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Gentoo 1.4 Final Released

Posted by timothy on from the assimilates-your-pc's-soul dept.

markds writes "After a long wait, the Gentoo team has finally released the latest version of their distribution. Gentoo Linux 1.4 is now available. 1.4 includes automated kernel builds, CFLAGS generation, the Gentoo Reference Platform, and support for netless installation." And Beost writes "It looks like our favorite disto gentoo has released two of the new v1.4 LiveCDs. Enjoy!" Reader Luke-Jr points to the list of official mirrors and "unofficial (though created by developers) BitTorrents." (Of course, you can also buy CD sets for a variety of architectures from the Gentoo store.)

79 of 398 comments (clear)

  1. Great release by dook43 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm glad that my favorite distribution has finally gone retail. I will definitely be among the people that shell out $15 for the two pressed CDs and the printed installation manual.

    Been using Gentoo for my linux boxes since late 2001; I couldn't be happier.

    --
    This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
    1. Re:Great release by GeckoFood · · Score: 3, Funny

      ...$15 for the two pressed CDs...

      Don't forget SCO's $699 licensing fee... ;-)

      --
      Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
    2. Re:Great release by Transient0 · · Score: 2, Funny

      I think that would actually be $1398.

      I'm sure there is a byte or two of infringing code on each CD.

      (p.s. yes, i know it's a per CPU fee.)

      --
      lysergically yours
  2. I don't mean to whore....but.... by mao+che+minh · · Score: 5, Insightful
    For 80% of the responses Most people that read this article will say to themselves "Gen-what? Big deal, my *insert distro here* has already done all of that!" or "Wow, so some Linux distro does a few things that *insert Mac or Windows version* has been doing for months, or even years".

    Just keep in mind this much: Whether you are a Red Hat user, a Mandrake enthusiast, or a Slackware zealot, we have all "been there". And like it or not, distros like Gentoo and Debian keep hope alive and stay true to the Linux and open source "roots".

    No, I am not a Debian or Gentoo user. In fact I am a Red Hat and Windows 98 user. I recognize valiant efforts and righteous grass roots development movements when I see them, however, and I pay my respect and homage to them.

    So, despite how bad this post may come off as a karma whore (and you all know that I love to write karma whores), just keep in mind that it is people like the Gentoo team that have made Linux the phenomenon that it is. OK, feel free to mod me down now.

    1. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by Artifex · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You're not whoring. The reasons why I went ahead and bought the CD set when it came up, even though I'd already downloaded the ISO, were a) I was lazy b) I needed to know the CDs weren't going to fail on me like a copied ISO might, and c), the biggest reason of all, I want to support Gentoo.

      My primary experience with Linux in the home has been SuSE, and I know I'm going to find Gentoo painful to start up and might even go back to SuSE at this stage in the game. But Gentoo seems to be about much more than Linux: from what I understand, they're working on platforms for other OSes out there, and that greatly increases the probability that many more people will benefit from their work on Portage and the rest.

      Oh, and just in case someone thinks I'm karma whoring, myself (like I should care?), let me say that I also broke down and ordered an OEM version of Windows XP Pro yesterday, along with a requisite piece of hardware to meet the licensing terms, etc.

      --
      Get off my launchpad!
    2. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by EvilStein · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "My primary experience with Linux in the home has been SuSE, and I know I'm going to find Gentoo painful to start up and might even go back to SuSE at this stage in the game."

      Don't say that just yet. I was in the same boat but after following the directions and asking the friendly folks on the gentoo-user mailing list and forums.gentoo.org, I easily found everything I needed, and life is good. :)

    3. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by bogie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "just keep in mind that it is people like the Gentoo team that have made Linux the phenomenon that it is"

      Err not really. Gentoo came along way way after linux became a "phenomenon". Its also very much a minority distro. If you want to thank someone, thank Slackware, Red Hat, and Debian who have been giving and giving for years now.

      Nothing against Gentoo, but let's give credit where credit it due. It's going to be a long time before Gentoo can be lumped in with the above distros.

      --
      If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
    4. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by Artifex · · Score: 2, Informative
      Don't say that just yet. I was in the same boat but after following the directions and asking the friendly folks on the gentoo-user mailing list and forums.gentoo.org, I easily found everything I needed, and life is good. :)


      Well... I chose SuSE because of its very nice KDE and office-type applications integration, and YaST2(3,4, whatever they have now). In other words, it's pretty, I can be productive right away on it, and all that. Same reason why I have licensed MS-Windows versions, too, of course. I'd like to play around with Gentoo Linux because of the speed appeal and the almost-rolling-my-own, but it's going to take a while to get it going.

