Best, simplest version of Linux to put on old Sony Windows XP laptop?

I will use the 8 gig one someday, but my main interest is SDR radio for it. Used to think I was good at linux. but OP25 I can not get to work. DSD+Fastlane works fine in windows, OP25 in linux sucks for me. One day I will sit down and figure it out.
 
I am a electronics idiot, I am typing on a ryzen9 5900x right now with 32 gigs of memory and 3 TB M2 PCIEx4 storage and a GTX2060 video card . I only use it for TV viewing . My go to machine is my Lenovo Tiny 910 I5 machine works just fine.
 

I also discovered you can create your OWN "appointment tv" virtual channels to be placed in the EPG guide, with any source of tv shows, movies, etc that you want. I just created a single one so far with the old British '70's series UFO that I have on one of the drives hanging off my WDTVLIVE.

Pretty cool...
Well, I found out I could use the TVE login option for Slingtv, even though I ONLY have a free account! It loaded the 78 FREE channels from Sling, right into the guide for Channels! Except for the various Adult Swim channels, & the local news channels from around the country, all the rest have conventional guide data, and are recordable!
 
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well Amazon got it here in less than 24 hours. Wow what a tuner, WLOS out of asheville is a thorn in the butt for everybody in the upstate of SC even though they are the local ABC affiliate. I have tried different antennas, pre amps and everything and it is always hit or miss. The flex brings it in strong. All PC's are working fine with it, but my new Samsung tu8000 will not. Well will to a extent. I can use DNLA and get tv, but no guide or options. I guess I will need a firestick 4k or something to full function on it. But must admit, the picture quality is much better than the onboard tuners of my TV's.
 
well Amazon got it here in less than 24 hours. Wow what a tuner, WLOS out of asheville is a thorn in the butt for everybody in the upstate of SC even though they are the local ABC affiliate. I have tried different antennas, pre amps and everything and it is always hit or miss. The flex brings it in strong. All PC's are working fine with it, but my new Samsung tu8000 will not. Well will to a extent. I can use DNLA and get tv, but no guide or options. I guess I will need a firestick 4k or something to full function on it. But must admit, the picture quality is much better than the onboard tuners of my TV's.
What operating system does that Samsung use? Appstore Browse | Samsung TV & Blu-ray Apps

A Firestick 4k Max (what I'm using) is on sale right now: Amazon product ASIN B08MQZXN1XView: https://www.amazon.com/fire-tv-stick-4k-max-with-alexa-voice-remote/dp/B08MQZXN1X/ref=pd_ybh_a_11?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=38WKYSF70QJ38HBACHRJ
 
The Samsung see the flex, but you can only choose channels to watch, no description other than call sign and channel number, but still a great picture.
You need some manner of DVR software to assemble a guide. Depending on the software, this might be either PSIP data or something slicker.
 
I am loving the 4k Flex though, have 3 other tv's going with no coax!
Our ATSC 3.0 lighthouse went live at 10am, and I have those scanned in. No issues getting video and audio on any of them. The Channels DVR app shows flawless video for them, and the STATS show it's HEVC and AC-4 audio.

The HDHomerun app for my TCL 50S535 Roku tv, seems to hate the ATSC 3.0 channels. They won't consistently work, when I try to tune them in. Not sure why as of yet. That app works fine on my Firestick, when I tried that in place of the Channels app.
 
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One more question Mike. Does channelsDVR see your Mio?
I haven't tried that, and I'm not sure why it would need to? It's supposed to be able to through the "Add Source" feature under "Custom Channels", but I'm not really interested in doing that right now.

To tell you the truth, there's SO MUCH that Channels can do, I've been reading up nearly non-stop for two weeks, and have only tried a few things so far. There's just not enough time to go through it all. Even the .m3u channels are over 500 that I have going. That's a LOT of guide data, lol. Can't watch it all..
 
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I was just thinking of cabling Pain to run coax to the upstairs bedroom. I am sure I could find a way to share with my TBS cards, but just looking for simple solutions.
 
I was just thinking of cabling Pain to run coax to the upstairs bedroom. I am sure I could find a way to share with my TBS cards, but just looking for simple solutions.
I've got a headache just trying to keep up with it all ATM. Still recovering from a concussion the last two weeks~ from slipping and falling on the ice. Slammed the back of my head on the ice, almost knocked out, and that hasn't helped all this. Though I've been working through it, and it's better than it was.

I'm sure I'll eventually try connecting to the Mio. I did try to connect to the 2TB drive hanging off the Mio using SMB, but wasn't able to for some reason. It actively rejects me trying it, though it can see ROOT, it can't connect /media/usb/movie. I MUST be missing something, but I'm not sure what it is as of yet.

× shares-MIONAS.mount - MIONAS Share
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system.control/shares-MIONAS.mount; static)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/shares-.mount.d
└─distro.conf
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2022-03-15 16:44:43 EDT; 59s ago
TriggeredBy: ● shares-MIONAS.automount
Where: /shares/MIONAS
What: //192.168.1.15/root//media/usb/movie

Mar 15 16:43:13 dvr-server systemd[1]: Mounting MIONAS Share...
Mar 15 16:44:43 dvr-server mount[9724]: Failed to query password: Timer expired
Mar 15 16:44:43 dvr-server mount[9723]: Password for root@//192.168.1.15/root//media/usb/movie:
Mar 15 16:44:43 dvr-server mount[9722]: mount error(13): Permission denied
Mar 15 16:44:43 dvr-server mount[9722]: Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs) and kernel log messages (dmesg)
Mar 15 16:44:43 dvr-server systemd[1]: shares-MIONAS.mount: Mount process exited, code=exited, status=32/n/a
Mar 15 16:44:43 dvr-server systemd[1]: shares-MIONAS.mount: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Mar 15 16:44:43 dvr-server systemd[1]: Failed to mount MIONAS Share
 

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