[mythtv-users] Backend OS - opinions on Archlinux

[Nick Rout]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Karl Newman <siliconfiend at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Warpme <warpme at o2.pl> wrote:
>
>> On 1/6/13 1:11 AM, Nick Rout wrote:
>>
>>> I am looking at updating my backend, made necessary by the fact that it
>>> is mythbuntu 10.04 (no myth 0.26 packages).
>>>
>>> I really hate this 2 yearly cycle of updating ubuntu distros, even on
>>> LTS. I thought maybe a rolling release like Arch would alleviate me from
>>> having to do that.
>>>
>>>  <snip>
>
>
>
> Speaking about Gentoo vs. Archlinux. Brief look at that time showed me:
>> 1\gentoo
>> +You control EVERY aspect of Your OS (starting from what is on HDD,
>> ending on how binaries were compiled)
>> -compiles and upgrades sometimes are not so easy
>> -doing full system upgrade means recompile many OS components
>>
>
> Just to muddy the waters a little more:
>
> My myth combined FE/BE has been using Gentoo for 7 years now. I originally
> was drawn to Gentoo because I thought the customized compilation sounded
> like a good idea, however that has turned out to be almost a non-factor.
> The huge bonus of an OS like Gentoo is in fact the rolling release. I've
> never had to wipe and reinstall the OS, and only once have I had to
> recompile the entire system (when I switched from an AMD to a recent Intel
> chip), and even then it took only about 8 hours with my bottom-end Sandy
> Bridge i3. I update the system every day because I prefer to deal with the
> significant upgrades a little bit at a time instead of being hit with a
> bunch of issues at once. This way if something breaks (rare) then I have a
> very good idea what caused it and can focus my attention on it. I've been
> through several notable lirc, LCDd, udev, rc upgrades which required
> significant config file editing, but I can generally tell which packages
> are going to take some time to update ahead of time, and I'll wait until I
> have some time available. I've also never gotten stuck in the dependency
> hell like I hear about frequently for the binary distributions. A simple
> revdep-rebuild will detect broken linkages (seems to be getting more rare
> now) and rebuild the affected packages.
>
> One nice side effect of compiling everything is that you are automatically
> going to have a suitable development environment set up, and this makes
> applying patches trivial. In fact, when an ebuild uses the default
> functions, you can just drop a patch file in an appropriately-named
> directory and it will get automatically picked up and applied during
> compilation.
>
> Having said that, I wouldn't recommend Gentoo to a newbie unless I knew
> they were very tech savvy and very determined. The documentation is good,
> but it's definitely some (all) assembly required. Probably not as severe as
> Slackware is (was?) though.
>
>
Good post, I used to run gentoo a lot, in fact I ran gentoo installfests
and gave talks to my LUG, as well as fanboying to hell. I even built a live
cd that would join a compile farm for installfests - bring as many boxes as
you can, connect them to the network and boot this - everyone can benefit!
I eventually wanted an easy life and migrated to ubuntu. In fact my gentoo
experience with mythtv was rough [1], and I migrated to knoppmyth (based on
knoppix so debian originally). When knoppmyth didn't produce 0.21 [2] fast
enough for this impatient boy I went to mythbuntu. Now I appear to be going
full circle, in that the difficulties that the other posters have
identified with arch correspond with the difficulties I perceived with
gentoo - the config file stuff, particularly if you leave it a long time
[3].

[1] well it was on a retarded VIA Epia box - never trusted VIA with any
promises of open source support since then! I am guessing gentoo has come a
long way since then - although my primary difficulty was with video
playback so not even an issue now I run a separate backend.

[2] or whatever version introduced multirec.

[3] I still have a gentoo fileserver that I haven't touched software wise
for years. During various divorces, house moves and natural disasters it
sat in cupboards for much of the last 5 years, and mot all of those
cupboards had power or ethernet. I had a look at it a while ago and didn't
have a clue where to start in terms of updating. It has a freebsd twin in a
similar state. Neither of them touches the internet, so I am not concerned
about the security aspect. They chug away.
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