[Sussex] Brief introduction and Ubuntu question...

[Stephen Williams]

On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 12:38 +0100, Ronan Chilvers wrote:
> Hi Geoffrey
> 
> Geoffrey J. Teale wrote:
> >
> > Welcome!
> 
> Ta very much!
> 
> >
> > We use it as the basis of our application on which our business is
> > based and on several desktops.  We have validated the platform for use
> > in the clinical trials industry. We trust it implicitly.
> >
> > We migrated from Debian a few months back as Debian release cycle has
> > become a major issue.  An alternative was to use Debian sid - we
> > though Ubuntu's stable release was better than Debian's unstable.
> >
> 
> Yeah, it's an unfortunate side-effect of woody's stability I suppose.  I
> think they'll eventually have to speed up the stable branch a little if
> only to support newer server hardware technologies.  At the moment for
> example, I can't get woody to support SATA drives, without some serious
> kernel tinkering.
> 
> >>modprobing my sound card driver (NeoMagic 256AV).  Would be very cool if
> >>Ubuntu likes iPods too!!
> >
> >
> > Yup.  The Hoary release is due very soon (already running it on my
> > desktop here) and it has everything you ipset
> 
> HOORAH!!!!!
> 
> >
> > Not personally, but the Terminal Server Client is installed under
> > Gnome so should be no problem.
> 
> DITTO!!!!
> 
> >
> >
> >>Any thoughts?
> >
> >
> > Go for it..
> >
> 
> Righto!  Here I go...
> 

Ronan,

I haven't chipped in with a pitch for Gentoo here as you said you
"didn't want to have to do lots of recompiling". The one downside of
Gentoo is the compile times for some packages - KDE  is the worst
offender in this respect. 

Otherwise it's well worth considering. Portage is better than apt in my
view, but then I guess it's what you're used to.

I know that if you compile Apple filesystem support into the kernel you
can support your iPod, and I believe there are iTunes clones in the
portage tree. I have an iRiver myself, and it interfaces with Amarok
quite nicely.

I have found supporting SATA drives and SATA RAID arrays almost trivial
- as long as you remember to compile SATA support and whichever
SATA/RAID controller chipset support into the kernel.

The 2.6.11 kernel I am using has support for the NeoMagic256AV
soundcard. Generally I compile ALSA support into the kernel as I find
this avoids problems.

I did have drivers for my PCTel winmodem in my notebook under the 2.4
kernel series. I haven't checked the linmodems site recently to see if
there's a 2.6 compatible driver yet.

Be nice to have another Gentoo user on the SLUG - I feel a bit like a
leper at the moment.

Steve W.


> Cheers
> --
> Ronan
> 
> e: ronan at thelittledot.com
> w: www.thelittledot.com
> t: 01903 739 997
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