LinHES looks like a very nice solution for a distro that automatically finds and configures your hardware, and minimizes the amount of setup required. "Works like an appliance" is a great goal. It is definitely the easiest to install and set up of the MythTV variants I tried. And the other ones (MythBuntu, etc.) are no longer being updated. (I am only counting "complete" solutions, not DIY pick-your-distro and add MythTV to it.)
Unfortunately, the system I have built has fairly new hardware, and LinHES doesn't support everything. The main problems:
- No firmware for my wifi chip
- No support for my integrated graphics (have to always force VESA for it to install and run)
- No UEFI boot/Installer doesn't see my SSD and allow installation to it
Since LinHES uses its own repo, and it's not recommended to add other Arch repos, that pretty much means I can't take advantage of my hardware.
This is not a slight against LinHES. I'm sure it works perfectly fine for many people, installing it on "non-cutting-edge" hardware. Constraining LinHES to it's own repo is probably necessary, for the audience LinHES is intended for, and to prevent a limited staff from being deluged with support issues from people using the latest development kernel, or third-party packages, or whatever. I get it. Developers have a life, full-time jobs, families, etc. So do I.
So I've moved on to Xubuntu 19.04 (core) + MythTV. Or I should say, moved "back to." I tried LinHES first, then Xubuntu, then LinHES again, and finally back to Xubuntu, learning more each time.
Took a whole lot more manual configuration than LinHES did, but I got it basically working last night. Can view program guide and watch live TV. Still have to configure things like storage groups (just set up a single default to get it working,) booting straight into front end, power management (suspend not full shutdown,) etc.
Even on Xubuntu, I had a few problems setting up MythTV. The main one being, mythtv-setup requires gksu, which is deprecated and removed from repos. I had to modify a script to use pkexec instead.
My hardware:
Motherboard - ASRock B360M-ITX/ac (using on-board HDMI-out to my TV for video and sound)
CPU - Intel Core i3-8300T
Graphics - Integrated on CPU, Intel UHD Graphics 630 (decode on the GPU! Woo!)
RAM - 8GB DDR4 (single stick with another slot free)
SSD - XPG SX8200 PCIe NVMe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 240GB
DVB - Hauppauge WinTV-quadHD
Misc - Blu-Ray drive, laptop hard drive(s) for recordings, database, and other stuff I don't want on the SSD
I'm sure my hardware is "overkill" for just recording and watching TV, but I wanted to have the flexibility of running other software that may require more resources. Games, for instance. Who knows. Just don't want the machine to be obsolete in two years.
I wish the LinHES team the best of luck. If the dev team ever needs help testing a new release (for hardware similar to mine) feel free to contact me.