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On a similar note, I often find e.g. the Gentoo Wiki a great resource for solving problems on *other* distros, because of the sheer details and quality often seen on the site.

(There is more to be said here, but the point is still that the Gentoo community (forums, IRC, Wiki etc.) is something for everyone to be proud of.)

Now go and use your favourite distro. :-)

Code Listing 2: etc-update options

Please select a file to edit by entering the corresponding number.
(-1 to exit) (-3 to auto merge all remaining files)
(-5 to auto-merge AND not use 'mv -i'):

tmpfs /tmp tmpfs size=3072m,mode=1777 0 0

Already done:- http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Speeding_up_portage_wit h_tmpfs

Yes, it requires you edit a file, and possibly install an app. But it does work and is easy to setup.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mouse_Scrollwheel

I have all 5 of my buttons working on my microsoft mouse.

Now I suggest (so you dont break X as so many people complain is impossible to fix) that you do this before editing the file

cp xorg.conf xorg_backup.conf

Now if you reboot and X doesn't work, you can type this

cp xorg_backup.conf xorg.conf

and it will work again.

I'm currently building a MythTV system on a P4 1.5GHz. I've got it running pretty well so far in Gentoo under EvilWM. The instructions I'm trying to follow are here. They're pretty complete, and even though they don't match my setup exactly, I've only run into a couple hiccups so far. It involves using Zap2It or XMLTV to download the listings, setting up your IR remote, configuring X, and more. I highly suggest using it if you want to set up your own MythTV box.

Debian already uses non-standard icons in the Firefox package because the Firefox logo is copyrighted and non-Free.

On Gentoo, you don't get the cool Firefox logo if you build Firefox from source. The neatest way to get the logo back is to create a Portage overlay, copy the ebuilds for Firefox there, and modify it with IUSE="branding java mozsvg" and mozconfig_use_enable branding official-branding in the appropriate places in the ebuild, put branding in your USE flags, and emerge. Technique described on Gentoo Wiki

Let me see... You give the user the choice between:

1) Downloading a .dmg image that gets automounted, copying the Application to the applications folder, entering a password. Presto the Application is ready to use.
2) Weeding his/her way throught this before he/she can update/install their Applications. ...and you really think that the average user will have trouble choosing? I like LINUX as much as the next guy and I use both LINUX and OS.X alot but let me tell you that LINUX isn't ready for Joe/Jane user by a long shot. In the ease-of-use department OS.X is still lightyears ahead.

You should try moving your build directory onto tmpfs for compiling, thats a real speed up.
see http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Speeding_up_portage_wit h_tmpfs/ for example.

Oh, and here are the go7007 driver page from gentoo.
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_go7007
Mythtv only supports it in CVS right now.

Yeah, but gentoo seems to be the only distro that'll let you do this; 32-bit flash will not install on my Ubuntu. I've seen a couple articles for gentoo.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_AMD_64

I'm about to see if I can get it installed w/ some of the info there. It might work with some patience.

-j3 actually. make.conf (5) reccomends setting the number of concurrent compiles between [Number of CPUs]+1 and 2*[Number of CPUs]+1

Whenever the speed of optimization is refuted, the gcc flag "-O2" or "-O3" is mentioned. What about the "-march" flag? Does optimizing for your CPU not help that much either? I'm no CPU expert, but why would intel bother engineering new optimized instructions etc. into their chips, if the benefit is marginal?

The other point of argument is usually comparing one app against its un-optimized self. Perhaps that is negligable, but I've got two identicle dell systems with P-III CPUs. The system running the Fedora Core 2 distro is a dog compared to it's twin running Gentoo. It's about an optimized system with every single piece of code running optimized.

OK, fine, let's say it's a wash and there's no performance gain. That's not the only reason to choose Gentoo.

http://forums.gentoo.org/ The user community registered to this site is amazing. Everyone's very willing to help a person in need. This counts huge in my book. I can't remember ever not getting resolution to a problem I was having from this site. Usually, I don't even have to post my own request for help. Someone else has already had the same problem and the solution's out there. I've tried a lot of distros, and their user community help systems. This one's the best in my opinion.

