My Series 1 TiVo is getting old, so I am planning an escape route based on MythTV, a free software system that turns an old computer into a personal video recorder. This week I tested three MythTV-specific Linux distributions: KnoppMyth, MythDora, and MythBuntu.

My curiosity toward MythTV-specific distros was touched off by MythBuntu's latest release earlier this month, Public Alpha 3. I run Ubuntu on my primary desktop machine, and had a relatively painless experience installing MythTV on it courtesy of the official repositories. Only while waiting for the MythBuntu ISO image to download did I decide to check out its competition.

MythBuntu Public Alpha 3 is based on development builds of Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon," and provides users with MythTV version 0.20.1. It is available as a 423MB ISO image via BitTorrent download.

MythDora 4 is built on top of Fedora Core 6, also providing MythTV 0.20.1, and is available (via direct download only) as a 1.0GB DVD ISO image or as two CD-sized ISO images.

KnoppMyth R5F1 is built from scratch using pieces of Knoppix 5.0 and Debian Sid.

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