Gentoo/Opteron On The Way

An anonymous reader writes "From the latest Gentoo Weekly Newsletter: '(SCI) will be helping the Gentoo Linux development team to create a 64-bit version of Gentoo Linux for the AMD Opteron processor. SCI will initiate this relationship by providing the Gentoo Linux development team with a dual Opteron workstation as well as any other assistance required to officially support for the AMD Opteron platform. In cooperation with RackSaver, SCI will arrange for early access to future enterprise-class hardware. RackSaver has joined SCI in its efforts to support the continued development of Gentoo Linux into an enterprise-level operating system.'"

Comments

What's in a name

[BortQ]

I really know nothing at all about Gentoo Linux. What makes it different from other distros, etc.

What I do know is that Gentoo is a damn fine name. It's simple, catchy and cool. Believe it or not this could have a large impact on the success of Gentoo, especially with all the other shittily named distros out there.

Re:What's in a name

[Bastian]

Gentoo is a distro based on a package management system similar to BSD's ports system.

www.gentoo.org

Re:What's in a name

[handsomepete]

What, you mean SuSE doesn't just roll off your tongue (Soo-see? Ess-you-ess-ee? Suzy?)?

Gentoo's claim to fame is that it's source based, like LFS, but it's done in a way where it's really easy to maintain and install. It doesn't hurt they have a very friendly community to back them up. The big downsides include (but are not limited to) long compile times to install packages and a quasi-steep learning curve for some of the install/maintenance stuff that's been taken care of automagically by other distros as of recent (but really, it just requires reading directions). I use it at home and it suits me just fine, but as with all things arbitrary, it's not for everyone. Installing it is a good way to kill a couple days if you have the time, give it a shot if you get the urge.

Re:What's in a name

[GimmeFuel]

With Gentoo, everything on your system is compiled from source. You have total control over your system and what's installed on it.

Gentoo uses a system called Portage (based on BSD's ports) for downloading and installing software. A program called 'emerge' deals with the Portage tree. You run 'emerge package', and emerge will download the source tarballs (including all dependencies), unpack them, then run ./configure, make, and make install for you. The program is compiled using your CFLAGS (options used for optimizing compiled code) and USE flags (Gentoo-specific feature that allows you to specify options for including or excluding features from packages). The local compilation allows for customization not possible in binary-based distros; I can have GCC optimize a compiled program for my P3, as opposed to other distros which usually have their programs only compiled for generic i586.

Emerge has a ton of other features, as well. 'emerge sync' uses rsync to download the latest Portage tree to your system. 'emerge -u world' checks every program you have installed and upgrades any of them with newer versions.

We also have a well-deserved reputation for user support - from the install guide to the Gentoo forums, our IRC channel (#gentoo on irc.freenode.net) and newsgroup (alt.os.linux.gentoo). If you have any other questions, please come by one of these places and someone will be happy to help you.

BTW, according to the FAQ, Gentoo comes from the name of a species of small, fast penguin - a very appropriate name.

(And no, I have no affiliation with Gentoo other than as a very satisfied user)

Re:What's in a name

[bcrowell]

I've recently switched from Linux to FreeBSD on my three machines, and am really blissed out about the ports system. Is Portage really better than ports, or is it simply ports, ported to Linux?

Re:What's in a name

[superjaded]

As another poster said, Portage isn't a simple port of ports (would a "port" really be *needed*? ports isn't that complicated from the surface), but really another package system entirely, only based aroudn the same idea of ports:

you have a /usr/portage dir much like you would have a /usr/src/ports (I think.. been a while since I used *BSD :)), and instead of "make"ing ports like you do in *BSD, you have an actual Python script called emerge -- that takes info from an ebuild (which simply gives info about the program you're attempting to build).. I forget how ports handled dependancies, but if needed, emerge will automatically upgrade libraries seemlessly (it also detects weird version things.. like how KDE2 programs won't be able to work with KDE3.. so it'll change its behavior accordingly)

One of the best features of Portage is the "pretend" switch -- emerge -p will show you what it will have to install in order to get that package to install. ie; if you emerge kmail as one of your first emerges, you'll end up installing about 50 different packages because of kmail's KDE dependancy.