The gentoo wiki site http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page and how-to docs on http://www.gentoo.org/ are also great. They walk you through everything from the most basic things that most every system needs, to the very specialized tasks like user mode linux or selinux.

OK, it can take a while to compile a new system from scratch. Keep in mind that barring a hard drive crash on a system with no backup solution, you only have to do this system wide compile once. Every other distro I've used requires an upgrade to get from the current version to the next. While these upgrades are continually getting better, historically they were so bad that most people felt it was safer to just do a fresh install instead. Ok, Gentoo has a type of upgrade that you need to do periodically. It's real tuff. You delete /etc/make.profile and relink it (ln -s) to the new profile. Whew! Time for a coke.

Got two systems? Use distcc to help speed up compiles.

Still not fast enough? Install from the stage 3 tar file and run an "emerge -e world" later when you've got more time and the system won't be doing anything except burning electricity anyway.

Just don't want to have to wait to start surfing tghe web? Boot Knoppix instead of the gentoo live CD. While all the bootstrapping and compiling is going on, fire up firefox and pass the time with a functioning system.

Got 50 machines that have identicle hardware? Suffer through the compile once, and use one of "emerge -B/-b" or "quickpkg" to quickly install the rest with pre-compiled, optimized, binaries.

Bottom line, it's not a panacea. It's not your Grandma's distro. It's not without the occasional problem, but we Gentoo fans like our distro so Back Off! :) You're free to use another.

Well, since you're distro-shopping anyway, try here.

Actually, just insert your package manager controls in place of "emerge," and it should be applicable in ubuntu or whatever.

For those intersted... http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Icecast_OGG_and_MP3_s treaming

The difficultness is overstated, if you just RTFA. Really. I setup a Gentoo router over my week-day weekend (Tues-Thur). The hardest part was loading the correct driver for one of my NICs (I have two mobos, A7N8X-E Deluxe and A7N8X Deluxe (rev 2.0)). The problem with that was I was loading the right driver, but for the wrong mobo (was loading sk98lin which is for the A7N8X-E Deluxe instead of 3c59x for the A7N8X Deluxe). I spent 3 hours trying to figure out what I did wrong. After that, it's simply a matter of following the easy-to-read Gentoo handbook, sysadmin guides (which guided me through how to set up the actual router), and Gentoo wiki.

What helped me best in setting it up is after having sshd running so I could ssh into the server from my main PC. Have that running in putty on one side of the screen (or another screen if you have 2 monitors) and the handbook on the other, it was dead easy.

ALSA can run from outside of the kernel. Check out their site. They have a 'dmixer' software mixer, that is compatible with oss sound implementation, if some software insists on using oss api.
Im a gentoo user, so I have a link to good howto (its somewhat gentoo centric, but I've set up the sound in slack more or less similiar way, before I even heard of gentoo).
In any case HOWTOs are your friend. Google for somethign that has 'howto oss software mixing' or the like. I suspect you'll find a solution.

If you're running Gentoo, it's been available in Portage for a while now. Gentoo-Wiki has a howto for installing it.

If you're running Gentoo, it's been available in Portage for a while now. Gentoo-Wiki has a howto for installing it.

Here are some instructions on how to install it on a Gentoo system.

Even if you aren't running Gentoo, I'd imagine it would point you in the right direction to install it on other distros.

The HOWTO that I linked to has a more detailed explanation of how to do it.

Well if you just stuck with OS X instead of Debian, you could use emerge. But given that it's still in the super-alpha "may eat your cat" stage, perhaps not a great idea.

stability

Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.

Wrong, its only as bleeding edge as you make it. /etc/portage/package.mask is your friend here.

high-level support options

None?

Ya the windows guys I work with try this excuse all the time with me, but if you can't read you shouldn't be doing what your doing. Sitting on hold for two hours is not support. I can find most resolutions on the forums in under two minutes. Of course if its that critical you should be running a dual server setup with failover so that you have a backup when things go wrong and they you have time to fix them. Besides you can take all the money your saving from not having expensive support contracts and buy that second server :-)

security

Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.

