This is partially here for my own benefit if I have to set up a HTPC again, and also as help for anyone with a NUC and a TV and some spare time
Over time I plan to script as much of this as possible, perhaps making it an interactive shell script, maybe even calling a chef cookbook!
I'm using a 2015 Celeron NUC (https://ark.intel.com/products/85254/Intel-NUC-Kit-NUC5CPYH). Advantages include:
- Low power draw (about 15W)
- Almost completely silent, can heat up and a fan turns on but you hardly hear it
- Very small, can screw it to the back of a monitor/TV
- 4gb of RAM
- Old 150gb 5400rpm 2.5" SATA drive I had lying around (only intending to store music on it)
- OS was previously running off a 4gb SD Card
- Now running off a spare 16gb Compact Flash card connected via a USB adapter.
- Other storage comes from USB external TB drives with various file systems (see later).
OS doesn't reside on data storage drives, so this way my music collection has plenty of room, and I can easily switch OS's by swapping out memory cards.
Windows doesn't allow installation on an SD/CF card, and takes heaps of room, so I chose Linux, and Lubuntu is supposed to be more light-weight...
Intel provides open source graphics drivers for Linux, and from what I read this is the best/most complete/supported linux graphics driver stack, with support for VA-API, meaning hardware video decoding should be possible.
Lubuntu recognised all hardware in my NUC model, though I read newer ones have built in WiFi adapters which need newer drivers than are available in Lubuntu 17.
One disappointment with this setup and Linux in general was that it turns out that on Linux, both Chrome and Firefox browsers (and apparently Opera too) have completely disabled hardware video decoding! This means a slower NUC like mine can struggle to decode 1080P video streamed over the internet (Netflix or Youtube). 720P or lower is usually fine though.
It sounds like Chrome may be working towards allowing hardware decoding via VA-API, but that was posted late 2017, it's now mid 2018, so we may need to fiddle.
Installing video players such as VLC and playing 1080 or 4K content locally is fine, because the player software is able to access hardware.
Besides this, Linux is great for running a NAS-like setup with the ability to act as a HTPC.
Kodi (https://kodi.tv) seems to be the go-to HTPC software that people install on Windows or Linux based HTPCs. I've previously ran OpenELEC (https://openelec.tv/) which is a custom Linux OS that comes with Kodi already installed in a "kiosk" like mode, where it starts on bootup. This worked well enough, but I find it limiting to only be able to browse giant menu options and need to use a remote with up/down/left/right buttons.
Instead I prefer to have a more desktop-like OS and control the mouse with my phone, using Missing Link (something I wrote/maintain http://peaklabs.net/)
To play videos, I prefer to install VLC. Sure Kodi shows DVD covers for movies and all that, but personally I don't need it. Missing Link works with Kodi setups too though!
Lubuntu comes pre-installed with Firefox and Transmission (a bit torrent client) so no need to worry about these.
Ideally all this could be a chef recipe or something, or saved as an ISO... if I were doing 1000's it'd make more sense that way, but for one-off experiments, this seems simpler:
- Download Lubuntu ISO, downloaded 17.04 (https://lubuntu.net/)
- Make bootable USB stick (I used https://etcher.io/)
- Boot from USB stick, install on chosen media via normal means
- Apply any updates, etc. (Lubuntu upgraded itself to 18.04 already... only made the bootable ISO a few days earlier!)
Simply run setup.sh. It will ask you questions as it goes along, for now those aren't documented while it's in flux. Things it does are described below with info sources:
http://lubuntuhowto.blogspot.com/2014/09/how-to-install-ssh-server-on-lubuntu.html
$ rm -r ~/.config/lxpanel
cp /usr/share/lxpanel/profile/Lubuntu/panels/panel ~/.config/lxpanel/Lubuntu/panels
$ lxpanelctl restart
Xfce Power Manager->Security->Automatically lock session "Never", untick "Lock screen when system is going for sleep"
https://github.com/transmission/transmission/wiki/Configuration-Files
- I just opened it and told it where to read torrents from and where to save downloads
- Install missing link (this will get nicer...)
sudo cp MLcmd.service /etc/systemd/system
sudo systemctl enable MLcmd
sudo systemctl start MLcmd
- VLC
- TODO: Adblock plugin on Firefox, or use pi-hole (https://pi-hole.net/)
- Install support for exFAT file system for Lubuntu (so large external drives can work, which are also windows & apple compatible)
sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils - Install samba server
- Install patched chromium-browser
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/chromium-beta
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium-beta
See: https://askubuntu.com/questions/240923/enable-sync-to-vblank-on-lxde-with-intel-video-card
Basically write a config file to: /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf Containing:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection
Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, one major shortcoming of Linux as a HTPC at the moment is with it's inability to do hardware video decoding in Firefox or Chrome. It's simply blanket turned off for all Linux builds. Not only this, but there are many codecs, and some are not decoded in hardware by intel cards/drivers. One example in my case is VP9, which according to what I've read should decode but doesn't seem to. Only VP8 seems to work on my NUC.
https://launchpad.net/~saiarcot895/+archive/ubuntu/chromium-beta is a patched build of Chromium-beta which allows users to enable hardware video decoding.
Other requirements:
- h264ify browser extension forces video stream to h264 which can be hardware-decoded.
- copying files from full chrome build to enable Widevine so Netflix (or other DRM video streams) will work
By default, USB drives are in /media and owned by the logged in user. We want root to auto-mount them on startup and have them available to all users (needed when setting up Samba later).
To do this, run the following
sudo mkdir /mnt/Elements
sudo mkdir /mnt/Music
sudo mkdir /mnt/4TB