VortexBox 1.5 released, a Fedora based distro that turns a PC into a Jukebox

Wednesday, September 22, 2010 Andrew Gillis , Distributions , Distributions-News , News , VortexBox 0 Comments

Andrew Gillis has announced the release of VortexBox 1.5, a Fedora based distribution that is powerful enough to turn a computer into an easy-to-use music server or a jukebox. Andrew Gillis quoted on the official VortexBox site's release announcement,

"We are pleased to announce the release of VortexBox 1.5. As always our goal it to make VortexBox work with any media player. The recent release of iTunes 10 does not work work with the old VortexBox DAAP server. We took this opportunity to replace the DAAP server in VortexBox with a better one. The new DAAP server not only works with iTunes 10 but it can server FLAC files to iTunes by encoding them as WAV files inline. This reduces the need to keep a mirror of your music files in mp3 format.

We also updated the the latest squeezebox server and added a control panel to control the services on VortexBox. Thanks to everybody who helped with features and bug fixes for this release."

VortexBox is known for it's quick installation, the ease of use that it provides, and the low system requirements. VortexBox can convert any PC into a music machine. Some of the major features of VortexBox includes easily ripping CDs to mp3, FLAC, and other major formats also it can load CD covers, ID3 tags and other details about the songs. VortexBox can also serve as a music server to play music files over the network.

Features

Some of the major features listed on VortexBox's official about page are,

• Converts an old PC to a CD ripper / jukebox / NAS in 15 minutes.
• Easy to customize VortexBox as it is based on well-trusted Fedora.
• Automatically tags all files from online music database.
• Automatically downloads the cover art.
• Automatic sharing of file to SMB (Microsoft) file shares.
• Automatic re-indexing Squeezebox Server after every CD is ripped.
• AppleTalk – for OSX or Bonjour for Windows.
• DAAP – Automatically shares all MP3s for streaming to iTunes and Roku Soundbridge.
• NFS – For Linux boxes and almost anything else, Solaris etc.
• DLNA support – Play music and video DLNA enabled players, XBOX 360,PS3, Windows 7 etc.
• Easy installation of mplayer for AlienBBC support.
• Good support for Sonos.
• Works well as a back end server for XBMC (XBOX Media Center) running on XBOX, Windows, OSX, AppleTV, or Linux.

To download the latest VortexBox 1.5, please visit the official download page (http://vortexbox.org/downloads/)