Most security issues are caused by bad configs and failure to deal with security updates in a timely manner. Understand your software, watch the security lists for issues, and have a test server to install updates on for testing before loading on a production server.

rapid updates

No. Bleeding edge is not equivalent to rapid.
apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system.
emerge apache isn't rapid. It takes half a hour.

Create a build host
HOWTO Download Cache for LAN-Http-Replicator
HOWTO Distcc server on Windows
Using a shared portage via NFS
Share Directories Using SHFS (cause NFS doesn't have the most secure history)

and ease of administration?

Below standard. All typical manual administration by editing standard config files. No centralized "managers".

Very few if any distros have a centralized manager thats worth the cost of the keyboard you access them with. If you are working on many boxes setup the same you need something like CFEngine and a copy of Automating Unix and Linux Administration

But hey what do I know I just admin 27 gentoo linux boxes :-)

stability

Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.

Wrong, its only as bleeding edge as you make it. /etc/portage/package.mask is your friend here.

high-level support options

None?

Ya the windows guys I work with try this excuse all the time with me, but if you can't read you shouldn't be doing what your doing. Sitting on hold for two hours is not support. I can find most resolutions on the forums in under two minutes. Of course if its that critical you should be running a dual server setup with failover so that you have a backup when things go wrong and they you have time to fix them. Besides you can take all the money your saving from not having expensive support contracts and buy that second server :-)

security

Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.

Most security issues are caused by bad configs and failure to deal with security updates in a timely manner. Understand your software, watch the security lists for issues, and have a test server to install updates on for testing before loading on a production server.

rapid updates

No. Bleeding edge is not equivalent to rapid.
apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system.
emerge apache isn't rapid. It takes half a hour.

Create a build host
HOWTO Download Cache for LAN-Http-Replicator
HOWTO Distcc server on Windows
Using a shared portage via NFS
Share Directories Using SHFS (cause NFS doesn't have the most secure history)

and ease of administration?

Below standard. All typical manual administration by editing standard config files. No centralized "managers".

Very few if any distros have a centralized manager thats worth the cost of the keyboard you access them with. If you are working on many boxes setup the same you need something like CFEngine and a copy of Automating Unix and Linux Administration

But hey what do I know I just admin 27 gentoo linux boxes :-)

stability

Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.

Wrong, its only as bleeding edge as you make it. /etc/portage/package.mask is your friend here.

high-level support options

None?

Ya the windows guys I work with try this excuse all the time with me, but if you can't read you shouldn't be doing what your doing. Sitting on hold for two hours is not support. I can find most resolutions on the forums in under two minutes. Of course if its that critical you should be running a dual server setup with failover so that you have a backup when things go wrong and they you have time to fix them. Besides you can take all the money your saving from not having expensive support contracts and buy that second server :-)

security

Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.

Most security issues are caused by bad configs and failure to deal with security updates in a timely manner. Understand your software, watch the security lists for issues, and have a test server to install updates on for testing before loading on a production server.

rapid updates

No. Bleeding edge is not equivalent to rapid.
apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system.
emerge apache isn't rapid. It takes half a hour.

Create a build host
HOWTO Download Cache for LAN-Http-Replicator
HOWTO Distcc server on Windows
Using a shared portage via NFS
Share Directories Using SHFS (cause NFS doesn't have the most secure history)

and ease of administration?

Below standard. All typical manual administration by editing standard config files. No centralized "managers".

Very few if any distros have a centralized manager thats worth the cost of the keyboard you access them with. If you are working on many boxes setup the same you need something like CFEngine and a copy of Automating Unix and Linux Administration

But hey what do I know I just admin 27 gentoo linux boxes :-)

stability

Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.

Wrong, its only as bleeding edge as you make it. /etc/portage/package.mask is your friend here.

high-level support options

None?