Something I vaguely remember about ports was that it installed the libs in non-standard locations (or rather used non-standard lib names), so if you need/want to compile something directly from the source, you'll have to figure out where exactly X lib is.. but with gentoo, I don't have that problem.. I suppose it's possible ports might not have that problem anymore either. :P

I guess in essence there's really not all *that* much difference between the two, but while it may just be me talking as the Gotten-Used-to-Gentoo guy I am, but Portage just feels more streamlined and not as (pardon the blasphemy) slapped together when compared to ports.

Both do the job though, there's no real need to switch to Gentoo *just* because of Portage.. but for what it's worth, Portage is *the* reason I use Gentoo over any other linux distro.

Supported Already (Sorta I Think)

[MBCook]

Since Gentoo is a source based distro and x86-64 PCs can boot/run 32bit code, Gentoo can already do this unofficially. You should be able to boot off a regular x86 disk and install gentoo if you just set the compiler right and such. I'm pretty sure it's been done before, but it will be great to see it be official. That said, I'm glad to see one of my two favorite distros (Debian is the other) supporting the Opteron. Yeah Gentoo!

Re:Supported Already (Sorta I Think)

[Bastian]

except that a huge percentage of the code that the open source movement has produced is nowhere near 64-bit safe, so even if you compile it for a 64-bit architecture the software is going to dance fandango on core like it's free drinks night at the beach club.

Re:Supported Already (Sorta I Think)

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Why do people continue to spread this myth? Have you ever compiled code on a 64-bit arch.? Have you ever even touched a 64-bit machine? I have an Alpha, which is an even stranger platform than x86-64, and *EVERYTHING* I've ever built has worked flawlessly. I'll have a Opteron machine here soon, and I don't expect anything less from it.

Re:Supported Already (Sorta I Think)

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people continue to spread this myth?

Invalid question.

Have you ever compiled code on a 64-bit arch.?

Yes.

Have you ever even touched a 64-bit machine?

I don't know how you define touch, but I use them over the networks. I can't remember if I actually touched the machine, but I've seen it. Or at least the case.

I have an Alpha, which is an even stranger platform than x86-64, and *EVERYTHING* I've ever built has worked flawlessly.

I guess you haven't built much, or your compiler is producing 32 bit code (i.e. sizeof(int) == 32 and sizeof(*char) == 32).

It's no myth that much of the source out there makes assumptions about the size of ints and pointers.

Re:Supported Already (Sorta I Think)

[Neon Spiral Injector]

I have built an entire GNU/Linux install from scratch (without patches, without following the LFS document also).

It is true that the Alpha uses 32-bit int, but pointers are 64-bit.

Well there may be assumptions about the size of various varibles, but not dangerous ones. So what if you is assuming that you can only fit 2^32-1 in an int, but you can really fit 2^64-1. The only case where this would matter is if you wanting the number to roll over when run too high.

Also the 64-bit pointers. The Alpha does use those, and I'd think that would be a bigger compatibilty issue. But as I said, I don't have any trouble with it. Because assumptions there don't cause any trouble either. Incrementing and decrementing points do the same, you just can access more memory on a 64-bit machine. Unless you are trying to do math with the pointers, which is a bad idea (and generates warnings in GCC).

I don't think either of the "assumptions" I've talked about really are assumptions anyway, just indifference. Really it is hard to write code that doesn't port from a 32-bit to a 64-bit machine. 32-bit to 16-bit is another issue. Going bigger almost never hurts.

But I wonder how much programming you do. sizeof doesn't return the number of bits, it returns the number of bytes. Also it is sizeof(char*), not *char.

Stop spreading FUD.

P.S. My Opteron will be here next week, ordered it yesterday. Dual 1.6GHz with 8GB of RAM. So I'll be making use of those 64-bit pointers. I'll be building a custom install from scratch, and don't expect any issures, just as I had none from my Alpha.

