Re: [Hampshire] Ultimate Linux Media PC?

On 08/03/2009 12:30 PM, Stephen Davies wrote:
> I am puzzled by one of the responses to this thread.
>
> If you have to build some kernel modules and it is a real PITA when the
> kernel is upgraded to get it all working again
> then as this is a Media Centre and therefore a pretty statically
> defined system then why are you doing upgrades to the kernel etc if
> everything works and is not broken?
>
> This constant need to upgrade (& Possibly break) working systems is
> always feels a bit wrong to me. If it ain't broke then don't fix it
> seems to be about right here.
> Ok, if there are problems with say MythTV and a new release fixes them
> fine buat as I say, if it is all working fine, then why upgrade?
>
> Stephen D

For me there were 2 reasons to need upgrades.

1) Security - the box in question is visible over my adsl line to allow
access to my media and to allow TV guide browsing / remote record. As
such I need to keep up to date with security fixes to minimise the
chance of my box being compromised. From time to time these require a
kernel upgrade, which in turn required the re-building of the kernel
modules. Even if I wasn't allowing remote access in to the box, as it
has a web browser installed I would want to keep up to date with
security fixes in case of a browser based security flaw.

2) Fixing other bugs in other software. After your machine has been
installed for a while you can eventually be forced into a kernel upgrade
to get the rest of the package dependencies to an appropriate level to
get the latest patched application you require. There were also a number
of kernel USB issues around the same time as I was trying to get my USB
based TV tuner working and some of the issues with the stick were blamed
on the kernel USB stack which really did force an upgrade and then
re-compile to try and get things working.

As a side note getting my media centre working, in the early days, was
the biggest pain I have ever encountered in Linux. There were several
points that I nearly gave up and just bought a copy of windows media
centre to stop all the hassle. It originally took months of blood
(literally in the case of one of the hardware installs), sweat and tears
getting it working.

Now it is much less hassle and there are a number of live distributions
that help, but I'm still not sure I'd want to recommend it as a
"solution" to someone who doesn't know how to get under the covers and
sort problems out when the occur.