Best Linux Distro for MythTV

[goshdarnindie]

I'm taking my Linux skills and venturing into building a PVR with a WinTV 150 as the core of the system. My only experience is with Redhat, should I be looking at another distribution for this undertaking? I've got SuSe Live 9.2 as well, but it didn't sound like the best route in one of the articles.

 

[silverpig]

Hmmm, I'm about to set up a mythtv box too I think. I'm going with gentoo because that's what I know, and they have some very good mythtv guides. If you've never installed gentoo and aren't comfortable with doing up all your config files yourself, then you best bet is probably something like fedora or ubuntu.

 

[meksta]

I have been using myth for about a year now. I started on RH9 and then moved to FedoraCore 2. There are some good guides to get going out there but this is IMO the best one:

http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php

 

[drag]

ya. I tried compiling Mythtv a couple times a while ago and got it partially working. It's a bit of a pain.

That Fedora Core guide worked best for me. It's pretty comprehencive and is all nicely pre-compiled and pre-configured and aviable as a online repository for yum (I beleive) or apt-get. Whatever you like.

Also Debian has nice pre-compiled binaries aviable from a third party source. That's what I use now, but I still go back to the fedora core guide for references. It's talked about in the documentation aviable on mythtv's website.

Shouldn't be to hard to follow the Fedora guide.. Just read thru it first and read the mythtv's website documentation and you'll be set. Just follow the directions and take note of the IRC channels for help.

 

[goshdarnindie]

I was questing on using Fedora. I probably will now, thanks.

 

[filterxg]

knoppix, its a debian build for mythtv

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Originally posted by: filterxg
knoppix, its a debian build for mythtv

I'm sure you mean Knoppmyth.

 

[rahvin]

From what I have read Gentoo offers the easiest method of installation, if you go to the Gentoo Forums under Documentation, Tips and Tricks there should be a step-by-step howto for configuration. Gota love that "emerge mythtv".

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: rahvin
From what I have read Gentoo offers the easiest method of installation, if you go to the Gentoo Forums under Documentation, Tips and Tricks there should be a step-by-step howto for configuration. Gota love that "emerge mythtv".

Yeah, but by the time you have your box up and running I could have had a debian or fedora install up and have recorded 40 hrs of tv already

 

[StormRider]

Since Xandros is a Debian based distribution, does this mean it should work nicely with MythTV too?

 

[goshdarnindie]

I'm sure you mean Knoppmyth.

So the concensus seems to be veering towards a Debian based solution. Knoppmyth may do the trick, except I was hopeing to do some gaming on this machine as well. nothing serious, just the few multiplayer titles that are available which mean I'll probably have to setup a Windows environment on top of Linux. I'm assuming Knoppix can be installed to the HD, thus opening up more possibilities for my set top box.

 

[drag]

Maybe.

The advantage to using Mythtv with Debian and Fedora is that somebody already went thru and compiled all the programs and stuck them in packages for you. Otherwise if you want to install some of the packages from source code yourself then Xandros will probably work as well as anything else. Most any Linux distro would work fine for something like this.

Maybe if your lucky you could use the Debian packages. I don't know how compatable Xandros will be though, I don't have any experiance with it.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: MCrusty

Originally posted by: rahvin
From what I have read Gentoo offers the easiest method of installation, if you go to the Gentoo Forums under Documentation, Tips and Tricks there should be a step-by-step howto for configuration. Gota love that "emerge mythtv".

Yeah, but by the time you have your box up and running I could have had a debian or fedora install up and have recorded 40 hrs of tv already

I just installed gentoo on my mythtv-to-be box two days ago... took all of 30 minutes

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: MCrusty

Originally posted by: rahvin
From what I have read Gentoo offers the easiest method of installation, if you go to the Gentoo Forums under Documentation, Tips and Tricks there should be a step-by-step howto for configuration. Gota love that "emerge mythtv".

Yeah, but by the time you have your box up and running I could have had a debian or fedora install up and have recorded 40 hrs of tv already

I just installed gentoo on my mythtv-to-be box two days ago... took all of 30 minutes

Let me guess, stage 3 install with pre-built binary packages?

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: MCrusty

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: MCrusty

Originally posted by: rahvin
From what I have read Gentoo offers the easiest method of installation, if you go to the Gentoo Forums under Documentation, Tips and Tricks there should be a step-by-step howto for configuration. Gota love that "emerge mythtv".

Yeah, but by the time you have your box up and running I could have had a debian or fedora install up and have recorded 40 hrs of tv already

I just installed gentoo on my mythtv-to-be box two days ago... took all of 30 minutes

Let me guess, stage 3 install with pre-built binary packages?

Stage 3 yep. They use the same compiler options that I'd have used anyways. The convenince is USE flags and emerge.

On my A64 and my P-M lappy I did a stage3 install, got everything running, got my new versions of gcc and glibc, and then re-emerged every package. Let it run overnight and had everything recompiled with the newest version of gcc, nptl, and prelinked everything. I had a better than stage1 install, the system was usable within an hour, and was still usable while updating

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: MCrusty

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: MCrusty

Originally posted by: rahvin
From what I have read Gentoo offers the easiest method of installation, if you go to the Gentoo Forums under Documentation, Tips and Tricks there should be a step-by-step howto for configuration. Gota love that "emerge mythtv".

Yeah, but by the time you have your box up and running I could have had a debian or fedora install up and have recorded 40 hrs of tv already

I just installed gentoo on my mythtv-to-be box two days ago... took all of 30 minutes

Let me guess, stage 3 install with pre-built binary packages?

Stage 3 yep. They use the same compiler options that I'd have used anyways. The convenince is USE flags and emerge.

On my A64 and my P-M lappy I did a stage3 install, got everything running, got my new versions of gcc and glibc, and then re-emerged every package. Let it run overnight and had everything recompiled with the newest version of gcc, nptl, and prelinked everything. I had a better than stage1 install, the system was usable within an hour, and was still usable while updating

"Usable" sure

That is actually a decent way to install the system, although I still prefer using knoppix to do it. I still prefer Debian though, "performance" differences are neglidgable, and I like aptitude better then portage.