[mythtv-users] linux distro suggestions?

[Matt Garman]

At the risk of starting a flamewar, I'm going to go against the
FAQ[*] and ask the question: which distribution should I use?

    [*] http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Which_Linux_distribution_should_I_use.3F

To be a bit more specific: I currently have a working & stable
combined frontend/backend running on Gentoo.  I have the same setup
for my parents, who are 150 miles away.

I also use Gentoo on my workstation, but Ubuntu on my laptop and
file server.  I forgot how nice it is to not have to wait for
packages to compile every time I install something new or do an
upgrade!  Plus it seems I always have some dependency issues to work
through whenever I upgrade on Gentoo.

Before Gentoo, I used Debian (at least five years ago).  I've never
used a Red Hat-style distro on any of my own computers (always been
scared of the "dependency hell" stories), but we use CentOS on our
servers at work (but our installs are very "vanilla" and I don't do
much tweaking of them).

So anyway... I'm just trying to solicit thoughts, to see if I just
have a case of "the grass is always greener" syndrome, or there is a
compelling reason for me to consider another distro.

I did a little research at Distrowatch.  In general, I'd want to
stick with the bigger/more popular distros.  So I looked at the
package versions available for the popular distros (info as of March
20, 2009):

Ubuntu 8.10 (Hardy):
    alsa-lib(1.0.19) 1.0.17a
    linux(2.6.28.8)  2.6.27
    mplayer(1.0rc2)  1.0~rc2-0ubuntu17 [1]
    nvidia(180.29)   177.80
    mythtv           0.21.0+fixes18722-0ubuntu1 [2]
[1] determined by "apt-get --no-act install mplayer"
[2] determined by "apt-get --no-act install mythtv"

Debian testing
    alsa-lib(1.0.19) 1.0.17
    linux(2.6.28.8)  2.6.26
    mplayer(1.0rc2)  1.0rc2
    nvidia(180.29)   173.14.09

Debian 5.0 (Lenny)
    alsa-lib(1.0.19) 1.0.16
    linux(2.6.28.8)  2.6.26
    mplayer(1.0rc2)  1.0rc2
    nvidia(180.29)   173.14.09

Fedora 10 (cambridge)
    alsa-lib(1.0.19) 1.0.18
    linux(2.6.28.8)  2.6.27.5
    mplayer(1.0rc2)  ???
    nvidia(180.29)   ???

Gentoo stable
    alsa-lib(1.0.19) 1.0.18
    linux(2.6.28.8)  2.6.27.12
    mplayer(1.0rc2)  1.0rc2
    nvidia(180.29)   180.29 [3]
    mythtv           0.21_p18314-r1 [4]
[3] determined by "emerge -pv nvidia-drivers"
[4] determined by "emerge -pv mythtv"


For what it's worth, my MythTV box is built on an Asus M3N78-EM
(Geforce 8300) with an AMD 4850e CPU.  Video caputure is via
HDHomeRun.

Anyway, just looking for general thoughts, ideas, considerations.

Thanks!
Matt