HTPC with Linux for Streaming

What's the right recipe for a home built system these days? AMD? Requirements:

• small form factor, suitable to go in the living room
• quick boot time (SSD?)
• Linux
• stream imsa.com, Amazon prime
• wireless keyboard and mouse

Thanks!

Chromebox with a logitech k400. That's what I use.

I'm using nas4free (on top of FreeBSD).

Case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163255

Motherboard (note, mini-itx with 6 6g/s SATA ports and dual gigabit ethernet):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128721

Power supply:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256063

Processor (because streaming/storage dosn't need much):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116950

24TB (4GB each) of Western Digital RED drives in raid2z (can lose 2 drives and still be OK)

16GB of Crucial ECC memory (because ZFS loves RAM and only a fool uses non-ECC ram on a NAS)

That is enough to hold my wife's entire photography business as well as all of our music, etc and nas4free supports all of the protocols you could ever want for streaming and mounting as space. The OS is installed on a 8GB usb key and it runs headless. All management is done via either the lovely web interface or ssh commandline.

I have two, one's an old Dell slim tower and one is custom-built. Both running regular desktop Linux distros. Making them good HTPCs is mostly about controls (one has a DS3 controller w/ keyboard, one had a wireless handheld keyboard/touchpad combo that broke and is being controlled through VNC from a phone/tablet/laptop for now) and setting up the desktop environment to suit the use.

I'm looking at a Rii i8 Mini thumb keyboard/touchpad to replace the one that broke, that's a good "remote."

Raspberry Pi with XBMC?
Amazon Fire with XBMC?

Way easier/cheaper than all of the above options. Not sure if there is an IMSA channel for it or not.

Yeah, what does the Amazon fire TV (not stick) have for hacking options? I would recommend the Logitech K810, pricey but so nice.

How does the Chromebox handle stream? I have run into issues with android vs Windows. Like trying to watch top gear in a less than legitimate way...

I run a Matricom quad core android box with Kodi.

Amazon Prime Video doesn't seem to play nicely for me in Linux. There are some hacks to make it work, but just a heads up!

I personally run a home built with an AMD A8 APU and a SSD. I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 with chrome beta. It also serves as a Plex server for the rest of the house.

I think I'd prefer to build an actual PC, versus a fire / chromecast appliance. Call me old fashioned, especially since nearly all of those are hackable to some degree. Thank you all for the tips. I need to do some googling and shopping. I'll do a build thread soon!

Is Linux better or much better than Windows 7 or 8?

Wait a couple months for the Compute Stick which is made exactly for that application?

http://www.popsci.com/intels-150-compute-stick-turns-any-hdtv-windows-pc

Mr_Clutch42 wrote: Is Linux better or much better than Windows 7 or 8?

Well Linux is a few hundred bucks less and is at least as reliable, lower maintenance and more secure...but if you want to play video games on your HTPC, they "just work" on Windows, on Linux it's more complicated.