Ya the windows guys I work with try this excuse all the time with me, but if you can't read you shouldn't be doing what your doing. Sitting on hold for two hours is not support. I can find most resolutions on the forums in under two minutes. Of course if its that critical you should be running a dual server setup with failover so that you have a backup when things go wrong and they you have time to fix them. Besides you can take all the money your saving from not having expensive support contracts and buy that second server :-)

security

Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.

Most security issues are caused by bad configs and failure to deal with security updates in a timely manner. Understand your software, watch the security lists for issues, and have a test server to install updates on for testing before loading on a production server.

rapid updates

No. Bleeding edge is not equivalent to rapid.
apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system.
emerge apache isn't rapid. It takes half a hour.

Create a build host
HOWTO Download Cache for LAN-Http-Replicator
HOWTO Distcc server on Windows
Using a shared portage via NFS
Share Directories Using SHFS (cause NFS doesn't have the most secure history)

and ease of administration?

Below standard. All typical manual administration by editing standard config files. No centralized "managers".

Very few if any distros have a centralized manager thats worth the cost of the keyboard you access them with. If you are working on many boxes setup the same you need something like CFEngine and a copy of Automating Unix and Linux Administration

But hey what do I know I just admin 27 gentoo linux boxes :-)

stability

Below standard. Bleeding Edge, often beta.

Wrong, its only as bleeding edge as you make it. /etc/portage/package.mask is your friend here.

high-level support options

None?

Ya the windows guys I work with try this excuse all the time with me, but if you can't read you shouldn't be doing what your doing. Sitting on hold for two hours is not support. I can find most resolutions on the forums in under two minutes. Of course if its that critical you should be running a dual server setup with failover so that you have a backup when things go wrong and they you have time to fix them. Besides you can take all the money your saving from not having expensive support contracts and buy that second server :-)

security

Standard. Maybe a bit above due to easy, high customizablity.

Most security issues are caused by bad configs and failure to deal with security updates in a timely manner. Understand your software, watch the security lists for issues, and have a test server to install updates on for testing before loading on a production server.

rapid updates

No. Bleeding edge is not equivalent to rapid.
apt-get upgrade apache is rapid - it takes 15s on a fast system.
emerge apache isn't rapid. It takes half a hour.

Create a build host
HOWTO Download Cache for LAN-Http-Replicator
HOWTO Distcc server on Windows
Using a shared portage via NFS
Share Directories Using SHFS (cause NFS doesn't have the most secure history)

and ease of administration?

Below standard. All typical manual administration by editing standard config files. No centralized "managers".

Very few if any distros have a centralized manager thats worth the cost of the keyboard you access them with. If you are working on many boxes setup the same you need something like CFEngine and a copy of Automating Unix and Linux Administration

But hey what do I know I just admin 27 gentoo linux boxes :-)

Is there any plan to support fd.o composite extension for transparencies? I know the support in current xorg implementation is rather slow and not completely backward compatible, but up till now I've seen very little activity on this subject: metacity support is almost unexistant (in fact, if you want to use a composition manager, you'd better recompile metacity without composite support or switch to xfwm4). The two features I'm looking forward more shadows and transparencies and something like expose (currently there are only a couple of unmantained hacks.. see expocity and Skippy)

I second that. You can have Smart Run a script when things fails, like Mailing the details of the failiure and then turning off the computer.

For other computer parts lsensor might do the trick.
For exemple: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Monitor_your_hard_dis k(s)_with_smartmontools

if it's an external device, the best thing would be to get a controlable UPS And turn off (again with a small script)

Just think RAID, UPS, smart monitors and deamons and with a bit of imagination, you can come up with a soultion.

Gentoo has a few dozen different kernels at your disposal. There used to be a gaming-sources kernel that was based on ck-sources. The other popular kernel in portage for gaming is mm-sources by Andrew Morton (the guy Linus lets go hog-wild with the kernel).

