Hmm perhaps it is a dumb question, I don't really know. I'm very new to Knoppmyth and to Linux. I have looked around but for the life of me I can not find a simple answer to the question.

I have Knoppmyth booting straight to MythTV but that's not the GUI I mean.

I also know I have someting called X and that looks promising, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to get in or out of it. Though I do realise X is running when MythTV is running but if I exit MythTV I get a splash screen or a wallpaper screen and I can right click the mouse and I get a Fluxbox and if I exit the Fluxbox I go back to MythTV (I expected to exit to the shell with X stopped).

What I was hoping was that there was a GUI whereby I can browse files move them around, edit or delete them without having to go via the shell command line.

KnoppMyth is meant first and foremost to run MythTV and other DVR-related programs. Anything else is secondary, and that includes things like you're describing--a graphical way of deleting or moving files.

Any recordings you want to delete you can delete from within MythTV. If you want to move recordings to another computer, you can always connect to the KnoppMyth computer via a network (NFS, SMB, etc.) and move files that way.

So it depends on what you're really asking. If you just want to move and delete recordings, that's how you would do it. If you don't want a full-time MythTV system--maybe you're just trying it out or only have one computer--you should probably look into installing MythTV on top of Ubuntu or Fedora or the like.

KM does have X on it; the frontend itself is an X application. It sounds like you're tripping over the terminology, so a little background might help.

"X" is a nickname name for X-windows, which is the base Windowing system for any UNIX or Linux system. You'll also see XFree and Xorg, the differences are vast to ubergeeks, but for most of us we can call them all the same thing. (just like not all facial tissues are Kleenex; there is a difference, but most people don't care) Xorg is an X-windowing system.

X doesn't do much of anything, it's just a foundation, it doesn't even do a lot of what MS Windows can do. To get to that level of functionality you need a special app called a "Window Manager" There are hundreds of different window managers available, if not thousands. "Fluxbox" is the window manager installed by default on Knoppmyth. The window manager puts the titlebar and frame around the windows, These are called the "decorations." These allow you to move and resize the windows. Window managers generally provide a method for selecting and starting other X applications. With X and the Window Manager, you now arguably have the equivalent of MS Windows.

One Caveat, anything you go to the Start Menu for in Windows I'm calling a "Windows Application" Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, Control Panel, Word, Excel, Etc. are all apps. Windows with an empty Start menu is useless, (Some say Windows with a full start menu is STILL useless.) X plus a Window Manager is equally useless. In both cases you still need some Applications to do something useful. It sounds like you're looking for the equivalent of a Windows Explorer, and maybe even a Control Panel.

Everything you need to do with a mythbox can be done within the mythfrontend gui, although I find some things easier from another PC via mythweb. Several advanced things you may want to do can normally be done from a "shell" Which is like the Window's Command Prompt. -- You can do a lot of damage there...

If you're looking to learn Linux, I think you'll find lots of support, but as ceenvee703 alluded, KM may not be the best starter OS. KM is geared to be a lean-and-mean set-top box, and so lacks much of what you're looking for by design. For the best learning experience, get an Ubuntu disk, you can boot the CD straight into a desktop and play around without fear of trashing your PC, when you get comfortable with the live distro it can install on your harddrive, and coexist with Windows.

Thanks for the explanation. I hadn't realised the Knoppmyth was a scaled down installation just meant to run MythTv.

I can see the sense in it all now.

I want an easier interface so that I can fault find the MythTv system better and also so I can learn more about Linux.

I expect I can just add applications to my current installation but it sounds like I will be better off to start all over again with the installation of a "full" Linux distro and then once I have found my way around that install MythTv. The perhaps come back to Knoppmyth for my Front Ends.

Why not give Debian Lenny a try? KM has some big pieces of Debian in it so it's a logical move. In my case, going from KM to Debian Lenny just happened. Once I got used to it, I only boot into Windows to use Photoshop since I haven't found a RAW converter for LINUX that works as well as ACR.

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Retired KM user (R4 - R6.04); friend to LH users.

If you have a second computer in your household, you can administer your knoppmyth box via a web brower on that other computer. Webmin is a very nice, java based, gui environment that has a "windows explorer" equivalent program, a file editor, as well as log file viewer, sql veiwer/modifier, etc. Pretty much everything you need for administration. Between webmin and putty for ssh, you should be all set.

The Webmin server is already installed in knoppmyth, all you have to do is set a password for it and start it running. You can do this from a terminal window on the knoppmyth box. Here is the knoppmyth wiki:
http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/?id=KnoppmythWiki
and here is the "webminhowto" from the wiki:
http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=WebminHowTo
Then log in from the other computer's browser using:
https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:10000
where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your knoppmyth IP number. don't forget the "s" in http and don't forget to add ":10000", the port that webmin listens on.

Of course, both of your machines should be behind a firewall. I have webmin set to start automatically each time knoppmyth boots. I use it all the time.

If you want to fault find and learn Linux, I would recommend the command line initially. Debugging tools are often command-line based and learning Linux (IMHO) starts here. The command line is really nothing to be afraid of....

There's lot's of good tutorials on getting started. There's even one on the wiki: http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=LinuxTips

If you are in a hurry, <ctrl>-x will bring up a xterm command line interface.

Allen

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ASUS AT3N7A-I (Atom 330)
TBS 8922 PCI (DVB-S2)

Thanks for the encouragement. I will probably install UBUNTU on another PC just to try nit out and see how it looks.

I will also stick with KM installation for now and see if I can get it working. I spent some time on a linux tutorial and figured out some of the common commands.