Linux, why do you hate me?

[MEC-777]

Built an HTPC about 4 weeks ago. All I need it to do is browse the web, play YT, netflix, HD videos etc. @ full screen and run Steam In-home game streaming - you know, basic HTPC stuff.

 

After a month and countless hours of troubleshooting and distro hopping I still haven't been able to use it properly. The closest I've come is where one function will work but the others don't. Often, if I'm able to fix one problem, another arises. It just never ends, a continuous circle of issues I can't seem to solve, regardless of how much I research and try to understand. 

 

Has anyone else had this much trouble setting up Linux? 

 

I really don't want to resort to installing windows, but I feel like I'm being left with no other option. One can only spend so much time on something with little to no success. 

 

The Linux power-users will hate me for saying this, but boiled down, windows simply works and I know how to disable a ton of services etc. to make it far less resource-heavy. I just hate having to pay for it. lol.

 

Is it just me, or is Linux supposed to be this difficult to setup/work with? Even just to get it to perform those simple things?

[Vitalius]

It could entirely have to do with your hardware (drivers and such). What is your hardware? And as Johners said, what distribution had what problem? If you can remember. 

I mean, I can do all that on Ubuntu 14.04. The only issue I've hit was getting the cursor to appear since it was in a VM, and I still haven't bothered to fix it (I just use the host's mouse).

[xXxYOLOxSWAGxXx_420BlazeIt]

What problems are you having?

[ManWithBeard1990]

You've been very vague as to where you're getting stuck. We'll be able to help you much better if you stick to a specific (popular) distro and tell us where you're experiencing problems while trying to make it do what you want. Also, I didn't know Netflix worked on Linux.

[MEC-777]

HTPC specs are in my sig. Distro is Manjaro open box. The rest of the details, including a list of issues can be found here in my post over on the Manjaro forums: https://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=14813.0

 

Feel free to help out if you can. I was more so just curious of others experiences with Linux and issues with getting such things to work. 

 

But by all means, I would greatly appreciate any assistance. Thank you.

[IdeaStormer]

Your post is a as clear as mud, we have no idea what you did or what is not working.

[Crabtr]

I'm curious, why are you using Manjaro rather than a pre-built HTPC/xbmc distro like Xbmcbuntu or OpenElec? I love Arch and I suppose it's derivatives but it seems like 2 of these issues would be fixed with a better "out of the box distro" like Ubuntu or similar.

 

Video playback issues: As said in that thread, flash on Linux sucks. Use Chromium or html5 instead, maybe even VLC.

 

Steam issues: This probably stems from you not having a dedicated GPU. There's still some decoding that has to go on with streaming and quite a lot at that. Integrated GPUs really aren't that good at this task.

 

Display setup issues: Probably a xorg conf issue, try changing it instead. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=149238

[MichaelBP]

Your post is a as clear as mud, we have no idea what you did or what is not working.

 

I'll second that, you seem very frustrated, try and take a break from it. ...

 

Oh great, your back, might I suggest that you give XBMCbuntu a go instead? .. It can fix a lot for you, and expand by plugins to your needs.

 

One thing you might also want to research is how to play Netflix on Linux, I was trying to make it happen a long time ago, but silverlight was not Linux compatible at the time, maybe things have changed sins then, but it may still be a problem.  

[Locke99GS]

Can use pipelight with some success to watch Netflix, and compholio has a hacked together wine+firefox+pipelight/silverlight thing that has worked for Netflix in the past. However, these solution don't integrate well with XBMC on Linux. If Netflix is important to you, on might be simpler to try whatever the Windows method would be.

 

I don't really use Netflix, so it doesn't concern me. I use XBMC on Wheezy on salvage hardware for my HTPC. Works fine, never an issue.

[MEC-777]

I'm curious, why are you using Manjaro rather than a pre-built HTPC/xbmc distro like Xbmcbuntu or OpenElec? I love Arch and I suppose it's derivatives but it seems like 2 of these issues would be fixed with a better "out of the box distro" like Ubuntu or similar.

 

Video playback issues: As said in that thread, flash on Linux sucks. Use Chromium or html5 instead, maybe even VLC.

 

Steam issues: This probably stems from you not having a dedicated GPU. There's still some decoding that has to go on with streaming and quite a lot at that. Integrated GPUs really aren't that good at this task.

 

Display setup issues: Probably a xorg conf issue, try changing it instead. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=149238

Using Manjaro OB because it's the first distro I've used yet where netflix playback actually works via FF with pipelight plugins. This does not work in chromium (for me anyways). I will try HTML5, thanks.

 

Streaming performance seams to have improved, though I'm not sure what I even did. Tried a few games including metro last light and it worked decently. Frame rates in the 50 to high 50's most of the time, almost no latency - but the sound was crackling horribly. Still trying to figure that out...

 

I'll second that, you seem very frustrated, try and take a break from it. ...

 

Oh great, your back, might I suggest that you give XBMCbuntu a go instead? .. It can fix a lot for you, and expand by plugins to your needs.

 

One thing you might also want to research is how to play Netflix on Linux, I was trying to make it happen a long time ago, but silverlight was not Linux compatible at the time, maybe things have changed sins then, but it may still be a problem.  

I'll check out XBMCbuntu and Ubuntu. Those are next on my list to try out anyways (I like trying the different distros in virtual box for fun). 

 

I know how to play netflix on Linux. Manjaro if the first distro I've tried that actually allowed it to work as I explained above. It can be finicky to get working apparently. 

 

Can use pipelight with some success to watch Netflix, and compholio has a hacked together wine+firefox+pipelight/silverlight thing that has worked for Netflix in the past. However, these solution don't integrate well with XBMC on Linux. If Netflix is important to you, on might be simpler to try whatever the Windows method would be.

 

I don't really use Netflix, so it doesn't concern me. I use XBMC on Wheezy on salvage hardware for my HTPC. Works fine, never an issue.

Yep. Netflix works fine for me in FF with pipelight. The problem is audio quality which crackles.

[MEC-777]

Checked out XBMC more closely - no netflix and no steam. So that is out of the question. 

 

Tried out Ubuntu 14.04 in virtual box last night and managed to break it - to the point where it only shows the desktop background and nothing else. Ctrl + alt + T doesn't work, requires a hard shutdown to kill. All I did was install pipelight and enabled flash and silverlight through the pipelight plugins (so I could try playing netflix through FF) and that somehow killed the whole thing...? I followed the installation instructions for Ubuntu exactly. I'm guessing it has something to do with the graphical drivers in virtual box, but I don't know.

 

Been looking more closely at SteamOS. It has Gnome desktop (Debian) and if there's a way to easily switch between Steam and Gnome then this just might work.