[mythtv-users] MythTV On Gentoo - Thoughts and Questions

[Jim Kusznir]

Dan Littlejohn wrote:

>There are good guides for Gentoo installs here:
>
>http://gentoo-wiki.com/index.php?title=HOWTO_Setup_MythTV
>http://home.comcast.net/~alf_park/mythtv.html
>
>Includes use flags and window manager opinions.
>
>for the 15 min install there is Jarod's Guide for Red Hat, lol.
>     http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php
>
>  
>
I run 2 gentoo myth systems; my first one was gentoo from the beginning, 
and it worked great.  My second one was for my father-in-law, and he was 
scared of the compiling, so he pressured me to go the fedora route.  I 
tried.  After 3 days following the "15 minute procedure" in jarod's 
guide, I gave up and switched to gentoo.  Started the install, went to 
bed, and had the system functioning by lunch.

I tend to make use of both of the gentoo references above; they both are 
a little different, and by reading them both, you can tweak the system 
more to your needs.

With respect to window manager, on my first system I used flexbox (or 
something like that; I don't remember anymore).  I might even suggest 
the generic one that comes with X.  I like the gentoo ideal:  only what 
you need, and no more.  So for a dedicated myth system, both gnome and 
kde are way excessive.  With that said, on my second myth system, I 
installed a full kde and an IR keyboard/mouse.  So I can do some basic 
computing with the system as well as myth.  In the end, it comes down to 
what you were planning on doing with it.

I now have a PVR-500 (requires the latest ivtv, not currently in an 
ebuild and often requiring some custom installing), so I install ivtv by 
hand; everything else I do through ebuilds.  It really isn't that hard 
to make an upgraded ebuild if there's no current ebuild available.  I 
would highly recommend it.

If you search around, there are actually ebuilds for the CVS version.  I 
think these make it even easier for gentoo users to use CVS than any 
other dist. out there: all you do is re-emerge myth and its components.  
The ebuilds will automatically check out the latest CVS snapshot, 
compile, and install all without intervention.  It usually works pretty 
well, too.

I am definately sold on gentoo as a platform for mythtv; I think it fits 
better than all the precompiled packaged systems.

--Jim

>Dan
>
>
>On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 11:26:03 -0800, Richard J. Sears
><rsears at americanis.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>Richard -
>>
>>Thanks to you (and others) for the great feedback. I had a few more
>>problems with Asterisk and the addon's :-)
>>
>>Couple of quick questions. First, would you share your make.conf USE
>>flags with me so I get them right the first time and second, Did you use
>>KDE or Gnome..?
>>
>>Thanks Again !!
>>
>>On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:11:51 +0100
>>Rickard Olsson <richie at webhackande.se> wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Richard J. Sears wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>I guess I was wondering what you Gentoo folks thought about this. Did
>>>>you use  emerge to do the job, did you have trouble later patching and
>>>>compiling addons or other programs to make MythTV the best it could..?
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>I used the CVS just before 0.17 came out and the ebuilds when it was
>>>released. The ebuilds were a no-brainer to setup. There are some USE
>>>flags that you need for stuff like nuvexport and ffmpeg that I haven't
>>>seen documented anywhere (aac, threads and another that I don't recall
>>>right now), but other than that, no problems.
>>>
>>>Most other sundry files are in portage - it's possible that there's
>>>something missing but I haven't found anything.
>>>
>>>There's been no real need for any config file management issues (MythTV
>>>has just one config file AFAIK and you normally edit it through
>>>mythsetup, the rest is in the database).
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>