with free open source applications, you can turn pretty much any Linux distribution into a digital multimedia hub too.
But you have to be really dedicated, really patient, and really experienced. For those reasons, the appearance of eAR OS on the Distrowatch new-releases list looked extremely promising. As I write, eAR OS sits humbly in 85th place on Distrowatch's page-hit list, but that could change as word spreads about this interesting little project. eAR OS is produced by a Danish company called Audio Reality and is available in both free and paid-for 'Enterprise' versions.
Obviously, I tried the free version, although I believe the Enterprise version includes extra features and performance enhancements. eAR OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution you get a stylish GNOME desktop with a few of the usual free open source applications pre-installed - but its USP is its eAR Media Centre. If you check out the usual mini-blurb on Distrowatch, it says:
“Tune in to TV programs, rip CDs to hard disk in lossless FLAC quality, watch digital TV and DVDs, listen to Internet radio, view photos, or listen to music - all from within an intuitive user interface.”
Sounds promising, doesn't it?
So let me begin by describing the set-up I was about to use to test eAR OS. The PC is a Fujitsu Siemens, 3.4GHz Pentium 4, with 1024MB RAM, an Acer 19inch LCD monitor, fairly basic stereo speakers and a 300GB hard drive split between Mandriva 2008 Spring and a test partition where eAR would be installed. Attached to the PC via a USB port is a Terratec Cinergy DTusb XS Diversity dual DVB-T TV Tuner adaptor, which is in turn connected to a roof-top digital TV aerial. In the past, when this machine had Windows installed, I used the Terratec adaptor to watch and record Freeview TV.
For those of you outside the UK, Freeview is available throughout the UK, is free of charge, and includes such digital channels as Sky TV News and Sports News, BBC and ITV around 70-80 radio and TV channels in total. Freeview has ample choice for the amount of TV watching I do, so if eAR OS was capable of handling it, I was going to be a very happy viewer indeed. I also have a Western Digital external hard drive I use for storing multimedia files on videos, music, etc, which I planned on attaching to the PC once eAR OS was installed.
Interestingly, given the multimedia aspect of eAR OS, it comes as an installable live CD. I say “interestingly” simply because, in my experience, live CDs struggle to handle multimedia well due to the fact they're operating at a reduced read/write speed compared to a native OS. eAR OS loads fairly quickly into a very stylish GNOME desktop (SCREENSHOT1) and displays a good sense of the importance of security by automatically launching a wizard to guide you through configuring the Firestarter firewall.
Firefox, K3B, Kaffeine, F-Spot, GIMP, Gnome Control Centre, and the eAR Media Centre are all available via a zooming, Mac-style SimDock along the bottom of the screen, with more applications Wine, Exaile, VLC, Thunderbird, Pidgin, Audacity - residing in the traditional Gnome menu. When you first launch the eAR media Centre you're immediately reminded of Windows Media Centre, with a plain black background and a short list of multimedia options.
I selected the 'Watch Television' option and sat waiting patiently for something to happen.. and waited.. and waited. Nothing ever did, so I quit from the media centre and launched Kaffeine instead, which has an option to watch digital television. After selecting (a woefully slow) 'autoscan' from the Channels section of the DVB menu I was absolutely delighted to find that Kaffeine was working with my Terratec adaptor all the Freeview TV and radio channels had been 'found'.
While being able to watch TV in Kaffeine was excellent, I did find it hard going because the picture was so dark and no amount of fiddling with preferences, plugins and settings would fix it. No matter, maybe a hard-drive install would sort it out using the live CD was proving to be quite a slow process anyway - so I proceeded to the installer, which is your basic Ubuntu installer. In other words, it does its job, simply, and with little fuss.
I was slightly concerned when I came to the bootloader installation because there was no indication it had 'found' my Mandriva partition, and it didn't ask me where I wanted the bootloader.. ah well, deep breath and hope for the best. If you decide to install eAR OS, check out the website advice first, because they tell you not to take the 'Restart' option once the install is complete you log out manually and eject the CD yourself.
Upon rebooting I found Mandriva listed in my GRUB boot menu well, it was called 'linux' but at least it was there, so that was a relief. Running from HD instead of CD, eAR OS booted up a lot quicker and I found my cabled network already detected and configured. The Kaffeine autoscan whizzed along this time but the dark picture problem remained, which was disappointing but probably not insurmountable in the long run. Pleasingly, I found the multimedia and shortcut keys on my keyboard volume, internet, email, home, CD controls etc all worked without any configuration.
Time for some basic poking around the system. I discovered eAR OS has the Ubuntu Hardy repositories available through Synaptic, you can install 3D graphics drivers just as in Ubuntu (I did, and wished I hadn't because it screwed up my screen resolution but, hey-ho) and, most bizarrely, you're immediately working as root because there's no user/sudo set-up during the install. Anyway, enough mucking around with system stuff what about that media centre? Well, it works a lot faster on a HD install, for one thing.
There are hundreds of internet radio stations available but, bear in mind, if your ISP has a download limit listening to internet radio can quickly push you over your limit. Next, I tried the 'Play DVD' option my retail copy of The Bourne Ultimatum (top movie, BTW) played fine but, again, the screen was extremely dark. Hmmm. Media Centre had no problems playing my Freeview TV channels apart from that damned dark screen again.
eAR OS is supposed to be designed to work primarily with TV remote controls it didn't work with my Terratec's so I had to resort to a combination of keyboard and mouse commands, which proved to be quite clunky and user-unfriendly. MP3s from my external hard drive played without any issues, and browsing through my family photos was a breeze. Generally speaking I'd say eAR OS Media Centre does pretty much everything that Windows Media Centre does, but perhaps isn't quite so polished.
The fact it's available as a live CD means you can check if your TV adaptor and most importantly, its remote control works before you install. Having Kaffeine play Freeview TV channels in one Linux distro made me wonder about having it work in others, so I tried it in my main Mandriva 2008 Spring partition and it works a treat! What's more, the picture is perfect there's no sign of the darkness problem which haunts the eAR OS install.
I'm eternally grateful to eAR OS for this discovery alone, but the truth is I probably won't be keeping eAR OS on that other partition for too long. It does do what it says it will, with a bit of fiddling, but it's just not for me or my needs. Plus, the developers really need to rethink their approach to using the root account as the main one, and they need to fix that Kaffeine brightness problem. Still, it's a good effort at breaking Microsoft's grip on the media centre market and deserves some support.