Re: gEDA-user: which linux?

[sdb@xxxxxxxxxx (Stuart Brorson)]

> > What's your opinion? Not sure what other apps I'll run, but definitely 
> > the geda suite.
> 
> Disclaimer: I'm a Red Hat Employee.
> 
> I use Fedora Core for all my machines, including my work machines and
> laptop, file server, etc.  The furnace runs Red Hat Linux 6.2 but only
> because I haven't had time to upgrade it yet.  FC is reasonably up to
> date without being unduly unstable, and is constantly maintained and
> updated.

As the person who puts out the gEDA Install CD, I'll say this:

I traditionally use Fedora.  Prior to Fedora I used
RedHat. . . various editions back to 4.2.  Prior to that it was
Slackware. . . . .

The gEDA Suite installer works great on FC 1 & 2 -- I developed and
tested it on those releases.  I believe it also works on FC3.
Starting with FC4, however, there has been a lot of breakage if you
install from source.  My (current) install CD will fail on FC4, as
will a hand build.  There are bug-fixes documented on the gEDA wiki
here: 

http://geda.seul.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=geda:installation

Two issues exist with FC4:  1.  FC4 uses gcc-4.0, which won't compile
several of the apps [1] on the gEDA Suite CD [2].  2.  FC4 has moved a
number of packages requried to build from source to RPMs which are not
installed by default -- even for a "workstation" install. 

If you want to run the entire gEDA suite, and install it from source
(or let the installer's wizard do it for you) then you need to be
aware of this.  An incomplete set of FC4 work-arounds are contained in
the above-linked wiki page.  If you install via RPMs, this is not an
issue.  Alternately, you can use FC3.

I understand from good sources that the installer works smoothly on
SuSE9.3 as long as you install the pacakges mentioned on the wiki
during system build.  Many people believe that SuSE is more polished
than Fedora.  I think they are both fine systems, but FC4 has a number
of pitfalls for the newbie, so you may want to avoid it.

Stuart

[1]  Broken apps include GTKWave, GSpiceUI, Icarus Verilog, and
another one (I forget).  Both gEDA/gaf and PCB compile OK.

[2]  Gcc-4.0 also won't compile many other open-source apps.   Google
around on this website to see previous discussion about this issue.