[mythtv-users] OT: What does Fedora 8 really have to offer?

Jeff Coffler jeff-list-mythusers at taltos.com
Mon Nov 5 23:49:12 UTC 2007


On Nov 4, 2007, at 6:06 PM, Support [ Ian Ward ] wrote:

> The Centos Kernels have stuff ripped out.  No digital Tuner cards.  No
> xfs filesystem
> There are some special Centos Extra kernels with xfs and dvb , however
> the 2.6.18 kernel is still a problem for my DVB cards.

I have an HDHR on the backend, along with Firewire.  I found that the  
extras CentOS kernel worked just great with that - no sweat at all.

> So, in summary, RHEL5 or Centos do not seem good options for the
> bleeding edge requirements of Myth.
> A backend needs DVB cards and maybe XFS filsystems
> A frontend needs up to date xorg, nvidia, mpeg2 etc.. etc..

I was running FC6.  I never upgraded to FC7 because of the firewire  
issue (the Kernel firewire drivers aren't compatible with the firewire  
utilities, causing problems).

FC8 was about to come out, dropping security updates for FC6.  So I  
wanted to do something.

I found that CentOS worked just great for me.  I have Comcast DCT-6200  
cable boxes (captured via firewire), along with an HD Home Run.  I use  
the JFS file system, which has fantastic delete performance and has  
never been a problem for me in 2+ years of MythTV use.

On the frontends, I run CentOS 5 as well.  I installed the latest/ 
greatest nvidia drivers from their WWW site.  Everything else (MPEG2,  
xorg, etc) "just worked".

Frankly, I don't consider the MythTV requirements that "bleeding  
edge".  CentOS 4 would be a problem, but CentOS 5 is not.  You may  
have particular hardware issues, but even with an Hauppauge PVR-500  
card (which I no longer use), installing the drivers is a simple case  
of "make; make install".

If you used older versions of FC, then CentOS should work - I'm pretty  
sure FC6, when it shipped, had a 2.6.18 kernel.  That's what CentOS has.

The best thing of all: CentOS 5 will get security updates for many,  
MANY years to come.

	-- Jeff


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