[mythtv-users] gentoo, latest mythtv - mythfrontend has no text

[Jarod Wilson]

On Tuesday 30 June 2009 18:38:54 Brian Wood wrote:
> Gentoo is good for some purposes, not good for others.

s/Gentoo/<any distribution of your choosing>/

> But getting binaries compiled for your machine, instead of generic ones that 
> are supposed to work for anyone, is a plus. For example, using "optimize for 
> size" helps a lot if you're running a cache-starved CPU like the VIA chips.

My thing is this: the systems that benefit the most from such
optimization are the ones most painful to compile on, because they're
so damned slow to begin with. A 1% performance gain means squat on a
quad-core box. But you really need something fast with a distcc to
build on a system (such as the previously mentioned quad-core) with
bearable compile times unless you're incredibly patient. (I'm not.)
So why not just spend a few bucks on something faster and save yourself
the pain and suffering? I mean, the Dell Studio Hybrid serving as my
current frontend has a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, etc., runs
quieter than an EPIA I've since retired (replaced the board w/an Intel
D945GCLF2), and cost a mere $400. Its got more than enough oomph to
handle (most of the) 1080p h.264 material I've thrown at it, without
having to eke out an extra 1% performance by optimizing the bejesus
out of everything -- it runs stock x86_64 Fedora 11 right now. (But of
course, now I kinda want to replace it w/something that has nVidia
graphics to get shiny new vdpau hotness and no video tearing like there
is w/the 100% open-source Intel solution I've got now...)

> My first Myth experience was with Gentoo, and that gave me a much better 
> understanding of what Myth was and how it worked than I might have got from a 
> pre-packaged install. It especially taught me a lot about what Myth depends 
> on to work.

I'm not sold that it really gives you a better understanding of how
MythTV works if you're doing more than just painting by numbers. I'd
say I have a pretty good understanding of how MythTV works, but I got
started with MythTV on Red Hat Linux 9. Granted, Gentoo might force
one to pay slightly more attention than with a pre-packaged install,
but again, if you're actually trying to understand how things work,
you'll get that out of both a pre-packaged install and a source-based
install. Assuming "pre-packaged" isn't one of the distros that installs
and configures everything for you right out of the box, but rather,
installing your distro of choice, then adding MythTV functionality on
top... MythDora/MythBuntu/KnoppMyth definitely lower the bar of
required understanding, but intentionally so.


-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com