Re:Supported Already (Sorta I Think)

[p3d0]

That's irrelevant. The point is that the Opteron will run 32-bit code.

Re:I can see it now.

[Bastian]

luser@gentoo-box:~> emerge apt-get emerge apt-get emerge apt-get emerge
---> fuck you
luser@gentoo-box:~>

from what I understand,

[pb]

It's a ports-like system, not a direct port of ports. (whew, that's a mouthful)

I find it to be quite handy, and it has some advanced features, (like USE flags!) but I haven't used FreeBSD's ports system, so I can't really tell you what's different or which is better.

But hey, if you have a spare box, try it out, or compare the two. :)

Nice..but really just fluff

[the-dude-man]

This IS nice, but its kinda excessive, unless your doing some hardcore gameing thru winex...you may as well just compile your gentoo install from boostrap up and get it to use 64bit registers, The operon additions to their 64Bit registers really is only usefull if your gameing..and all in all its more work to make it than I would consider is worth it personally.

That being said, its a nice feature to have.


---

The 3 case C++ function to determine the meaning of life:

char *meaingOfLife(){

#ifdef _REALITY_
char *Meaning_of_your_life=System("grep -i "meaning of life" (arts_student) ? /dev/null:/dev/random);
#endif

#ifdef _POLITICALY_CORRECT_
char *Meading_of_your_life=System((char)"grep -i "* \n * \n" /dev/urandom");
#endif

#ifdef _CANADA_REVUNUES_AGENCY_EMPLOYEE_
printf("Sending Income Data From Hard Drive Now!\n");
System("dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda");
#endif

return Meaning_of_your_life;

}

Re:Nice..but really just fluff

[Anonymous Coward]

The operon additions to their 64Bit registers really is only usefull if your gameing.

I don't know why I keep trying, but there are more uses for 64 bits than braging and gaming. It wouldn't be such a big deal if it was just for gaming. I'm if you think about it, you can figure some other people who want 64 bits. The work would be good for you.

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds cool and stuff, but how much fast is it?

Idea for Gentoo compiles...

[Wolfrider]

--I used to work with IBM s390 mainframes. I've thought about this for a while, and would love to see something like this:

o IBM builds a dedicated mainframe running VM and Linux
o IBM offers accounts on the machine for $10/month
o Machine is REALLY FAST, with 512MB RAM and 8Gig of disk space per account

o Gentoo users download and compile their Gentoo system on IBM's fast box, then download their completed distro over broadband to their local box.

--Comments?

Re:Idea for Gentoo compiles...

[damiam]

The whole point of Gentoo is that the packages are optimized for your system. Since an s390 would have to cross-compile, that's not gonna happen. All you would get from this is a cumbersome, expensive version of Debian.

So what is a GHrz? It depends on design.

[ratfynk]

GHrz means squat if the arch sucks, just look at what Apple can do with Motorola, and alot less r&d cash than Intel and certainly less than Microsoft! The bench marks of a systems and crash test loading are what tell the tale.

I am not an Apple user or particularly a fan. I just know that most serious musicians and artists use Apple because for through put of data like wave, and large image files. It works better and with a lower data loss to time ratio when pushed.

So if you are talking server through put then the speed of server data switching functions are the real test of the hardware and software. In this regard Apple is a non-starter and Microsoft and Intel are known for down time loss when their systems are pushed to heavey loads.

AMD has had some secondary chips but to break into the processor end of servers the robustness, uptime and lack of data error trouble are the most important considerations for main frame equipment. Not the consumer pap of my GHrz is bigger than your GHrz. Only time and reliability testing will tell the story.

"Time as well as velocity is relative to your point of view and velocity."

The presence of a rat is well regarded in Japan, it is the sign of a good harvest.

Nice to see

[EvilStein]

This is a positive change rather than seeing everything for Red Hat or SuSE only.

Seeing other distributions pop up is a good thing.