      --
      Get off my launchpad!
    5. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 5, Interesting
      What's a long time in computer terms?

      Face it, we have Intel and AMD on the cusp of major architecture changes AND the migration to the 64 bit processor. Both changes require a complete recompile of your system to exploit the improvements.

      At the same time, you have a distro that for the first time brings parity between the x86, PPC, and sparc architectures. Plans are even in the works to port portage to Cygwin, BSD, and MacOSX. The GCC compiler is getting good enough at building across architectures that a new hardware platform could have a Linux port in weeks.

      Computing power and RAM are plentiful in PC's. People bicker about 19 hours to compile OpenOffice, but I can remember a time when (assuming it was possible at all) a compile like that would take weeks.

      All of these factors are pointing us to a world in the near future where binaries are an afterthought. Even if the hardware you are running on can't compile on the fly, you can plug it into a server farm that CAN.

      Gentoo may be a half-assed Linux distro. But it has the potential to completely change how we distribute software.

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    6. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by Jimithing+DMB · · Score: 4, Informative
      I needed to know the CDs weren't going to fail on me like a copied ISO might.

      Odd. The only times I've ever had CDs burned from ISOs fail is when the burner failed to burn the disc properly.

      There is, of course, a simple way to check that it did burn properly. Assuming you burned it as MODE1 with one data track and no additional postgaps you can do this:

      dd if=/dev/cdrom bs=2048 | md5sum

      Then compare that with the md5sum of the ISO. If you added a postgap, then specify the number of 2048 byte blocks that make up the ISO with count=XYZ

      Another method is to use find and md5sum redirected to a text file, something like:

      cd /mnt/loopbacked_iso
      find . -type f -exec md5sum {} \; > ~/known_good_md5
      cd /mnt/cdrom
      find . -type f -exec md5sum {} \; > ~/cdrom_md5
      diff -u ~/known_good_md5 ~/cdrom_md5

      That works a bit better in cases wher you have intentionally added/deleted/modified files and want to make sure nothing else got changed. Note that you may or may not need to pass that through sort; I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader.

    7. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by Kevin+DeGraaf · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I needed to know the CDs weren't going to fail on me like a copied ISO might

      Uhm... you do know about md5sum, don't you?

      --
      We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
    8. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by Ig0r · · Score: 5, Informative

      "...a distro that for the first time brings parity between the x86, PPC, and sparc architectures."

      Debian has had a synchronous stable version for Alpha, ARM, Intel x86, Motorola 680x0, PowerPC, and SPARC since mid 2000.
      Most recent stable release supports 11 architectures.

      --
      Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
    9. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by arkane1234 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They said "people like the Gentoo team".
      Not the Gentoo team, themselves.
      They're right, it was people who wanted to better Linux, make it more configurable and give the user more options.

      --
      -- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
    10. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by pyr0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Don't forget mips!! Gentoo runs on mips as well. Current supported machines are SGI Indy, SGI Indigo2 (R4k), and SGI O2 (R5K). I've got an R5K Indy with gentoo mips, and it works great. Distcc and fast machines with cross-compilers make it really fast and easy too.

      --
      Project Steve
    11. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by Xabraxas · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The package system, aside from the fact that it builds from source by default (which has now been proven to be of no meaningful benefit to most users)

      That's not entirely true. Building from source gives you control of what support you want to add. The USE variables are the upside to this method.

      And no self-respecting corporation would install an unmaintainable distribution consisting mostly of beta and untested software that 24+ hours of dedicated, hands-on attention to install on typical hardware.

      Actually there is an unstable branch to Gentoo for beta and untested software. I use Gentoo stable and never had a single problem with it. Most "self-respecting" corporations that do use Gentoo tend to have a seperate build machine where they can build binaries and emerge them on the other machines.

      If the efforts of Gentoo developers were put towards improving an existing non-commercial distributions such as Debian, or improving the open source programs themselves, it would clearly be advancing the cause of Linux -- instead they are duplicating existing work and stepping backward in time, producing a product that almost no one wants, and no one at all needs, and this doesn't help linux at all.

