What distro should I use?

[jhsu802701]

I'm in the Data Acquisition subgroup of Project Phoenix, an IEEE study group working on an open source blood pressure monitor.  Our laptop has only a 500 MHz  processor and 256 MB of RAM.  We need to program microcontrollers and work with National Instruments data acquisition probe (USB-6008, I believe). I looked at the Linux FAQ, and National Instruments specified support for Red Hat Enterprise, OpenSUSE, and Mandriva.   I have experience with Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, and Ubuntu.  However, I stopped using Damn Small Linux because there were certain things I could never get working.  Puppy Linux is lightweight and easy to use but has a weak repository.  (I know that the latest version is supposed to support the Debian/Ubuntu repository with the Woof feature, but I wasn't able to get that working, and it took a long time to install Woof.)  Ubuntu has a superior repository but no support for National Instruments applications. Some questions: 1.  Must we use the NI-DAQ software, or are there viable alternatives available? 2.  Are there other distros that would work better with both NI and our old, power-challenged laptop? 3.  How long will Mandriva and OpenSUSE support the older versions that work better with NI than the newer versions?

[jchrisj]

Open SuSE 10.4 just went out of support. I installed 10.3 over 11.1 for compatability wirh LabVIEW but I need a supported version to keep it on the network so I'll need a solution pretty soon.

Chris

[jchrisj]

Sorry, that should have been SuSE 10.3.

[mhoogend]

1.  Must we use the NI-DAQ software, or are there viable alternatives available?

To be precise, for a USB device you must use DAQmx Base.  NI-DAQmx does not support USB devices.  Comedi also does not support USB devices.

2.  Are there other distros that would work better with both NI and our old, power-challenged laptop?

I'm not an expert on the power-challenged laptop front.  So I'll leave that one for others.  As far as it working well with NI, for the drivers the biggest barriers would be the package management system and the kernel.  With the Ubuntu tutorial that can help you get around the RPM limitation on a deb based system, and in general you can control what kernel is on your system.  This might end up making it harder to get support from the distribution vendor though, and the normal support channels from NI.  The NI side will happen anyway if you are venturing off a supported distribution.

3.  How long will Mandriva and OpenSUSE support the older versions that work better with NI than the newer versions?

The pages that outline lifetime/lifecycle policies for the different Linux distributions that NI supports (or previously supported in the case of Mandriva) are:

• http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Linux_Lifetime
• http://press.redhat.com/2008/05/21/the-red-hat-enterprise-linux-lifecycle/
• http://www2.mandriva.com/support/lifecycle/

That at least tells you the organizations official policy.  You might still get community support out of the supported lifecycle, but this depends on what amount of support you are looking for and if you need official support.  You'll notice the more "enterprise" you go, Red Hat, the longer the support lifecycle becomes, the more stable you get, and less often you get updates.  That versus being on the bleeding edge.

[JoeFriedchicken]

The parts of newer distributions that hog resources are typically the desktop environments and their applications (Gnome and KDE are the leaders and most RAM-hungry). You'll probably see normal responsiveness on limited hardware if you only use a window manager and not use a desktop environment. I recently installed OpenSUSE 11.1 and chose to use IceWM as my graphical environment. The installation was rather straightforward, and I could indicate my preference from the installer. In addition, openSUSE 11.1 is the newest distribution that NI currently supports, so you'll be able to use your USB DAQ devices with DAQmx Base for at least a year, which is when openSUSE plans to drop 11.1 🙂

Alternatively, you can just not install X.org and use a console-only login. DAQmx Base has a C interface, so you don't need to have LabVIEW installed to control your devices (although, it can be a bit easier).