I've got a bunch of new machines at work to run my broadcast control system that I'm writing. I've been exclusivley a Gentoo man before this but Marks recommendation of ubuntu made me want to give it a go. I have to say for ease of install and getting a development environment going it's really quite good.

The sticking point I've reached is trying to get Comedi running (it's a bunch of kernel modules and tools to talk to data aquisition cards). Under gentoo I'd either emerge it or build it from the latest release tarball without issue. Looking at the packages available I saw there was a comedi-source package available. So selected that and followed the instructions to build it (module-assistant) but all I get it errors, mostly around debian/rules stuff. A build from source is also not possible. Could someone try and compile/build this on their machine and let me know wether it works or not?

It would be a shame to drop an otherwise very nice distro just because I can't get this crucial bit of software working.

The Comedi source code all looks VERY old -- nothing dated newer than 2005 there, which (unfortunately) is an eternity for Linux kernel code. It is simply too outdated to build on modern kernels.

If you were to try *last year's* version of Kubuntu, then it would probably build/run without problems on that (5.04 "Hoary", or possibly even 5.10 "Breezy").

But until they update their source code, it won't build on a modern kernel, regardless of the distribution you use. Note that Redhat generally uses very outdated kernels, so it might work there (but not on Fedora).

EDIT: Their CVS version has some timestamps from 2006, so perhaps try building that instead of the .deb version.

Cheers

I thought I'd chime in and say that I'm currently using Ubuntu, have been using it for a month or two, and I really hate it.

The packaging system is terrible; packages are missing that people claim ought to be there, figuring out which packages to install for what I'd consider basic functions is a nightmare, etc.

For my current problem, someone tell me how I'm supposed to install mplayer on Ubuntu 5.10. There is no mplayer package.

Brother, you need to add the additional repositories.

Wow. That documentation was kinda vaguely accurate.

Upon further inspection it appears moving to 2.6.16 breaks the last release version even under Gentoo. However the CVS version builds fine.

I haven't got a Kubuntu box at home so will probably pop back to work tonight to see if it works, but I'm quite hopeful.

Quote:
The packaging system is terrible; packages are missing that people claim ought to be there, figuring out which packages to install for what I'd consider basic functions is a nightmare, etc.

I have to say I still prefer the ebuild/emerge system in Gentoo even if does take ages to compile everything from source. I was amazed that upon install all the things I've become used to having (make, gcc, etc.) were missing and required installation.

A small amount of tweakery resulted in a working build. I also had to move some kernel modules into the right place but other than that (and having to install a dozen or so packages to support the build process) it's been a sucess. comedi_test has returned the correct configuration info for the installed card.

Looks like kubuntu stays!

Just out of interest, seeing as the comedi-source will not build under Dapper in it's current state, should I tell someone?

Id have to say that I like ubuntu the little I have played with it.. about a year ago or so with Marks suggestion I setup a box with it added apache mysql php and left it alone and I have had no problems even after multiple power outages and a faulty UPS unit. no isses what so ever. before in various other distros i tried in same thing something would break. Though i guess in my case since nothings broke i dont play so ive forgotten alot lol need to get in there and find something to do just thought id share my experience with it