Fedora as compo Linux distribution?
category: general [glöplog]
As far as i have seen, most demoparties use ubuntu as distribution for
linux entries. It seems a bit to me that the reason for this is basically:
It's popular and we used that before. It didn't seem like the organizers
are really fond of ubuntu, though.
I would suggest using Fedora instead.
- It's the community version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which
is quite big in the professional world and therefore has a solid backing
- It generally seems to cause a bit less trouble than ubuntu from my experience ^^
- It comes with a vanilla gnome instead of this weird purple ubuntu variant ;)
- You can install it (no live system, actual install) to a big enough USB Stick and switch that from one PC to another without a problem (Last time i tried, this was a big problem with ubuntu)
- It has SDL2 installed as a default package, which is handy for intros
It's clear to me that there are a lot of linux distributions and everyone
has a favorite one. I'm not a Fedora user personally, so i don't think i'm
too biased ^^
What do you think about this?
linux entries. It seems a bit to me that the reason for this is basically:
It's popular and we used that before. It didn't seem like the organizers
are really fond of ubuntu, though.
I would suggest using Fedora instead.
- It's the community version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which
is quite big in the professional world and therefore has a solid backing
- It generally seems to cause a bit less trouble than ubuntu from my experience ^^
- It comes with a vanilla gnome instead of this weird purple ubuntu variant ;)
- You can install it (no live system, actual install) to a big enough USB Stick and switch that from one PC to another without a problem (Last time i tried, this was a big problem with ubuntu)
- It has SDL2 installed as a default package, which is handy for intros
It's clear to me that there are a lot of linux distributions and everyone
has a favorite one. I'm not a Fedora user personally, so i don't think i'm
too biased ^^
What do you think about this?
I think it should be openSUSE. But I am surely too biased cause I've it installed on a couple of computers. :D
i think it should be Biebian!
Gentoo or bust, think of the cycles!
a chroot environment maybe?
As someone who has actually released Linux demos: I would not care whether the target system was Fedora or Ubuntu. Use whatever the organizer dealing with Linux demos prefers; both are plenty common and sane enough that it won't matter much (unless you're in a size-compo and one of them happens to have some library preinstalled that you would like to use).
Gentoo, what else
In the DIY spirit of the scene, I propose https://kisslinux.org/.
I think the specific flavor of Linux is the least of a compo orga's worries. :)
While being able to boot Compo Linux from a USB stick is certainly nifty, the fact that you have to boot it in the first place throws a huge spanner into the compo works. Compo orgas will hate you just because they have to reboot the compo PC mid-compo to show your prod, then reboot again to show the next prod, with all the lovely opportunities for things going wrong that come along with that.
So, if there were a way to run Linux prods seamlessly under Windows (without compromising performance of course) using some kind of virtualization tech that would be more helpful to orgas than any distro choice.
Barring that, I would focus more on the boot time of said Compo Linux - can a skilled orga switch from Win to Lin in under 30s, and then back in another 30?
While being able to boot Compo Linux from a USB stick is certainly nifty, the fact that you have to boot it in the first place throws a huge spanner into the compo works. Compo orgas will hate you just because they have to reboot the compo PC mid-compo to show your prod, then reboot again to show the next prod, with all the lovely opportunities for things going wrong that come along with that.
So, if there were a way to run Linux prods seamlessly under Windows (without compromising performance of course) using some kind of virtualization tech that would be more helpful to orgas than any distro choice.
Barring that, I would focus more on the boot time of said Compo Linux - can a skilled orga switch from Win to Lin in under 30s, and then back in another 30?
No, no... You should not switch back to Windows once you tried Linux. :]
You're doing it wrong dude, you should VM Windoze under Linux :D
I'm a long time Ubuntu user but I'm starting to think that perhaps it's just Debian with a lot of corporate do not want plastered on it.
I'm a long time Ubuntu user but I'm starting to think that perhaps it's just Debian with a lot of corporate do not want plastered on it.
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As someone who has actually released Linux demos: I would not care whether the target system was Fedora or Ubuntu. Use whatever the organizer dealing with Linux demos prefers; both are plenty common and sane enough that it won't matter much (unless you're in a size-compo and one of them happens to have some library preinstalled that you would like to use).
This, mostly. Although, the presence of SDL is less of an issue: intros can be made quite efficiently with GTK (or Clutter or ...) as well, and I'm quite confident in that people will always find a way.
What concerns me more about different distros are their different libcs (glibc vs musl etc, as well as different versions). Tools like smol, and I think epoque's tool as well, rely quite heavily on glibc specifics, so having at least that part uniform would be nice.
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While being able to boot Compo Linux from a USB stick is certainly nifty, the fact that you have to boot it in the first place throws a huge spanner into the compo works.
Another thing to add to that: quite often for compomachines, it'll need the correct and latest proprietary Nvidia drivers installed and set up correctly, which complicate things a lot more. (In an ideal world, Nvidia would just upstream their drivers into the kernel and Mesa, like AMD does, but that doesn't seem to be even close to happening.)
