[clug] Small Linux tablet machine for kitchen?

[Martin Schwenke]

Hi Paul,

On Sat, 06 Jun 2015 10:37:19 +1000, Paul Wayper
<paulway at mabula.net> wrote:

> What I want is a small "tablet" machine - a touch screen computer that can
> either have an on-screen keyboard or a remote bluetooth keyboard and mouse -
> for the kitchen.  Aims are:
> 
> * Play music (into external powered speakers) from network

> [...] As far as I can see, the last update to
> any of the Linux DAAP daemons was about four years ago, and the most
> maintained one I can find has bugs that prevent about a third of the songs
> from playing correctly (AFAICS it's a 32-bit integer representation issue)
> and it randomly locks up.  The standard Android music player recognises my
> Logitech SqueezeBox share but crashes when trying to load the full
> directory.  Etc. etc. etc.

I have tried to find reasonable ways to stream my FLAC connection.
Like you, I have SqueezeBox (aka LogitechMediaServer) and there isn't
much that can cope with the number of tracks I have.

Most of the Android players just try to download the full track listing
instead of doing anything smart (e.g. load an artist list), so they
crash.  The only one I have found that works is Squeeze Player, which
costs a few $$.  It works like a headless SqueezeBox and is flawless.

On Linux, there seems to be no usable desktop DLNA client at all.
There's a recommendation out there for VLC but it seems to try to load
too much information and either runs my machine out of memory or
crashes.  I think a previous attempt discovered that Kodi (formerly
XBMC) loads and plays fine... but it wants to be full screen, which is
no use to me.  A nice looking option for a SqueezeBox client is
Squeezelite.  It is headless, so can be operated by any Squeezebox
controller (I use Squeezer on my phone, which is better than the
original Duet remote, or the web interface).  However, Squeezelite
stops playing randomly and various versions have suffered from endless
stuttering after inactivity.  And so it goes...  I have tried lots of
other options (Rhythmbox, Banshee, ...) but they are all either broken,
bloated or both.

I end up mounting my FLACs via NFS and running a local media player.  I
guess you could do that on a Linux tablet but the user interface issues
suck.  One alternative would be to run something like MPD.  However,
I'm already running 2 DLNA servers (SqueezeBox for music, minidlna for
video) and running a 3rd dedicated media daemon just seems dumb.

The whole thing is incredibly frustrating.  I assume that the working
DLNA players in things like Kodi are lightweight, since they work in
embedded environments.  I don't understand why they're not available
separately...

peace & happiness,
martin
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