Hello,

Does anyone know about any Knoppmyth plans to do a release running MythTV 0.19? Perhaps when this is planned.

Also I have a suggesttion. What do you guys think about thisone?
I'd suggest making some detailed notes for it's creation so that advanced newbees like me can tinker with making our own knoppmyth release as a stepping stone to becoming contributers to the project. The plus is higher turn around time for new myth versions.

tompkins, let me be the first to say, this is not the sort of question you ask ANY and I mean ANY open source software release and just so we are clear, the question is "When will it be ready?". Think of this question in a real life example, "Are we there yet?", "Is dinner ready?" & "How about it?" all rate in the same boat.

Whilst it is admirable that you want to help, the best person to speak to is cesman, or better yet sit back relax and read the forums for a while and when you see a need then by all means help out.

Cesman would encourage anyone to go off and rebuild the installer if they so desire, the software and knowledge is out there, there is nothing stopping you. Good Luck to you.

I would like to conclude that patience is a virtue that all users of free, open source software needs to possess. The updated version is currently in testing and without this testing the average user would get a buggy release and would increase the load on the forums.

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Girkers

I didn't mean to offend anyone. My question was intended to come off as more of a,"Hey I don't see anymention about 0.19 anywhere, does this communioty even know about it? Perhaps someone could maby like mention that a release is in the works rather than leaving it up for guessing."

The knoppmyth project has done a wonderful thing, they have taken something really cool (mythtv) and removed like 99.99% of the complication. This allows those totally unknown to linux pickup a disk and use mythtv. It also allows experienced users to save themselves the hassel and time required to get mythtv up and working.

Simply by reading forums about MythTV it is clear that alot of people at all levels of experience have problems with the install or the issues that develop after it. The thing that saved me back before I knew about knoppmyth was The Ultiamte Guide to Installing MythTV: a step by step (line by line) discription that filled in many holes left in MythTV's manual. It left alot to be desiered and is now outdated. My point is that there is no documentation middle ground. There is at present only, "Hey look over in that library and you'll find scrapps of information that you should be able to piece together oneday. But all the information is there so go get em." Wouldn't it be nice for those learning the ropes to have something imeediatly useful, say a step by step guide? And, wait wouldn't it be even better if there was a step by step buid for even more complicated things like what's involved in making a distro like Koppmyth. Heck people could even add comments about various steps like in a rolling your own kernel section something like: what the heck is a kernel anyway?, what are all these options? Imagine how quickly someone could learn linux and mythtv, imagine how quickly they could grow to the point where they could help out. Or you could just keep turning away people witha blight, "the information is out there, good luck."

Isn't that what the opensrouce community really needs? More contributers?

I believe that there are plenty of posts stating that a knoppmyth version with 0.19 is in the works, as a matter of fact one is a sticky post in the announcement forum.

It would be great to have all the documentation you asked about, but you will almost always hit a brick wall asking for that of open source programs, because documentation is very tedious and time consuming. Thus people working on something in their spare time for no monetary compensation are not very likely to provide the level of documentation you are asking about, and it easy to understand why.

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Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

As usual, Xsecrets is spot on. And even when documentation is provided, it seems that it is often not read.

Well you clearly didn't look very hard. See this sticky posting at the top of KnoppMyth:General, which Cecil posted after about the 4th or 5th "are we there yet" thread. - http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8552 There are even a couple more "are there yet" threads which appeared after that.

Seriously, we don't live in caves and wear uncured animal hides. The forum is generally aware of new release of drivers (ivtv, nvidia, ...), or major packages within a day or less. Releases based on 0.19 are in the testing cycle as Cecil and Dale indicated, and if Cecil thought they were ready for general consumption they'd be publically available. If you wonder why the testing cycle is taking so long, just take a look at this list of issues in the release-0-19-fixes branch http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Notes_-_0.19.1

Frankly the only thing worse than a half dozen "are we there yet" postings is 10-20 different threads about a stupid MythTV bug that you've got no control over.

That is a good point! These people dedicate their time for their own reasons and to the benifit of all of us. I see that I's pretty selfish of me to ask them to do more. It would be nice to have that kind of documentation, but is there a way it could be done that would not involve such added effrot from the developers?

What do you think about this idea?

I understand that documentation takes time, but what takes so much time? The writing, the explination, the indepth discussion. What if the developers did the bare minimum contribution to such documentation what would that be and how time consuming is it?

Couldn't they just cut and paste their commands into a list and post it in a wiki? That probably gets time consuming, so perhaps a keylogger designed to work within a specific window (say a work window). Other users of various levels could be encouraged to add comments to each line like, "Humm, this command is pretty sweet. What is says is that "bob" is choosing to use a GUI to make changes to his kernel setup before rolling rather than answering a list of 200 questions. Keylogged information form seperate shells could be organized by voulneteers of the wiki with minimal technical backgrounds.

Users who are trying to follow in the developers footsteps could post screen shots of GUI's or comments of menue options at junctures where "magic seeems to happen" and the deveoper or other users could fill in the gaps. The result would be a structured procedure that grows in detail with time rather than a forum of random questions and answers. Forums are good information tools but hey need to be searched which means the user needs to know something about what they are trying to find out.

