The MythTV project I discussed in the last entry caused me to think about a couple of systems I have in use at the moment. These systems are both based on customised “single-use” Linux distros — one is the Trixbox system that runs the home phone system, the other is the new PVR system based on KnoppMyth. KnoppMyth and Trixbox are examples of what I’m calling “starter systems”; custom-built distros that are designed with a single use in mind, that a newcomer to the field can get working with a minimum of knowledge and effort. I’ve been really happy with this kind of build for getting a system running quickly (in the KnoppMyth case, it restored my faith in MythTV after having been burned in the past), and with a lot of function, but as someone who is quite beyond being a newbie I’m wondering if that quick startup gives way to trouble…
When I moved the phone system to Trixbox, it was because the previous system was stuck on an older Linux distro (a SUSE 9 that just refused to upgrade) and the Asterisk build was from-source. I was keen to set a system that Just Worked, as close to out-of-the-box as possible, was upgradeable, and didn’t require that I do a lot of manual work to maintain. Trixbox certainly gave that in the first instance, and came with a lot of extra function (web-based configuration, head-up display systems, a CRM facility that I was going to use for… I dunno, but it’s really cool)… However, I had to do a lot of mucking with it to get ISDN working, and I’ve had to give up the LDAP caller-ID integration I had set up. Voicemail access is confusing and different to the original system (it’s probably fortunate we don’t get many messages), and because I foolishly decided that I would run VMware Server on the same box, I’ve blown the “single-use” idea.
KnoppMyth looks like it might head the same way. It has a lot of extra function built in, like the pre-configured MythTv plugins, that normally would be a lot of extra work to integrate. However, I really want to get this new tuner card working, which looks like I’ll have to build not only MythTV itself but probably the kernel and the DVB support utils from source. That blows the “stock-built” maintainability of KnoppMyth. Also, since KnoppMyth uses the Debian repositories, APT reports that there’s nearly 400 packages that are available for updating — but I can’t find anything in KnoppMyth doco that says whether it’s safe to do an “apt-get upgrade” on it. 🙂
I’m wondering if I might be better off sticking to my distro-of-choice (still Gentoo currently, although running servers on Gentoo can be a bit of a pain and I might be looking to change) and just do the grunt work myself… I’m arguably competent enough to handle building things myself, so maybe I don’t need the handholding that these built-to-purpose distros provide.
(Thinking outside the box a bit, I wonder if the VMware folk might have to start being a bit careful about how they “market” VMware Appliances, for the same reason. Folks might download a heap of appliances for different purposes, then some time down the track realise that what VMware has let them do is make dozens of different systems that might not even all be the same OS (there are FreeBSD and OpenSolaris appliances on VMTN as well as Linux) that all need to be maintained in different ways.)
Something to ponder while I wait for my next “emerge -av world” to run… 🙂
Crossed Wires 