Well my SlimServer died almost a month ago now - the gory details are
'here'
(http://www.abxzone.com/forums/general-intel-platform-discussions/108255-system-death-troubleshooting-advice-needed.html).

Since then, I've got my SlimServer back up using some secondary
hardware I had, a 1.2 GHz Duron machine with 512 MB RAM running Ubuntu
6.10.

It looks like I'll have some data loss anyway, see 'here'
(http://www.abxzone.com/forums/windows-nt-2000-xp-2003/108365-rebuilding-os-drive-image-raid-drives.html),
I'll never upgrade to Vista, XP is looking a little tired compared to
Ubuntu, Ubuntu is fun and interesting and this Ubuntu build hasn't been
perfect but it's been very resilient even after some pretty severe
breakage.  The experience going to much slower hardware has been
surprisingly pleasant.

HARDWARE

I was thinking of going with 'this'
(http://www.abxzone.com/forums/general-intel-platform-discussions/108282-possible-conroe-setup-opinions.html)
(Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 or E6700, ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA along with my
old 512 MB DDR400 RAM and AGP video card).  I want the E6600 or E6700
because of it's blistering performance in FLAC and LAME encoding.  It
also won't be too expensive after April 22nd.

Unfortunately if I go with Ubuntu Linux it may be a bit wasted - Linux
is so fast and efficient with my 1.2 GHz Duron this will be massive
overkill.  Also Linux isn't as good with the newest technology (I read
it doesn't yet support the advanced thermal sensors the Core 2 Duos
have) and it may not like the VIA PT880 Ultra chipset in the
motherboard.

Still, I am hankerin' after this stuff.  It's not like anyone ever
regretted buying something too fast, just paying too much for it!  :-)

SOFTWARE

The big conundrum.  The thing I like about Linux is that this is
changing rapidly.  Still, there are some old standbys I just don't want
to do without and I want to find equivalents.

1.  EAC.  I gather that the recommended ripper is GRIP.  I tried it
today and liked it.  It does seem to try to recover errors and will
slow down the drive when it encounters problems.  But reporting of
these problems leaves a lot to be desired - it just has a little
animated face to let you know what's going on, it doesn't log where the
errors are occurring, and it doesn't support AccurateRip.  Is this the
penultimate Linux ripper?

2.  MAREO.  I'm currently encoding to FLAC, then encoding to MP3, then
doing MP3Gain analysis and adjustment with this.  Is there a Linux
equivalent or will I have to divide this into a series of steps?

3.  Mp3tag.  I installed EasyTag but haven't played with it much.  It
seems OK, but is there anything better?

4.  MP3Gain.  I like this Windows program very much and use its rather
unique features like using a reference other than 89 dB and adjusting
the file's volume.  Anything in Linux that does this?

5.  Ripping of audio from DVD video.  I've done this a few times and I
will want to do it again.  It requires a ripper than can demux to AC3
files, then a program that converts AC3 to WAV.  Is this possible in
Linux?

I really want to make this work now.  I've played with Linux for years,
Ubuntu is the first distro that works almost perfectly and does -nearly-
everything I want.  I'm willing to put some work into it.

Thanks!


-- 
Mark Lanctot
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34505

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