      This is just garbage. Gentoo is not Debian. Gentoo is after a different market. It is about fine-grained control, it's not just a non-commercial distro with good package management. Those two things just happen to be an added benefit. The control Gentoo offers is powerful yet simple. That's what people like. To say that Gentoo is something that nobody needs or wants is very naive. It is positively something people want since it is growing rapidly. I would hope it is something people need, since it was created to fill a need.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
    12. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by richie2000 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Perhaps he looked at Distrowatch?

      --
      Money for nothing, pix for free
    13. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by innosent · · Score: 4, Informative

      I didn't have any problems getting into Gentoo, and [...]

      I agree. While Gentoo is certainly not the easiest distribution to install, the install guide documentation is quite good, and even inexperienced Linux users won't have much problem installing it. Even starting from stage1 (where you have to build everything), the most difficult part for inexperienced users is compiling the kernel, but if you can handle a kernel compile, you'll have no problem with Gentoo.

      Once you're used to the system, you'll appreciate the fact that announcements like this release don't matter, since you're only two commands away from the latest versions of all packages on your system ("emerge sync" to update the ebuild [packages] list, and "emerge -u --deep world" [--deep gets all dependencies, not really necessary] to update every package on your system, except the kernel).
      It may seem like it would be difficult to install an entire system from source, but it's really quite easy, just pay attention to the USE flags, and be patient, because it will take a while to compile everything. One more tip, there are a few packages (OpenOffice.org especially), where a binary version is available, and this will save a ton of time if you don't care that it's 100% optimized for your system, and/or don't feel like spending longer to install an office suite than it took to compile Gnome and KDE combined.
      So try it, it may be exactly what you want in a distribution, and if it isn't, at least you know it isn't. As an added bonus, you'll probably learn something new about Linux.

      --
      --That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
    14. Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... by An+Ominous+Cow+Erred · · Score: 5, Informative

      Unfortunately the parent poster here clearly doesn't understand the danger inherent in assuming a CD-R is good if it simply reads correctly.

      When you burn a MODE-1 ISO-9660 data CD-R, it's not simply writing your data out directly to the disc -- it's being encoded through no less than three sequential error detection and correction systems. Audio discs and discs that use MODE-2 without ISO-9660 error correction still go through the two sequential error correction and detection encodings inherent in the CD design.

      The actual data on the disc is always riddled with errors -- the pits/lands (or in the case of a CD-R, the stained areas of dye) are simply too tiny and numerous to not have them obscured or distorted by microscopic scratches, bits of dust, tiny bad patches of dye, cosmic rays, etc. When you read a CD your CD-ROM drive is constantly correcting errors on its base level (C1), and if there is even a tiny visible scratch on the disc it's probably having to rely on its secondary error correction system (C2) to read the disc properly.

      In normal operation your drive doesn't even TELL you about these errors -- the only way to know about them is to use special equipment or use a few special brands of drives that support reporting this information (C2 errors are reported by a number of drives, but C1 errors are only reported by a few drives (Plextor Premium, and recent Lite-On drives come to mind) and not in a standard way).

      ISO-9660 MODE 1 (and MODE 2 with correction) adds a third layer of error correction to protect your data if all else fails, that's why a somewhat scratched disc still works.

      What I'm trying to say here is that simply comparing the md5 sum of your cooked (i.e. ISO-9660 error corrected) data track is not a way to judge the quality of a burn. Your disc might read fine today but die tomorrow.

      dd doesn't know the difference between a well burned disc with only a few C1 errors and no C2 errors, versus a badly mismanufactured disc that might've been exposed to the sun at some point that is riddled with errors that only your ISO-9660 third-level error correction is managing to fix. The first disc will probably last quite a while, while the second disc is already on its last legs and will probably not be readable in a month.

      Analyzing these "hidden" errors is key to getting a good burn and making trusted archival copies.

      (Unfortunately it seems that CD-Rs are nowhere near as durable as they are supposed to be. Many cheap brands of discs burned only 6-7 years ago are becoming unreadable now! So far my Metal Azo Verbatim Datalife Plus discs are holding on like troopers though -- knock on wood -- but even on those I can see C1 error counts creeping up over time).

  3. Tried it, will try it again by Akardam · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Although I had some major problems with Gentoo not booting after install on one of my test systems at work, I was still impressed with the relative ease presented by a system still so powerfully configurable and tweakable (I was installing from a Stage 1 1.4 (RC2 I think) build). I will definitely keep it on my list next time we have a box ready to roll out. I do wonder whatever happened to that one guy who wanted to fork Gentoo... did he ever follow thru with his plans?

