[mythtv-users] gentoo, latest mythtv - mythfrontend has no text

[Phill Wiggin]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 11:00 PM, Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday 30 June 2009 18:38:54 Brian Wood wrote:
> > Gentoo is good for some purposes, not good for others.
>
> s/Gentoo/<any distribution of your choosing>/
>
> > But getting binaries compiled for your machine, instead of generic ones
> that
> > are supposed to work for anyone, is a plus. For example, using "optimize
> for
> > size" helps a lot if you're running a cache-starved CPU like the VIA
> chips.
>
> My thing is this: the systems that benefit the most from such
> optimization are the ones most painful to compile on, because they're
> so damned slow to begin with. A 1% performance gain means squat on a
> quad-core box. But you really need something fast with a distcc to
> build on a system (such as the previously mentioned quad-core) with
> bearable compile times unless you're incredibly patient. (I'm not.)
> So why not just spend a few bucks on something faster and save yourself
> the pain and suffering? I mean, the Dell Studio Hybrid serving as my
> current frontend has a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, etc., runs
> quieter than an EPIA I've since retired (replaced the board w/an Intel
> D945GCLF2), and cost a mere $400. Its got more than enough oomph to
> handle (most of the) 1080p h.264 material I've thrown at it, without
> having to eke out an extra 1% performance by optimizing the bejesus
> out of everything -- it runs stock x86_64 Fedora 11 right now.


But, let's face it.. "a mere $400" isn't exactly chump-change. For an aweful
lot of folks, there's no _way_ they're going to be able to just toss out
$400 to pick up new hardware.  If you can breathe life into an older system
by taking a little compile-time, you can resuscitate and old under-powered
machine and possibly get more use out of it.

I'm a Gentoo user and I buy hardware more often than I should. (And $400
still isn't "a mere" amount of money for me.)  The above argument may not
exactly apply to me... But it does apply to many.
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