Making a MP3 Player

[ac_dispatcher]

Got a Window$ only buddy that came to me asking if a Linux Distro could be a MP3 player for his house. Basically line out to amplifier then to speakers. He wanted to try out Linux because he thought it could be scaled down to save hard drive space for MP3's.

 

So far the only computer spec's I have is that it will be a P2 computer. Im quessing 200-400mhz. Don't know how much ram yet. I don't think it would be networked. Could advise of an older Distro. Also thought of something like Slackware. No KDE or GNOME because it would require to much ram. What is the next GUI to use?

 

I also thought that if he is trying to maximized hard drive space what about a Cdrom Distro?: Slackware Live - PcLinuxOS - Knoppix. How slow of a computer has anyone gotten these to work on? Also does any of these come with a good MP3 Player?

 

Also for the sake of thought do any of these come with a VNC server? If he networks it he could control the MP3 player from anywhere are the house.

Edited December 18, 2003 by ac_dispatcher

[aRTee]

I have a server PII350MHz with 256MB ram, running 2 x sessions (vnc) -- one for edonkey (running as user donkey, this time I'm not taking any risks) and one for music.

 

Both vncservers run icewm as a wm.

 

BTW Before it was a PI 200MHz, 120MBram. As an mp3 server it worked fine; with lots of edonkey activity it would get choppy though, but dma was not functioning well.

 

For mp3 playback you can use xmms, but there are also projects that allows you to make a jukebox that you can access with a webbrowser, so you don't need any x running at all-- saves more memory, but only works if you are on a network.

 

My advice: Mandrake can work fine, but may be a pain to install with less than 128 MB of ram. Apart from that, if you switch off unwanted services, (or don't install them), there's not much difference in speed with other distros (except 386 compiled ones are likely slower)...

 

You should be able to have a complete system on 1.4GB or so.

 

Knoppix won't load kde if you don't have enough ram, and if your buddy doesn't like the command line, that may not be so cool.

 

BTW don't worry too much about RAM, for just icewm (or blackbox or so), 32 MB should even do, when only running xmms or so.

[ac_dispatcher]

"jukebox that you can access with a webbrowser"

 

Sounds interesting . Do you know what its called?

 

Also looking at much less hard drive space. Im talking minimal install. Way less than 1gig.

Edited December 18, 2003 by ac_dispatcher

[Darkelve]

Have you taken a look at mpg123 yet? It's a command line music/mp3 player that is included with Mandrake.

 

It's not very usable as is, but with a little bit of scripting I think it might be highly efficient and usable.

 

Edit:

 

e.g. I found this on an Apple OSX forum:

 

"The following may be useful if you want to use mpg123 as a random jukebox. (These examples assume your music folder is /Volumes/Storage/Music) mpg123 won't descend into subdirectories when looking for MP3s to play. This can be a problem when attempting to feed it a folder of music created by iTunes, which likes to store things in /Music/Artist/Album/Songs.mp3 format. Instead you can use the following:

 

find /Volumes/Storage/Music/ -name "*.mp3" | mpg123 -Z --list -

 

(On the other hand, if you *do* have all your MP3s piled in one huge folder, it would be just as easy to do 'mpg123 -Z /Volumes/Storage/AllMyMusic/*.mp3')

 

If you want to listen to all your songs in the order that 'find' locates them (not shuffled), use:

 

find /Volumes/Storage/Music/ -name "*.mp3" | mpg123 -@ -

"

Edited December 19, 2003 by Darkelve

[ac_dispatcher]

Thanks alot.

 

Based off some new info the computer will actually be a laptop. He wants a mobile mp3 / multimedia station.It will be around 333mhz with about 48mb ram. At little leass than 1 gig of hard drive to work with.

 

Would a current Mandrake work? (without KDE or GNOME)

[Darkelve]

From our collegues ;) :

 

http://linuxquestions.org/questions/history/113122

 

Seems like you need an older/other distro.

 

Somebody claims he got slackware running on a system with 4MB of RAM!

 

 

 

What I did to find this was to search www.google/linux for the following keywords:

 

"laptop 333 mhz 48mb ram"

 

I did not look further but maybe other results might be helpful too.

 

P.S. Try VectorLinux. It's based on slackware, but more intended for SOHO uses (there's even a SOHO version). You will need some configuring, I think, since Vector's menus are just *Crowded*!

 

http://www.vectorlinux.com/

 

From their sales pitch:

 

VECTORLINUX can handle any task large or small and is only limited by the imagination of its users. The operating system occupies less than 450 megs of hard drive space when fully installed and has a full set of preconfigured programs to handle all of your basic computing needs.

Edited December 19, 2003 by Darkelve

[Tuxiscool]

As having only a 1GB HDD for an MP3 player, while that is not a problem, you should try and get the smallest possible , that being an "embedded linux". In my opinion, the best for the task would be the "Linux Router Project". If i had time, i would write a guide to help you get it working, but time is something i don't have, so i will just provide you with a few links, and you will have to sort yourself out.

 

ftp://ftp.linuxrouter.org/linux-router/di....8_Linux_2.2.gz

 

There you will get an LRP disk image.

 

ftp://ftp.linuxrouter.org/linux-router/di...RP.linux.tar.gz

 

There you will get a kernel that you can compile on a different computer. This is needed since LRP doesn't provide sound card support.

 

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot...slinux-1.48.zip

 

Here you will get a very nice, small bootloader.

 

The LRP is a linux distro that uses FAT16 partitions, so make a dos boot disk with 'fdisk', 'format', 'edit' and 'lock' on it (sorry, you will need a winblows macine for this), run fdisk in a dos prompt and make 2 partitions, The first one being ~7MB, and the latter using the rest (the one for the MP3's). Reboot and format both partitions.

 

On another machine, extract 'syslinux.com' from the file 'syslinux-1.48.zip' and put that on a floppy.

 

Using the boot disk, run 'lock c:' on the MP3 box. (to allow direct disk access), then with the other floppy, run 'syslinux.com c:' on the MP3 box to install the bootloader.

 

Now, run 'cp idiot-image_1440KB_FAT_2.9.8_Linux_2.2 /dev/fd0' on a box to write the disk image to a floppy.

 

After putting that floppy in the MP3 box, copy all of the files except 'ldlinux.sys' to the primary partition.

 

Now use 'edit on the dos boot disk to alter 'syslinux.cfg' file on the primary partition. If the box has more than 12MB of RAM, then change the number after 'ramdisk_size=' to '8096', and also change 'boot=/dev/fd0u1440' to 'boot=/dev/hda1'

 

You will now have a bootable LRP system. Sorry but since i really have lots to do, i will have to let you do the rest (compile the kernel with sound support etc -- which i linked you to earlier), set up networking, bla bla bla.

 

Good Luck! :D

[iphitus]

/me jumps up and down

 

You could run mandy on that box!

 

My box is a P2, 300mhz. But i do have more ram..... 160mb.

 

 

You might find this distribution interesting. ive been meaning to try it out for a while.

http://movix.sourceforge.net/

[Guest kuchwas]

"jukebox that you can access with a webbrowser"

 

Sounds interesting . Do you know what its called?

 

Also looking at much less hard drive space. Im talking minimal install. Way less than 1gig.

SliMP3 www.slimp3.com (look for the free slimserver)

Giant Disc www.giantdisc.com