MediaPortal 2 for Linux - Another try on that case (2 Viewers)

[riggnix]

Hi everyone,

I've been thinking of trying to port MediaPortal 2 to Linux for some time now. I realize there were a lot of tries already and no one ever did it, but I'm in desperate search for a software project for the summer, so I might as well just give it a shot

I'll just list the main tasks of this problem here. I'm sure there will be other things i didn't think of, so your input is welcome

• It appears the main problem would be DirectX. MediaPortal is heavily based on it and there is no DirectX for Linux.
  A possible solution would be to make the DirectX part interchangeable with an equivalent OpenGL part.
  
  
• Dokan is only available for Windows.
  FUSE would be an alternative for Linux.
  
  
• The MP2-Server is run as a Windows Service. I didn't check yet how much work it would be to make it a "normal" console application, but I guess not too much.

These are the problems I can think of right now. I'm sure there will be a lot of minor differences where MP2 is not Mono-compatible, but this should be fixable.
I didn't start to examine TV Server yet, but even a MP2 client for Linux would be really nice. I#d love to see a MP2-Distro for RaspberryPi.

As I've written before, your input/opinion is very welcome.




Regards,
riggnix

 

[offbyone]

I have been thinking about this, too - so you are not alone.
As I have recently done a cross platform c# app with Mono using OpenGL - which worked pretty good - imho it would be possible to make MP2 available on OSX and Linux with a few limitation.
My problem is the limited time to work on this alone, but if you have enough spare time and are willing to make a skin engine port to OpenGL -> I could assist.

Once we have the rendering in OpenGL, we can start on Audio and Video playback, but skinengine port would the first big step.

 

[riggnix]

I would have been surprised if no one else was thinking about this

I don't have that much experience in Mono and especially OpenGL, but I think if someone gets this project rolling enough people will come to assist.
I'll try to look over the MP2 architecture to get an idea how we could tackle this.
I'm pretty psyched that someone from the development group is on board because i guess you know MP2 pretty well


Edit:
Did some research on mono compatible OpenGL libs and stumbled over Pencil.Gaming. I think this would be a good starting point.

 

[offbyone]

I used OpenTK in my project and found it pretty good working on OSX, Linux and Win. It might look dead, but is used in many places (even MonoTouch I think). The other Lib would be SDL (http://www.libsdl.org/), where a more recent Version 2.0 seems close to finish.

About my knowledge of MP2 skinengine: While I have been on the MP team for a while now, I have not looked at any DirectX code or written any of the rendering code of MP2 So we are in the same boat here.

 

[riggnix]

Pencil.Gaming seems to be made out of frustration with openTK. Sound pretty interesting IMO. But I'll try to look into all of these

http://www.opentk.com/node/3276

https://github.com/antonijn/Pencil.Gaming

 

[Peter2]

Interesting idea!
Over the years, many of us have gone from 1 system to multiple clients connected to a server and I guess that will become more common in the near future.
I'm quite sure that if MP could run on a RaspberryPi, it would make a lot of users very happy - including me.
The ability to use a minimalistic/cheap client is very appealing and I'm considering to get a RPI and run openelec or raspbmc as a MP client.

I don't have any knowledge of programming but if possible, I would encourage to make it a group project to spread the workload.

 

[FreakyJ]

@riggnix
If you would do that, it would bring MP to a whole new user base

If you have something to test, I'm on board

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
I really would love to see MP2 platform independent. No need for a SSD and a Windows Licence, an USB Stick and Linux will be enough for a client only system...
I'm more than willing to test if there is something I can test...

 

[GeoffC]

Even as a first step, just a Linux based client would be great.
When all you want is a small MP client on the network and it costs as much for a M$ license as it does for the hardware, you start thinking there must be a better way

 

[kiwijunglist]

Rather than port MP2, you could just create a linux extender client that will talk to MP2 server. AFAIK MP2 server handles all the media databases, so should be really useful and achievable. You might need to create a MP2-server plugin for transcoding (or a plugin that creates DLNA server) but you could just start with something that only plays files directly over the network.

Then people can run MP2-server on their old computers or slow NAS-PC and use a R-Pi or similar [EDIT: extender]