Kernels not in Gentoo portage but compatible and designed for speed are:
nitro-sources (ck-sources + reiser4 + framebuffer + other stuff)
love-sources (community maintained kernel to optimize desktop performance and test "unstable" patches)
speedy-sources (love-sources w/ reiser4)

Oh, and looking at the forums nearly everyone uses an nVidia card. So far, nVidia plays nicer with x.org than ATI.

Just follow this tip and it will do it automatically for you.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page should do the trick...

http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml
http://forums.gentoo.org/ - Frequently Asked Questions, Search

"Gentoo's too damn time consuming for my tastes."

It's pretty obvious that you have never tried using gentoo.

I think that once set up, Gentoo takes much less time to maintain and run than any Distro I have ever used (Redhat 5.2-9, Fedora 1 and 2, Debian, Mandrake, Knoppix (on hard drive), slackware).

I think that this is partly because the package manager is so great (trustworthy, stable and easy to use), and partly because the software that is installed is compiled specifically for all of the other software installed.

The best part is that the work of compiling all of your programs doesn't even have to take that much time or effort. Most gentoo users update overnight, or even compile while they work, neither of which has to dominate the usage of your system. Depending on which settings you use, changing the nice value of an emerge command let's you run it in the background with relatively little side effects. (See Gentoo Wiki - Portage Niceness)

And just to clear up a hole in my argument above ("once you get gentoo set up"), Setting up gentoo is easier than ever with the live CD and pre-compiled packages. You can even re-compile these packages (after the initial install) by installing their non-binary versions once you have your system up and running.

I was a Redhat user for many years, and until Fedora Core 2 failed me, and I could absolutely not get any Distro other than Gentoo to support my Treo-600 syncing, IBM T-40 Hardware, and my sd-card reader - I saw no reason to compile my software regularly. With gentoo, you don't even notice that you are compiling, except that software takes longer to install - and considering that everything I works beautifully (minus the bloat of most Distros), I save myself many lost days of troubleshooting despite compile time.

If you haven't tried Gentoo before, or not for a while. Give it a try, you probably will not go back.

i couldn't agree more. your points are very well taken,
lest we also mention that apple isn't as secure, and flashy as most would think
most notably is there recent exploits, that have taken them ages to pacth,
in fact, much loger than the MSIE "phishing" bug timetable.
that is sad, now matter how the pie is cut.

having said that, i must add, that i believe that if Apple were to port its current os x
and its entire toolset to the x86 arch
, i believe that it would be recieved with open arms.. not to mention
they are now the 3rd desktop in the world,
and they used to be 2nd..
so it'd be yet another great way to gain more market share

but again, they control the hardware that the os can run on
so they can use cusom options, to see to it that the software
performs the best it should, on the specific hardware
when you port something over to x86, you as a devloper, open up pandora's box.
thats the reality of microsoft's nightmare that they havent caught up with yet.

overall, i must say that i would give mac a shot, an alternative to microsoft isn't bad.
but having gentoo is one of the best things i've done in the past few years
and now they have Gentoo-OSX, as seen here:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Gentoo_for_Mac_OS_X
which would even further my interest in Gentoo and OS X..
hope my ideas have helped ;)

~KingPunk

There's DarwinPorts and Gentoo too!

As for linux envy... OS X is a BSD derivative! http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/ and http://gentoo-wiki.com/Gentoo_MacOS are some more ports friendly systems, as opposed to Fink's apt-style system. Maybe "Linux curious" would be a better term ;)

0.) Performance patches from Con Kolivas, i686 2.6.7 kernel, reiserfs
1.) All original sources, minimal patches.
2.) Compiled with i686 against latest gcc
3.) Stripping
4.) Prelinking
5.) Latest gcc and glibc and other sources
6.) Keep everything only dependent to what it really needs not what
the ./configure happens to find.
7.) Hdparm on install

http://gentoo-wiki.com/Gentoo_MacOS

From the documentation: "Portage installs things in / and could possibly overwrite important packages that were installed by OS X. Use this technology at your own risk!".

I think I'll stick to fink for now, they could at least have used /usr/local and not mess with / :-/