[AG-TECH] Gentoo or Fedora

Gavin W. Burris aka 86 ga5in at psu.edu
Mon Oct 18 10:25:34 CDT 2004


I do recommend Debian over Gentoo.  I have to agree with Ivan.  I
would not use Gentoo as a production system.  But I admit my bias for
Debian.  Though I came to this bias because I have found Debian easier
to maintain in a production environment, as well as for personal use
and experimentation, mostly due to the package management and the
Social Contract of Debian/GNU Linux.

The Gotcha with Debian is to install ALSA sound drivers.  In Linux,
the ALSA sound drivers are much better than the default OSS drivers.
I had to install the kernel-source package and built my own kernel,
then build the alsa-source package against it.  Not really a big deal.
I'll email you the steps I took If you like.  Maybe I should include
this info on my webpages?

I had no bugs. :)  Even my multiple video capture devices worked
"out of the box".  You do have to wrap your head around the ALSA
mixer settings, though.

Victor M. Babson, Jr. wrote (on Mon, 18 Oct 2004 at 10:14):
> Gavin,
> 
> I'm about to change the OS from RHEL WS3 to Gentoo in order to get some
> bug-fixes in the 2.3 version.  I've tried installing 2.3 on the current OS,
> but no dice.
> 
> I use Debian for a number of things on a number of machines.  I've never
> tried installing the AGTk.  Are there any gotcha's?  Some bugs that you've
> found but can deal with??  Examples?
> 
> Would you recommend Debian over Gentoo for AG, or were you just throwing
> this out there so people know that someone has done it?
> 
> Thanks for your advice/time.
> 
> --Vic
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Gavin W. Burris aka 86" <ga5in at psu.edu>
> To: "Steve Smith" <ssmith at vislab.usyd.edu.au>
> Cc: "Monika Rabarison" <monika.k.rabarison at ccaix.jsums.edu>;
> <ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov>
> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 9:50 AM
> Subject: Re: [AG-TECH] Gentoo or Fedora
> 
> 
> > I second the suggestion for Debian.  I just reinstalled my room based
> > node with my audio and video machines with Debian.  Please feel free
> > to send me questions.
> >
> > I recommend you use the pre-rc2 netinst CD image:
> > http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
> >
> http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/sid_d-i/i386/pre-rc2/sarge-i386-netinst.iso
> >
> > Cheers.
> >
> > Steve Smith wrote (on Sat, 16 Oct 2004 at 15:32):
> > > Monika Rabarison wrote:
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > > Thinking about upgrading the "good old" Linux capture boxes to 2.3,
> > > > what would you guys suggest Gentoo or Fedora? Any pros and cons?
> > >
> > > Another option is Debian (AG packages available at
> > > http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/debian).  The main pros are those of
> > > Debian: ease of upgrade (no need to do re-installs), good security
> > > support, large number of supported packages.  The main con has
> > > traditionally been the difficulty of installation (this is much better
> > > with the recent beta installers).  Also, the next stable release isn't
> > > actually out yet, although it should be soon.
> > >
> > > There are also packages available for Slackware, which has good support
> > > and a shorter release cycle if you prefer that.
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Steve
> > >
> >
> > -- 
> > Gavin W. Burris aka 86
> > Senior Systems Programmer
> > Penn State Visualization Group
> > http://viz.aset.psu.edu/ga5in
> 

-- 
Gavin W. Burris aka 86
Senior Systems Programmer
Penn State Visualization Group
http://viz.aset.psu.edu/ga5in




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