Software Support > GroovyMAME
Groovy Arcade Linux Live-CD, based on Arch Linux (official update)
NightSprinter:
I definitely want you guys to continue on Groovy Arcade, it's just something that boggles me, though. Even when I finally was able to update Groovy Arcade to the packages to run Wine (which I had semi-related issues), just updating to recent Arch packages caused everything to refuse to work. I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out here. If another user manages to go through the steps to upgrade to the latest glibc packages to add software to an arcade pc with GA, how is it possible to maintain the KMS/SDL/XRandR functionality that the live CD provided?
Calamity:
Well, keep in mind I just have a very slight idea of the Linux OS, so I may be saying something utterly wrong. You're not supposed to update to recent Arch packages yourself with GA unless you really know it will work. This is because things like ATI drivers are a moving target, and you often need to modify the patches in order to keep things working, and this requires lots of testing. So it may happen, as it did a couple of months ago, that vsync just stopped working properly with the updated ATI drivers, and it took us a week to figure out the reason.
The way this will work (hopefully some day) is that new GA versions already patched are released, so you keep your partition of roms and snaps, settings, etc. intact and just reinstall the OS partition, so you get a fully updated system. IMHO this shouldn't happen more often than once a year (I'd prefer once a decade) and in the meanwhile you would be just using the autoupdate feature to grab the latest grooymame/ume/gasetup/advmenu packages.
However things don't seem to work like this in the Linux world. For some reason that I don't fully grasp you need to be constantly updating your system in order to keep things working. Each of these updates can solve certain issues but *always* introduces new bugs. With Linux you have the permanent feeling of being running a beta version of an OS. My idea of how things should be for GA, is to provide a distribution that was rock solid in every single aspect that matters for the emulation task, and keep that one as the reference as long as possible. But you see, we have an 8 month old working distribution and you no longer can get Wine installed, does that make any sense?
So, although I believe that Linux is the only possible way to do video accurate emulation in the long term, I find this constant update policy a serious handicap for the viability of a project like this.
NightSprinter:
I definitely understand how you feel. If you'd like, I can try to collaborate with other people that may know more to figure out what packages break the functionality. Aside from wine, I do know there are some other games suited for arcade monitors available for Linux that use OpenGL (sadly, some of them are only for purchase on Ubuntu or its derivatives). With recent updates to MESA adding more features and speed to the open-source Radeon drivers, it's definitely something some enthusiasts would take note of.
I'll try to spend as much time further testing stuff out between my shifts at work. I'll post what I discover on my own, and what I discover via friends in a new thread if everyone wants (and especially anything pertaining to this distro, will post here).
Ansa89:
Communication for linux users: here you can find the 15KHz patches for linux 3.8 (this time you will find a little surprise ;) ).
Calamity:
Hi Ansa89,
Thanks a lot for the patches. The 25kHz support is very interesting. Eventually we should implement a method to allow custom modelines to be read by the kernel at that point, maybe from a txt file, as calculated previously by Switchres.
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