    1. Re:Tried it, will try it again by Unregistered · · Score: 5, Informative

      ask for help in forums.gentoo.org if you have installation trouble. I'm sure we could have gotten you up and running easily.

  4. To all 1.4_rcx users by Unregistered · · Score: 5, Informative

    You do not need to reinstall. Gentoo version numbers only refer to the install CD. emerge -u world and you'll be in the same place you would be with a 1.4_final install.

    1. Re:To all 1.4_rcx users by Bytal · · Score: 2, Funny

      emerge -upD world will do the same exact thing as installing from this cd. ie it will rebuild all software to the latest version available in portage. Whether you would really want to do this and ruin your beautifull, stable system is, of course, up to you :)

    2. Re:To all 1.4_rcx users by Zork+the+Almighty · · Score: 5, Funny

      As a Gentoo fanatic, I do this monthly, which is roughly the amount of time it takes to finish.

      --

      In Soviet America the banks rob you!
    3. Re:To all 1.4_rcx users by cosjef · · Score: 3, Informative

      Here's a 2.4 to 2.6 guide.

    4. Re:To all 1.4_rcx users by trippinonbsd · · Score: 2, Informative

      Thats whats nice is for man! nice -20 emerge -u world or you could even make a dedicated nice xterm nice -20 xterm or a "mean" one! nice --20 xterm Nice keeps everything running nice and smooth!

  5. Changelog! Getcha changelog! by James+A.+A.+Joyce · · Score: 4, Informative

    Changelog, hot off the press!

    (Now I wonder how long it will be before someone posts the "Gentoo Linux Zealot Translator"?)

    --

    Bash script for FP whores

    1. Re:Changelog! Getcha changelog! by Luke-Jr · · Score: 2, Informative

      That appears to be the daily CVS changelog which covers the portage tree, which has nothing to do with releases...

      --
      Luke-Jr
  6. Wooohooo! by RealityShunt · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's time to finally start that Gentoo install with the 2.6 kernel series that I've been putting off.

    I've been seriously too interested in the outside this summer. I have an actual tan, a girlfriend, and have put enough miles on the bike that I have to replace the tires. Enough! It's time for this insanity to stop!

    Time to download and emerge! Bring on those multi-hour computer sessions! Woot!

    --
    Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate.
    1. Re:Wooohooo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      multi-hour? what kind of geek measures his computer sessions in anything less than whole days

    2. Re:Wooohooo! by phyrestang · · Score: 5, Funny

      Forget the bike, how many miles on the girlfriend?

  7. Gentoo... by m0rph3us0 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah the best part about gentoo is... emerge openoffice 16 hours later you have a build.

    1. Re:Gentoo... by billatq · · Score: 3, Informative
      Yeah the best part about gentoo is... emerge openoffice 16 hours later you have a build.

      Or emerge openoffice-bin and get it for the time it takes to download :-). Of course, I'm using FreeBSD right now..

    2. Re:Gentoo... by hatrisc · · Score: 2, Interesting

      though, using distcc with a cluster of about 16 nodes, you should be able to cut that down to an hour. of course, not many people have 2 free computers at home, let alone 16.

      --
      I write code.
    3. Re:Gentoo... by Our+Man+In+Redmond · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or, do what I did.

      1. Set your Athlon XP 2000+ box up with Gentoo

      2. Optimize everything for the Athlon

      3. Set out a plate of milk and cookies.

      4. Start the openoffice emerge running

      5. Go to bed

      In the morning the milk and cookies will be gone and the OpenOffice elves will have left you a copy of OpenOffice, tailored to your machine.

      --
      Someone you trust is one of us.
  8. good news! by dcstimm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I want to thank Drobbins, Seemant, and All the gentoo developers! Thanks for your hard work for makeing linux even better!

    Please support gentoo by going to gentoo.org and buying the livecds...

    --
    keanmarine.com
    1. Re:good news! by Luke-Jr · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As I understand it, that's only because it was easier to register a for-profit company when Gentoo was started. I think we are trying to change to non-profit, though.

      --
      Luke-Jr
  9. Ask And Ye Shall Receive. . . by Farley+Mullet · · Score: 5, Funny

    Official Gentoo-Linux-Zealot translator-o-matic

    Gentoo Linux is an interesting new distribution with some great features. Unfortunately, it has attracted a large number of clueless wannabes who absolutely MUST advocate Gentoo at every opportunity. Let's look at the language of these zealots, and find out what it really means...