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So, if there were a way to run Linux prods seamlessly under Windows (without compromising performance of course) using some kind of virtualization tech that would be more helpful to orgas than any distro choice.
While WSL is a true VM with no good windowing support, Wine can open windows just fine, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, another thought about Fedora vs Ubuntu: Ubuntu has these "manifest files" that are an easy way to look up what packages (and their versions) are available on a specific Ubuntu release. I'm not able to find something like this for Fedora, would there be another way to check this, or will I have to do an install and then check the package list by booting into the installed OS and checking with dnf?
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Barring that, I would focus more on the boot time of said Compo Linux - can a skilled orga switch from Win to Lin in under 30s, and then back in another 30?
Also, about this: after Revision 2019, where International Shipping won the exegfx compo, I had some talks with las (the compo orga) on IRC about some of this, including the switching-between-operating-systems thing. While, of course, he preferred only switching at the beginning or end of the compo to keep it to a minimum, the delay between the entries wasn't very noticeable, or at least not to me. Especially if things are already two hours behind on schedule, an extra 45 seconds won't be too noticeable, especially in a compo where having precalc stuff is common :) . And during a compo, waiting a bit longer is a much less noticeable fuckup than, say, having an entry or slide that won't show due to unicode shenanigans. So, all in all, it's not *that* bad.
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can a skilled orga switch from Win to Lin in under 30s, and then back in another 30?
A skilled organizer can possibly tweak the boot time on Linux but can the same be said for Windows?
There should be a museum to remember the party organisers who fought just to run that single Linux prod. Pouring one out for the heroics at Distance 1999 (I think)
I have looked it up and if i got it correctly, WSL2 provides gui support with OpenGL 4.2 support for Windows 11 with allegedly little performance overhead, so maybe that could be worth a try if one doesn't want to reboot from Windows.
I couldn't find any manifest files for Fedora sadly, but i think installing
the compo distribution for testing is a good idea anyway.
Also, i can provide such a file as a service for you ;)
https://ninjakoa.la/fedora35-manifest.txt
And yes, epoqe's compression linker "cold" does heavily rely on glibc
specifics as well, but i would call linux distros not using glibc quite exotic ^^
Of course, you can do linux intros without SDL2, but using it saves you
some space. I've encountered compo orgas saying: "We have SDL2 installed"
and others saying: "Only default packages", so using Fedora would align both policies better.
I couldn't find any manifest files for Fedora sadly, but i think installing
the compo distribution for testing is a good idea anyway.
Also, i can provide such a file as a service for you ;)
https://ninjakoa.la/fedora35-manifest.txt
And yes, epoqe's compression linker "cold" does heavily rely on glibc
specifics as well, but i would call linux distros not using glibc quite exotic ^^
Of course, you can do linux intros without SDL2, but using it saves you
some space. I've encountered compo orgas saying: "We have SDL2 installed"
and others saying: "Only default packages", so using Fedora would align both policies better.
here's my proposal: you can use any damn distro you like, but you have to provide a capture of your demo yourself. because frankly, the idea that a party orga will install and get acquainted with linux in preparation to maybe receive one or two prods for it is a bit unrealistic. sounds fair?
Void Linux, what else ;)
@havoc: i guess i would be okay with that ^^
ninjakoala: cool! i think that kind of deal solves the issue for most smaller parties. and since creators on linux generally seem quite keen to explain what libraries (etc) they use i'd say free choice of libs could also be covered by this blanket solution :)
Running Linux demos under WSL would be… well, controversial.
Disqualifying a prod for requiring SDL would be, too.
Disqualifying a prod for requiring SDL would be, too.
I don't care about the distro, but I propose to run all Windows demos in Wine instead. Problem solved.
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run all Windows demos in Wine
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Disqualifying a prod for requiring SDL would be, too.
Does that include size limited compos like 4k?
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Barring that, I would focus more on the boot time of said Compo Linux - can a skilled orga switch from Win to Lin in under 30s, and then back in another 30?
Yes we can. The magic skill required is "use two compo PCs". It's a major PITA and compo PCs are a sacred resource. Smaller parties probably have exactly one - larger parties sometimes have two or more, but the main purpose here is not being able to show linux entries quicker.
Even if you have two machines available, you probably can not use them whenever and wherever you want, because someone else might also need a compo PC for testing/preparation etc..
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here's my proposal: you can use any damn distro you like, but you have to provide a capture of your demo yourself. because frankly, the idea that a party orga will install and get acquainted with linux in preparation to maybe receive one or two prods for it is a bit unrealistic. sounds fair?
Nope, not fair at all (especially in connection with size limited compos). Compo machines should be as vanilla installations as possible, controlled by the compo organizers. There are very good very obvious reasons for this.
My personal frustation with running linux entries in competitions: We are going through a lot of setup stuff for a really small amount of linux entries - most of them of questionable quality. Porting to windows would be trivial in most cases (while staying within size limits)...
