[mythtv-users] IR Blaster / LIRC kernel modules for RHEL4 2.6.9-42.0.2?

[Nick]

On 28/09/06, Pete Cap <peteoutside at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Nick <knowledgejunkie at gmail.com> wrote:
> Have you chosen CentOS over a non-enterprise grade OS (such as Fedora)
> for a particular reason?

> No particular reason.  CentOS IS billed as an enterprise-grade solution
> (it's basically RHEL with the branding removed).  However, I have actually
> been considering trying out Fedora, if only to learn the differences (also
> because there actually seems to be a more extensive user community), and
> because it has been like jumping through my own -- well, it has been a
> hassle setting up Myth on CentOS.

If someone asked me (not an expert by any stretch of the imagination)
whether to use a RHEL clone (CentOS, Whitebox, or even RHEL itself),
or a 'desktop' distro, such as Fedora, for a (dedicated) media/PVR
box, I would recommend the latter.

The RHEL-based distros are designed for stability, and with that comes
a price - notably hardware support and newer kernel features. In my
experience, media boxes always seem to require up-to-date hardware
support and you just don't get this with enterprise distros.
Eventually support may be added, but it's typically months down the
line. Also, the majority of media box users will be using Fedora
instead of RHEL, and so it will have more testing as a result, both
for hardware and MythTV itself. Note also that Fedora acts as the
'development' version of RHEL - once features in Fedora are considered
stable enough they may make it into RHEL itself, but that can take
time. Do you know if CentOS has back-ported DVB support in the kernel
(think it was added in 2.6.10)?

My old firewall machine ran WBEL4, but I have since consolidated this
with another Fedora machine, and noticed no stability issues
whatsoever. I still have WBEL on my laptop (acts as a remote frontend
machine for MythTV) but this was well supported out of the box, and
does not require ivtv or LIRC support to function as a media box. I'll
probably move this over to Fedora in the near future when I
repartition the drive.

Nick

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