Evenin' all,
Firstly, thank you Ian for a great site, even if I am a few years behind!
As a complete noob, I have question about virtualisation. As I have the space to place my server behind my tv, I have built it with the idea of making it into my htpc as well as a server, using XBMC as the front end, adding other clients around the house as time and funds allow. I am sure that I am not the first person to have this thought, so I was wondering, what would the most sensible way of going about this? My first thought was to follow Ian's guide, installing a desktop distro and XBMC as a VM, but having read through the forum I can see that this is possibly not the way to go and so I seek advice!
Thank you everyone!
Sean
Virtual Questions
Re: Virtual Questions
Hi Sean and welcome to the forums 
I'm going down the XBMC route as I think that is a good way to go too. My question to you would be what sort of clients do you intend using on other TVs (as and when funds permit). If you connect your server to the TV directly then I'm not sure what you'd gain by installing XBMC as a VM, you might as well install it directly on the host.
A few months ago I bought myself a little Lenovo Q190, installed XBMC on it, connected it to a TV and was able to pull content from my server via SMB. It worked perfectly. It also worked great with MythTV and allowed me to view and pause live TV using a tuner in my server, plus I could view recordings made via MythTV. I returned it simply because it had a noisy little fan in it.
When I put together the guide on setting up Virtual Machines I thought they had a lot of potential. Now however, I've realised that you can buy fairly powerful little computers for not a lot of money. A few guys on this forum are using Rasberry PIs and are having great success. I am currently trying to find myself something with a little more oomph than the Rasberry PI but something that is also very quiet, ideally silent. I'll install anything I need directly on it, I'll not bother going down the VM route anymore
I still use VMs for testing out stuff (plus I also use Windows VMs as I have a few Windows licenses knocking around) but not as much as I'd planned originally.
Just my opinion of course
Ian.
I'm going down the XBMC route as I think that is a good way to go too. My question to you would be what sort of clients do you intend using on other TVs (as and when funds permit). If you connect your server to the TV directly then I'm not sure what you'd gain by installing XBMC as a VM, you might as well install it directly on the host.
A few months ago I bought myself a little Lenovo Q190, installed XBMC on it, connected it to a TV and was able to pull content from my server via SMB. It worked perfectly. It also worked great with MythTV and allowed me to view and pause live TV using a tuner in my server, plus I could view recordings made via MythTV. I returned it simply because it had a noisy little fan in it.
When I put together the guide on setting up Virtual Machines I thought they had a lot of potential. Now however, I've realised that you can buy fairly powerful little computers for not a lot of money. A few guys on this forum are using Rasberry PIs and are having great success. I am currently trying to find myself something with a little more oomph than the Rasberry PI but something that is also very quiet, ideally silent. I'll install anything I need directly on it, I'll not bother going down the VM route anymore
I still use VMs for testing out stuff (plus I also use Windows VMs as I have a few Windows licenses knocking around) but not as much as I'd planned originally.
Just my opinion of course
Ian.
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Re: Virtual Questions
Hi Ian,
Thanks for your quick reply. I was beginning to reach the same conclusion myself. Funny how going really complicated can seem like a good idea sometimes. My plans are to go down the RPi route, as I really only need video streaming in the other rooms., but who knows where I'll end up! Anyways, I'm sure I'll be here again seeking wisdom. Thanks again.
Thanks for your quick reply. I was beginning to reach the same conclusion myself. Funny how going really complicated can seem like a good idea sometimes. My plans are to go down the RPi route, as I really only need video streaming in the other rooms., but who knows where I'll end up! Anyways, I'm sure I'll be here again seeking wisdom. Thanks again.
Re: Virtual Questions
You're welcome Sean. If you end up doing something really exciting please come back and tell us all about it.
Ian.
Ian.