    "Gentoo makes me so much more productive."

    "Although I can't use the box at the moment because it's compiling something, as it will be for the next five days, it gives me more time to check out the latest USE flags and potentially unstable optimisation settings."

    "Gentoo is more in the spirit of open source!"

    "Apart from Hello World in Pascal at school, I've never written a single program in my life or contributed to an open source project, yet staring at endless streams of GCC output whizzing by somehow helps me contribute to international freedom."

    "I use Gentoo because it's more like the BSDs."

    "Last month I tried to install FreeBSD on a well-supported machine, but the text-based installer scared me off. I've never used a BSD, but the guys on Slashdot say that it's l33t though, so surely I must be for using Gentoo."

    "Heh, my system is soooo much faster after installing Gentoo."

    "I've spent hours recompiling Fetchmail, X-Chat, gEdit and thousands of other programs which spend 99% of their time waiting for user input. Even though only the kernel and glibc make a significant difference with optimisations, and RPMs and .debs can be rebuilt with a handful of commands, my box MUST be faster. It's nothing to do with the fact that I've disabled all startup services and I'm running BlackBox instead of GNOME or KDE."

    "...my Gentoo Linux workstation..."

    "...my overclocked AMD eMachines box from PC World, and apart from the third-grade made-to-break components and dodgy fan..." "You Red Hat guys must get sick of dependency hell..."

    "I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH .rpms together on the command line, and that problems hardly ever occur if one uses proper Red Hat packages instead of mixing SuSE, Mandrake and Joe's Linux packages together (which the system wasn't designed for)."

    "All the other distros are soooo out of date."

    "Constantly upgrading to the latest bleeding-edge untested software makes me more productive. Never mind the extensive testing and patching that Debian and Red Hat perform on their packages; I've just emerged the latest GNOME beta snapshot and compiled with -09 -fomit-instructions, and it only crashes once every few hours."

    "Let's face it, Gentoo is the future."

    "OK, so no serious business is going to even consider Gentoo in the near future, and even with proper support and QA in place, it'll still eat up far too much of a company's valuable time. But this guy I met on #animepr0n is now using it, so it must be growing!"

    1. Re:Ask And Ye Shall Receive. . . by MBCook · · Score: 4, Informative
      That's cute and all, but if you get scared off by the FreeBSD or Debian install process, RUN LIKE HELL FROM GENTOO. I use Gentoo myself, and it's great, but it's not an install for the newbie. That said, after you've gone though the full install (I'm talking stage 1, none of that stage 3 wimp stuff) you will have learned a LOT more about how Linux works than you will from a text based installer.

      PS. Good job on reaching 1.4! Go Gentoo!

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    2. Re:Ask And Ye Shall Receive. . . by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Depends on what you mean by difficult. Try hacking the RedHat 6.1 installer to boot on a thinkpad with 16MB of RAM, and a modern PCMCIA network card.

      And this was last year, because 7.+ refuses to even LOOK at a machine with less than 32MB. The boot from scratch and do everything by hand approach I ended up learning by my self through weeks of excruciating trial, error, and usenet clippings.

      Then of course there is the wonderful habit the RedHat installer has of mounting my RAID as /dev/sda during installation. When the new OS starts, it moves to /dev/sdd, completely frelling the /etc/fstab file. I ended up booting those server off of floppies for close to a year. It was only until I played with the Gentoo installer that I learned enough about the boot process to permanently fix that problem.

      Point in click is nice. But I generally find it doesn't make my life any easier. But then again, my world seems a little strange to outsiders.

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    3. Re:Ask And Ye Shall Receive. . . by Gunfighter · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I installed Gentoo at several of my customer sites. Some of the installations replaced Windows servers, others replaced Red Hat installations, and some are brand new servers.

      I can tell you, without a doubt, that real, serious businesses are using Gentoo very successfully. Granted, someone less familiar with Linux could very easily have slapped up a RedHat9.x server for them in less time, but with Gentoo I was able to give the customers exactly what they wanted. I was able to give them a very robust, secure solution thanks to the minimalist nature of Gentoo. No features they didn't want, no services they didn't want, and everything went without a hitch (with the exception of one customer's PHP 4.3.2 thanks to his programmer naming some functions the same as the native PHP functions... duh).

