Mythbuntu 7.10: An Excellent MythTV Distribution

When downloading the Mythbuntu 7.10 LiveCD from their project website, it uses the Xfce 4.4 desktop environment. In addition to MythTV, also included on this CD are MPlayer, VLC Media Player, and Xine Media Player. Rounding out the package set is Mozilla Firefox.

Mythbuntu 7.10 does also include Ubuntu innovations such as the Restricted Driver Manager. While a minor issue, one complaint we have about Mythbuntu 7.10 is the Xfce theme. The color choice alone isn't bad, but combined with a black background around the Mythbuntu logo and text, when selecting a desktop icon the icon's image is extremely hard to see. A greater contrast in color between a window's border and the background would also be preferred.

One of the items that differentiates Mythbuntu from other distributions that just ship with the default MythTV packages is the Mythbuntu Control Center. The Mythbuntu Control Center is broken into System Roles, MythTV Configuration, Applications & Plugins, Proprietary Drivers, Remote Control, System Services, Artwork & Login Behavior, Proprietary Codecs, and Advanced Management.

The "System Roles" area is for managing the different system components such as whether this installation will have a back-end or will be a primary/secondary back-end, whether a MythTV front-end will be used, and whether to provide a GNOME, KDE, or Xfce desktop. For managing the MythTV installation, MythTV Setup can be launched directly from the Mythbuntu Control Center and the MySQL server information can be edited and tested.