Hmmmm,,,"taking the time to get famili= ar with linux is one of the more pleasurable things you can do for yourself if you have any interest in electronics or programming."

And there is nothing as f= rustrating as running into the typical problems that you don't have con= trol over and almost impossible to get insight on, such as:=A0 the build sc= ripts/make files are wrong/incomplete, the target OS has a different file s= tructure than the embedded assumptions used in the application, and lets no= t forget the mismatch of file protection assumptions made by the OS distro = and the app build...., and my favorite, all the necessary libraries are not= specified with the versions that the distribution app was created with, an= d in some cases, this information is almost impossible to find (can you say= configuration management?). =A0 Other than that, it is pure joy....and aft= er one has burned the better part of a day tracking down all the problems, = it is hard to remember that you job was to drain the swamp when surrounded = by alligators.....

Having said that, I have not built PCB from scratch..... perhaps they= do it with better insight/control.=A0

-J

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at= 10:52 PM, P. Taylor <phil AT plastitar DOT com> wrote:

=20 =20 =20

On 3/31/2014 6:22 PM, Greg Feneis wrote:

=

= So, if gEDA has Distribution packages specifically for Debian or SuSE, would it be necessary (or best) for me to ditch the Ubuntu installation and start working with a Debian or SuSE installation instead?=A0

I run Debian and every year or two I will build a fresher version of geda/PCB than is usually packaged by the distribution/repos.=A0 Definitely the way to go.=A0 It runs fine and is only moderately more painful than using the "built-in" version.=A0 I have had very= good luck with geda/pcb on debian, and have had absolutely 0 down time or crashes with the software.=A0 I had one bug that stopped a project for a few hours til I worked around what seemed to me to be a bug, and I had one PCB come back from a fab that looked different from the PCB rendering onscreen (but not the gerber files).=A0

IRC is oftc.net on #g= eda ... generally good for quick off the cuff questions.=A0 generally busier during the work week as well.

taking the time to get familiar with linux is one of the more pleasurable things you can do for yourself if you have any interest in electronics or programming.=A0 you will be confronted with a lot of people saying on the ubuntu forums (or IRC) "why would you ever build something from source???" whereas on the debian support list= s, irc, etc ... you'll get quite a more sympathetic ear.

The PCB/geda developers have made the software very stable and out-of-the-box reliable for doing good high precision work.

Phil