      Case in point: One local customer had been running a Samba server on RedHat with Win98 clients. They wanted to increase security by establishing a PDC for their domain AND move their website in house (Java-powered site running under Tomcat). I configured the RedHat Samba instance to use LDAP only to find that... Redhat's Samba doesn't (or didn't at the time) support LDAP! A Gentoo installation later (ok... so I went home and came back the next day while the Stage2 compiled... big deal), and it was as simple as 'USE="ldap" emerge samba tomcat' to get them up and running. They recently called me to say that they liked my idea of switching from their (albeit lacking and somewhat poorly designed by someone else) Java-based site to a Plone site. 'emerge apache plone' and away we go.

      --
      -- Stu

      /. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
    4. Re:Ask And Ye Shall Receive. . . by MrKinkade · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Apart from the fact I could have sworn I saw an identical post like this the other day, a quick response from a general linux newbie. Might be a little more deserving of it's mod if it were original.

      As a newbie, I didn't find Gentoo difficult to install what so ever. It comes with a step by step instructions that are only difficult to follow if you don't understand English. I'm sure I'm not alone here. The thing that makes text based installs hard is when the developers fail to explain some of the terminolgy they use in the install. First time I installed and put slack on my computer the interface wasn't daunting, but I had absolutely zero clue as to what / or /dev/hda1 was, and neither was it properly explained.

      The reasons why I like using Gentoo are:

      a) Better understanding of linux.

      I really hated slack when I first used it. Not because it performed badly or anything like that. It was the fact that there was so much to be included in the install that I didn't need or I had no clue as to what it did, and therefore if it was really useful to me. When you don't understand a system it makes it hard to decide what is cruft and what is depended on or important.

      With gentoo this was different, I started off with your basic shell, that is the bare essentials of the system that I could add the parts I wanted to. Also when emerging something, the building text flying past didn't help me me feel like I was empowered with the good of open source, but I DID get to see the dependancies of a program as it was downloaded (or using -p to show this without actually downloading any source).

      b) To have only what I need, and not what disto's think I should have.

      I could do all this with debian and forgo the compiling, but from what I am aware it takes new versions of packages absolutely ages to get into stable Debian releases.

      Really, this is just a cry for people to notice the cut&paste reply of the zealot translation.

    5. Re:Ask And Ye Shall Receive. . . by Xabraxas · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It doesn't, it's just a time consuming load of hogwash leet wannabees jump onto to say 'I use a source distro!'

      Must

      Not

      Feed

      The

      Trolls!

      Oh I just can't help it. First of all...NO. You'd be surprised to find out that there are many experienced Linux users using Gentoo. It's about choice and it's about control. Gentoo gives its users the most fine grained control of any Linux distro and it does it in a very usable way. See my sig for details.

      Gentoo does force a lot of people to learn more about Linux than they do whether they like it or not. This is not to say that it's not possible with other distros but there are no gui utilities for Gentoo and so the users are forced to use the CLI much more and are forced to edit config files much more, giving them a crash course education in Linux. Whether this is the best way or not is debatable, but whether or not people tend to learn more with Gentoo, well, that is not debatable. Read the forums. Personally I'm happy that a lot of newbies are jumping in with Gentoo and learning a lot more off the bat than they would with Red Hat or Mandrake. To each his own. Let's not fight about distros, at least we're all using Linux.

      I don't think it's fashionable to use Gentoo although it seems quite fashionable to bash Gentoo.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
    6. Re:Ask And Ye Shall Receive. . . by zsau · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That said, after you've gone though the full install ... you will have learned a LOT more about how Linux works than you will from a text based installer.

      Nonesense. I use Gentoo. I learnt most of what I know of Linux from my Slackware days before Gentoo, so maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm almost certain that installing Gentoo doesn't teach you all that much. You know mostly what you have installed, but you don't learn of the significance of the various packages when you emerge system or run the bootstrap script. You don't even now how to ./configure --help | less; ./configure [desired options] && make && make install!

      --
      Look out!
  10. The funny part is... by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 2, Informative
    That most of us Gentoo users are already running 1.4.

    Sigh, whatever Distro can upgrade the entire OS (in place!) with a single command: emerge -u world.

    Of course, some pressed discs would be nice for posterity.

    --
    "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
    --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    1. Re:The funny part is... by Pros_n_Cons · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sigh, whatever Distro can upgrade the entire OS (in place!) with a single command: emerge -u world.

      redhat: apt-get dist-upgrade
      debian: apt-get dist-upgrade
      yum: yum update

      I upgraded from Redhat9 to the new beta this way.

