Debian

Being a LONG-TIME OpenVZ user, I've been avoiding LXC some. Mainly because it wasn't quite done yet. I thought I'd give it a try on Fedora 23 to see how well it works... and the answer is surprisingly... fairly well. I made two screencast (without sound). I just used the lxc-{whatever} tools rather than virt-manager. Both containers just use the default network config (DHCP handed out via DNSMasq provided by libvirtd) which is NAT'ed private addresses... and were automatically configured and just worked.

Here's a list of all of the container OS Templates they offer on x86:

centos 6 amd64 default 20160205_02:16
centos 6 i386 default 20160205_02:16
centos 7 amd64 default 20160205_02:16
debian jessie amd64 default 20160204_22:42
debian jessie i386 default 20160204_22:42
debian sid amd64 default 20160207_11:58
debian sid i386 default 20160204_22:42
debian squeeze amd64 default 20160204_22:42
debian squeeze i386 default 20160204_22:42
debian wheezy amd64 default 20160204_22:42
debian wheezy i386 default 20160204_22:42
fedora 21 amd64 default 20160205_01:27
fedora 21 i386 default 20160205_01:27
fedora 22 amd64 default 20160205_01:27
fedora 22 i386 default 20160205_01:27
gentoo current amd64 default 20160205_14:12
gentoo current i386 default 20160205_14:12
opensuse 12.3 amd64 default 20160205_00:53
opensuse 12.3 i386 default 20160205_00:53
oracle 6.5 amd64 default 20160205_11:40
oracle 6.5 i386 default 20160205_11:40
plamo 5.x amd64 default 20160207_11:59
plamo 5.x i386 default 20160207_13:13
ubuntu precise amd64 default 20160205_03:49
ubuntu precise i386 default 20160205_03:49
ubuntu trusty amd64 default 20160205_03:49
ubuntu trusty i386 default 20160205_03:49
ubuntu trusty ppc64el default 20160201_03:49
ubuntu vivid amd64 default 20160205_03:49
ubuntu vivid i386 default 20160205_03:49
ubuntu wily amd64 default 20160205_03:49
ubuntu wily i386 default 20160205_03:49
ubuntu xenial amd64 default 20160205_03:49
ubuntu xenial i386 default 20160205_03:49

The first one shows the basics of LXC installation on Fedora 23 (per their wiki page on the subject) as well as creating a Debian SID container, getting it going, installing a lot of software on it including XFCE and most common desktop software... and accessing it via X2Go... and configuring XFCE the way I like it. This one was made on my home laptop and my network is a bit slow so I cut out a few long portions where packages were downloading and installing but everything else is there... yes including quite a bit of waiting for stuff to happen.

lxc-on-fedora-23-debian-sid-GUI-container.webm (25 MB, ~41.5 minutes)

The second video is very similar to the first but it is a remote ssh session with my work machine (where the network is way faster) and shows making a CentOS 7 container, installing XFCE and the same common desktop software, and then connecting to it via X2Go using an ssh proxy, and configuring XFCE how I like it. It was done in a single, un-edited take and includes a bit of waiting as stuff downloads and installs... so you get the complete thing from start to finish.

lxc-on-fedora-23-centos-7-GUI-container.webm (22.7 MB, ~31 minutes)

I recorded the screencasts with vokoscreen at 25 frames-per-second @ slightly larger than 720p resolution... and then converted them to webm (vp9) with ffmpeg @ 200kbit video. They compressed down amazing well. I recommend playback in full-screen as the quality is great. Enjoy!

Thanks to everyone that showed at C4K in June for the MythTV presentation.

We successfully installed a complete digital video recorder system from scratch on a standard PC. The final product displayed its ability to watch live TV, pause and rewind live TV and record shows. The guide data is very nifty and pulled across the internet from zap2it. Which has recently announced that they will be discontinuing that service. So the MythTV developers are hard at work attempting to come up with a better (and hopefully truly open) solution.

Package SetsIf one knows of the hype about Ubuntu, and it is almost unavoidable, one is led to believe that it is the most popular Linux distribution for desktop users. I have yet to see hard data that shows evidence of that claim so that will remain unresolved for now. One of the reasons touted for Ubuntu's popularity is that it comes on a single CD. Debian, upon which Ubuntu is based, also has fans because it too has a very light-weight install option (among other reasons) which will install the base system and allow one to install all the desired software post-install by downloading only what is needed. While Debian is huge, 27 CDs for the full distro or 3 DVDs (not counting the source CDs), virtually no one downloads all of the .iso images.

Since I'm a Red Hat fan (which includes Fedora Core and CentOS), I'm aware of the complaints people have about "having to download multiple CDs" before they can start installing. In fact, the recently released CentOS 5 is 6 CDs (i386, or 7 CDs for x86_64). To counter those complaints, I thought I'd try a single CD install of the recently released CentOS 5 "Debian style" and then add everything in post-install. Join me if you will...