Open Source VB

[DaleT]

Hello everyone,
I know that there are other solutions out there to accomplish what a lot of what a Vortex Box does, but I like having a LMS server for audio in different location as well as a Plex Server for movies. I sent a private message to Andrew about perhaps making Vortex Box Open Source on October 20,2019. I haven't seen a response yet.
The vast majority of topics lately seem to be complaining about the fact that:
Vortex Box is on a OS that is no longer supported.
It is difficult to update the OS.
Pieces won't update and are no longer supported.

They all seem to point to the end of Vortex Box. Andrew please chime in and tell us otherwise.
I don't fault Andrew and his new endeavors taking the majority of his time. Perhaps however it is time to make this open source with different teams making sure key components are up to date and work together.
Thoughts?

[SeanMiddleton]

100% agree, I have posted similarly in the past. Opening up VB to the open source community would allow it to continue to live and thrive.

[Sully]

I would hate to see this project fade away. I've explored replacements, but nothing I've found does what this does so well. I've built several of these for myself, friends & family over the years, and while I'm proficient at installing, customizing and have even veered off the "supported path" & updated the OS, and added other packages, but am far from being fluent in Linux OS, despite being a career IT guy.
I offer what support I can with $ contributions and testing, feedback etc.
Let's hope that Andrew is forthcoming with his intentions for the future of Vortexbox. I was encouraged to see the beta version 2.5 out in March, but 10 months later, still no GA release.
I sincerely appreciate all the time & effort that Andrew and others have put into this over the years and keep my fingers crossed that the end is not near.
Viva la VB!

[mrjoe]

I'd love to see open source, there are so many changes I could make (i do some front end dev) like updating the dashboard but being closed it's easy to break things!

[bburroughs]

Count me in as another contributor if VB goes open source. That's a far preferable option to simply letting this great package die!

[chabelo]

The GPL requires that all repackagings, forks, and distros also be GPL (i.e. Open Source). I've never understood why VB hasn't complied with this.

[48clyde]

I know this thread is a bit old, but I got frustrated with not being able to run other services on my 2.4 vortexbox server because of the now unsupported OS and not seeing relief any time soon.

So, I've gone down the docker path and recreated the core Vortexbox functionality of the Logitech Media Server, Squeezebox lite player and cd ripper now running in docker containers on Ubuntu 20.04. If anyone is interested I can post details

[Sully]

I know this thread is a bit old, but I got frustrated with not being able to run other services on my 2.4 vortexbox server because of the now unsupported OS and not seeing relief any time soon.

So, I've gone down the docker path and recreated the core Vortexbox functionality of the Logitech Media Server, Squeezebox lite player and cd ripper now running in docker containers on Ubuntu 20.04. If anyone is interested I can post details

YES!
Definitely interested
I have a spare PC I'd like to try this on..

[48clyde]

It's on github and all the instructions, pre-requisites etc. are in the readme file on https://github.com/48clyde/VBR

[DaleT]

When I get a moment I'll check it out.
dale

[gmeister]

Another great feature of VortexBox is the FLAC to MP3 mirroring. Is there any chance you will be adding that functionality?

[48clyde]

There is a lot of functionality that is delivered on port 80, such as backups, configuring networking and sound cards, system admin etc. that I haven't delved into, but I've created an initial flac-mirror docker container that will mirror flac files to mp3, m4a and/or ogg as configured. Have a look at the bottom of the docker-compose.yml file.

I think that some of the options for the ffmpeg conversions may need a bit of tweaking but it's a bit noisy here at the moment to have a close listen to the mirrored files.

[agillis]

Most of VortexBox is already opensource so feel free to use it. Just don't use the web interface or our logos these are copyrighted. We are updating Vortexbox and will continue to do so.

[gmeister]

48clyde: I finally got around to trying your Docker VBR on OpenMediaVault v5 (Debian Buster) and it works great! Thank you for your work on this.

Regarding the mirroring, there are two things I would like to tweak, but I can't figure out how (I am a Docker neophyte). When it finds a new album to mirror, I would also like it to copy the cover.jpg and/or folder.jpg artwork from the FLAC folder into the new MP3 folder.

And, your software is configured to check for new FLAC files every minute. This is excessive for my needs, and I would like to make it check once a day instead. Is there an easy way to configure this?

[agillis]

it already copies over the cover.jpg file for you.