      --

      -- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
    2. Re:The funny part is... by tdrury · · Score: 3, Funny

      I've never used apt-get. Does it compile from sources like emerge?

  11. Gentoo has a new USE flag by snkmoorthy · · Score: 4, Funny

    USE="-SCO" emerge gentoo

    1. Re:Gentoo has a new USE flag by Dante333 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Dude I thoguht you where kidding, but I checked. Sweeeet

  12. AMD-XP Watch out by BrookHarty · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just reading the forumabout 1.4 release, seems AMD-XP CD2 has problems.


    "GRP CD2 for Athlon XP is not available currently. Frankly, we've had all sorts of problems with the Athlon XP build.

    Athlon XP users can safely use the i686 set."

    1. Re:AMD-XP Watch out by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 4, Informative
      I'm running 1.4 on an Athlon I built from stage 1. The trick is to use mem=nopentium. There is an errata between the Kernel, GCC, the Athlon XP, and possibly some mother-board memory controllers that causes the 4 to not play nice. Before I stumbled on the solution on the forums the machine would lock up randomly.

      YMMV.

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  13. The number on reason for using Gentoo... by Dante333 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Its a great learning exprience. I learned more about linux installing gentoo (way back in the old days when it was still using gcc 2.95) than using Red Hat for a year. It may take a while to install and update, but it does teach you whats what on a linux system. That and portage just rocks. There is even a NWN ebuild

  14. I'm confused... by Feztaa · · Score: 2, Funny

    The torrents have been slashdotted, but my download is going slow. What gives?

  15. Anyone tried -Os? by Nucleon500 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I was just about to do a second Gentoo install when I read this, and now it's cemented. Now, to choose CFLAGS. I have a 2.4 GHz system, but only a 7200 RPM HD, so I'm thinking of using -Os. I'm hoping this will improve load times for big apps, and I've heard it also allows better cache usage. So, has anyone done a -Os system, and would they recommend it?

    I was going to benchmark this by loading OpenOffice before and after compiling it with -Os. On a cold boot, the -O2 load time was 12 seconds, and 3 when it was in cache. So I re-emerged, and I ran out of space! OpenOffice takes over 1.6 GB to compile! Perhaps lack of -Os isn't the problem.

    --
    Litigious bastards
  16. Re:What is Gentoo based on? by xchino · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is based on neither. Gentoo uses (and basically IS) a packaging system called portage, which is similar to FreeBSD's ports. It is the nicest package management suite I have seen within Linux. All dependencies are handled for you, and optional support can be defined through a USE variable. Say if you want php but don't want support for gd or java, you could set the USE variable to -gd and -java, and then simply "# emerge php" and all patches, dependencies and options are retreived, configured, and compiled for you with one command, based on what you want your system to be. Aside from an install not designed for newbies or the lazy, gentoo is IMHO the easiest distro to use and maintain, perhaps even for newbies, once installed.

    To me the optimization is secondary to the amazing package management system, and the fact that it stays out of my way and let's me decide what I want my system to be.

    --
    Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
  17. gentoo topic by quannump · · Score: 5, Interesting

    is it too much to ask for gentoo to get its on topic category? its got a pretty cool logo. jeez even turbolinux has one.

    --

    1. Re:gentoo topic by Syberghost · · Score: 2, Funny

      is it too much to ask for gentoo to get its on topic category?

      This is Gentoo; you're supposed to download the vectors and compile your own logo on each box where you want to see it.

  18. Re:Gentoo Trolls by lightcycle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd have to agree, but add that there also is a fair amount of anti-gentoo trolling in connection with every gentoo related story on /.
    Gentoo has strong and weak points, just as every other distro, and just as every other distro it isn't for everyone. This gentoo/anti-gentoo trolling is counterproductive as well as ashaming to every serious linux user, and I would like to see the discussion hitched up just a few notches above the sandbox level it's currently at. If we could do that, a balanced discussion might help users find the distribution best suited to their needs. After all, having choices will only benefit linux.
    Oh well, end rant...

    --

    The stars that shine and the stars that shrink
    in the face of stagnation the water runs before your eyes
  19. Re:What is Gentoo based on? by soleblaze · · Score: 3, Informative

    Installing Gentoo is pretty much just typing in a laundry list of commands. (see the Gentoo x86 in guide to see what I mean)

    You also have to edit some of the configuration files, but I think the documentation explains it pretty well.

