On 11/23/2011 8:08 PM, Jack Coats wrote: > I know EMC2 doesn't do anything but Ubuntu LTS as it's 'official' > supported distribution. > > On several other lists I have noticed the complaints about the Ubuntu > Bloat and moving > to Unity and things not working. > > Have we, as a community or even just developers, thought about now to > go to a 'less bloated' > distribution? > > I do like the idea of the LTS (Long Term Support) part of > distributions. And moving > from any distribution to another I have always considered a pain. But > I could support > moving if we can find another 'long term supportable' option where > this community > doesn't have to support the OS also. > > Any ideas? Thoughts? Concerns? > > Thanks for the responses. ... Jack > We've had variations of this discussion before.
My principal question is always, what do you want your real-time EMC2-equipped computer to do? If it is intended solely to control a machine, then most of Ubuntu is unnecessary. Others have posted to the Wiki their successes in bringing EMC2 to minimalist Linux environments, and we could go that route. Indeed, I'm planning to do that myself once I get around to finishing my real, headless controller (as opposed to my bench-test controller). Instead of starting with a distribution packaged by someone else, we could create one ourselves, starting with Linux From Scratch (LFS), resulting in the absolute minimum environment needed to build and run EMC2. To my mind, for controllers there are only two reasons for thinking about upgrading the O/S: 1) a new version of EMC2 with features I want requires it or 2) a new motherboard/CPU/peripherals-combo to replace an old one requires it. Upgrading for just the sake of getting the latest flashy desktop seems ludicrous. On the other hand, if your EMC2-equipped computer is intended to support Internet telephony, browse HackADay.com, run all your favorite CAD/CAM applications, keep the books, play music videos, etc., and, oh-by-the-way run a machine tool (I think this is the wrong approach, but that's just me), then you're likely to want to start with a full distribution like Ubuntu, so why not stick with Ubuntu for as long as possible? The number of applications that are supported in Ubuntu is staggering. I don't think any of the other distributions are immune to the pressures of the marketplace (even with "free" software there's a marketplace, it just has a different reward system) and won't get enamored of Unity or their own version of a touchy-tablet desktop environment. We can strip the distribution down if we like, or, instead of subtracting from the full edition, we could add to the server edition. Whatever. This kind of remastering used to be very hard but it's gotten easy in recent years. And if Ubuntu goes completely off the track, there are other, less popular distributions so similar in the technologies EMC2 depends on that the transition would be almost effortless. Frankly, if I wanted to lie awake at night, I'd choose to worry about the teams developing real-time extensions to Linux in the face of rapid changes to the Linux kernel or about the future of AXIS as both desktop environments and windowing systems evolve. Just my 2 cents worth. Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
