Fluxbuntu on a VIA EPIA 5000

From ThisBlueWiki

You can install Fluxbuntu (the nascent ultra-slim derivative of Ubuntu) on an EPIA 5000 system and get full motion, full screen MPEG-4 (XviD) video with almost no dropped frames using MPlayer. That's kind of amazing given how limited the CPU is in the system.

This machine is quite slow but usable even with only 120MB of usable RAM (after the video card takes its little bite). This 'guide' (mainly written so I can remember what I did) is for Fluxbuntu 7.10.

As an example of how slow this machine is, streaming SomaFM with VLC takes about 32% CPU.

Initial install

• Installed on my other machine since the EPIA won't boot from my DVD-ROM drive
• Put the drive back in, etc /etc/network/interfaces and chance eth0 to eth1 since it appears the VIA Rhine NIC is detected as eth1 for some reason. I also put via-rhine in /etc/modules, but I don't know that it was necessary.
• Did dpkg-reconfigure --default-priority xserver-xorg to redetect video hardware. This detected it as 'trident' which it is.

Video

• Set modes to a maximum of 1024x768, 24-bit color in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Set maximum vertical refresh to 60Hz.
• Added Option "XaaNoPixmapCache" to the Screen section in a bid to get rid of 4 tiled bars of crap on the bottom of the screen when using mplayer -vo xvidix -framedrop as root, but to no avail.
• Added VideoRam 4096 to the Device section and this got rid of it.
• Options for decent playback: -vo xvidix -nocolorkey -framedrop

Reporting bugs in Fluxbuntu

There is some serious confusion on where to report bugs in Fluxbuntu. As of 7.10, the report link in the bookmarks provided with Kazehakase is wrong, and in addition to the nonworking tracker at that link, there are two other trackers being used for a total of three places not counting the forums. The distro maintainers really need to get this straight as people are starting to use the distro and need to submit bug reports.

To report bugs in Fluxbuntu, go here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/fluxbuntu-project/+bugs