I'm not asking that the developer necessarialy write a detailed text book for their linux project, but am suggesting that something could be done even on the most basic level and enhanced via those struggling to follow in the foot steps of those above them. Something better than a Forum an ever developing procedure.

To be fair, tompkins, there is a sticky topic right at the top of

"General:General discussion about KnoppMyth."

entitled "Announcement: KnoppMyth and 0.19",

rather than here, which is " MythTV:General discussion about MythTV"

Which is not to say that I don't like your idea, but it does rather look like you've not had a look at the right forum.

Hope you don't take this the wrong way, it's not meant to be any sort of a put down, but you should have at least a quick look about before you post (just in case the answer is obvious!). I've neglected to do that myself (and regretted it) in all too many cases.

BTW - There has actually been a wiki page on building from SVN for quite a while now...
http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... hTVFromSVN

Thank you that's all I was loking for in my origional question. I really appreciate the information.

In response to weither I looked hard or not. I think you were being a little over critical. What do you mean by looking hard? If you mean reading the website home page, looking through release notes for any indication as to which version of mythtv the current knoppmyth build is built on, and searching for 0.19 and "0.19" in the forum search engine, followed by entering a forum and readin the subject headdings of the first 10 or 15 posting, then reading the first few entries in the announcements section looking for 0.19 somewhere, then entering the "general discussion about MythTV" section and looking there in the first few entrys. Then I actually did search hard. Infact I spent quite alot of time searching. Basicly I got frustrated after all that and figured that if the search engine didn't come up with anything for 0.19 then I wouldn't find anything. So I asked.

I'm new to Forums in general and found all my searching to be frustrating. Perhaps in the future I will look into every subgroup (which just seemed too tedious aftter all that above) insted of the ones where I would expect to find the information. Perhaps I should have not assumed that the serachengine was comprehensive. I mean if it's not how do people use the forums, read every article header? I searched for "0.19" in parenticies and alone and got nothing, there were not mentioning on the main website so I jumped in with the question.

Thank you. Hey you'r right. I spent alot of time poking around only to find out that the eaisest thing to do is hit the general discussions first and take alook at all the other groups before posting.

But thank you most for being so polite. You came off as a friendly uncle figure.

Oh hey thanks for the tip! I'll look at this SVN guide. I've never heard of SVN Before.

What I am proposing is a wikis where developers post a list of commands they used in doing routien testing. For instance I am betting that the knoppmyth testers are building their install disks, running the installer, and troubleshooting. I would also be that semi proficent users could benifit by just seeing what methods professionals use to approach problems. This would be a wikis that would allow people to see what commands professionals use and give users who wish to become more profficent a chance to discuss them.

Any way it's just an idea, but it's distinctly different than the mythtv instructional forums.

Dude, the forums and the wiki are already full of this kind of thing... The first skill to learn is recognizing it when you see it.

tompkins, I did begin to write a step by step knoppmyth installation, unfortunately it is currently on hold due to the rapid development of the releases. When a stable release is finalised I may revisit the document and complete it.

It was covering not only the installation, but the hardware too and was aimed at newbies to help them out similarly to what you are asking. I am doing this as my way of paying cecil and the community back for all there help on this project.

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Girkers

tompkins has hit my sore point square-on about docs, or rather the lack of cohesive docs. I learn by reading, then trying for myself. One of the most frustrating things for me about trying to get KnoppMyth running is just finding answers to the simple stuff. "What is the command to format a partition?" "What are the appropriate parameters and partition types?" How the bloody h3ll do you exit after reading a man page?" Honestly, I've spent more time searching for answers than implementing, and I've almost given up several times and purchased/loaded Media Center. I haven't because I'm stubborn and I'm not going to let this beat me!

There are a lot of things about Linux that people in the forums rattle off the cuff ("Oh, do a blah-blah then set the humpty-hump for the task") that many of us who don't use Unix/Linux daily simply don't know. In some cases, we don't even know the appropriate search term to use for that question. Perhaps there's a need for a "KnoppMyth for dummies"-style book that will lead users step-by-step, even listing the appropriate command syntax and parameters you use at each step. I usually have little trouble doing something if there is adequate docs for it...I usually never call/post for tech support if the docs are present and clear. I've spent more time in these forums reading/searching than in getting my box to run. (By the way, when someone says something dumb like, "Well, that's half the fun of learning!" I'd like to pop them one. No, it's not fun searching the net and going through hundreds of posts trying to find one tiny bit of info someone left out of their off-the-cuff explanation. Give me a good manual with the info in it and I can have fun.)

I understand what most of the industry columnists mean now when they write that Linux won't be ready for primetime until it has friendlier installers and better docs. If Linux had even one of those at this point, Windows would be well on it's way to being toast.

Just my two cents...by the way, Girkers, I used to be a tech writer in a previous life. If you want some help/input on doing that manual let me know--PM me.