  20. Debian *is* very recent, while still stable by The+Revolutionary · · Score: 4, Informative

    While I don't want to take anything away from the Gentoo project, as it obviously satisfies a need or interest in the community, but I am sick and tired of the untrue stereotype being propogated that Debian is not recent.

    If you bother to read the documentation, just barely, even the simplest overviews on the Debian website, you would know that you can also use Debian testing and unstable; you are not limited to stable.

    (Yes, sometimes it is appropriate to limit yourself to stable, and when you do, what you get is a system that is very stable, and very closely scrutinized for bugs; look at Debian's own bug-tracking system even).

    I am running: GNOME 2.2, Firebird 0.6 / Mozilla 1.4 / Epiphany 0.8, Nautilus 2.2.4, GIMP 1.3.17, OpenOffice.org 1.1, Abiword 1.99.2, Evolution 1.4.3, Gnumeric 1.1.19, XFree86 4.2.1, etc.

    No this isn't "cutting edge" if you consider cutting edge to be following development branches and cvs snapshots. Of course not, but I don't want that.

    Within reason, it is very recent, and it is stable; as stable as the upstream source, which is all that you can expect from any distribution.

    My base system is almost entirely out of Debian stable. The rest of the system is out of testing/unstable only as required to satisfy the dependency versions for these applications.

    I have never had the state of my installed packages corrupted by using testing/stable.

    There is probably a better way, but this is enough for me (please post if you have an even easier way, as I'd love to know):

    "apt-get update" to update the package information from the repositoriees.

    "apt-get -u upgrade"
    "n" to see the packages available for upgrade from all repositories.

    "apt-get -u install x" to upgrade package "x".

    I could just answer yes to "apt-get -u upgrade", yes, and I recommend others to do this if they don't want to be bothered further, but I prefer to make the decision each time when I want to keep a package from stable instead of testing or unstable.

    --

    .sig Realistic fines for copyright in

  21. Easy Slashdot karma formula by WalterDGeranios · · Score: 5, Funny
    OK, feel free to mod me down now.

    Step 1: Make a comment.

    Step 2: Type "I know everyone is going to mod me down" or "OK, mod me down everyone."

    Step 3: Those tricksy Slashdot readers outwit you and mod you up!.

  22. OT SCO: Re:Great release by Sancho · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I seem to recall SCO claiming that since the code was introduced so long ago, it has contaminated every build since. While the contributing code was perhaps localized at first, it's impossible to know how the code /around/ it would have evolved had their IP never been introduced. All of Linux from that point on is tainted by their code, and thus is their IP.

    I have not seen the code in question, and I certainly hope that MicroSCOft loses this battle, but should they win, I could really see this claim as having some weight. Linux evolves, and parts of the kernel interact with other parts. You could, for example, take concepts from their code and use those concepts in the single-processor scheduler. It's impossible to know how far the taint has spread since the code was out there for anyone to read. It's fairly safe to localize it to Linux, though, and since this is actually just a money grab, it makes sense. And the logic behind it is fairly sound (as much as I hate to admit it).

  23. Re:Obvious flamebait by omega9 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The biggest advantage of (the option of) compiling on your own box is customization of the package, which far outweighs the speedup from being a local build job. For instance, say you want to install a package that has four USE flags. They are all mutually exclusive and each calls it's own dependancy. In Gentoo, you're able to build that package with only the options and dependancies you desire, possibly none (single package, no USE settings). In a binary distro you would have to offer 16 (2^N where N=number of USE flags) different packages and still have to worry about deps.

    While I believe there is a genuine advantage to compiling on you own hardware, I also believe people incorrectly prioritize it above the level of potential customization.

    --
    I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
  24. Reverse dependencies by normalperson · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Is unmerging a package safe yet?


    Do packages that depend on the package I'm unmerging also get unmerged automatically or do they stay installed (and broken?)


    Of course, I tend to like to try out new software on a whim a lot and frequently install something to use for a few hours before I decide whether or not it's worth keeping on my system (usually not).

  25. Oh Please... by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While the contributing code was perhaps localized at first, it's impossible to know how the code /around/ it would have evolved had their IP never been introduced. All of Linux from that point on is tainted by their code, and thus is their IP.

    That's about as realistic as the MS programming monkey that once copy-pasted two lines of Linux 0.01 into Windows would now make all of Windows the IP of Mr. Linus.

    Derivative works are more than just inspiration, I can't create a story in the Star Wars universe but I can certainly make one in a *different* galaxy far far away. It's not like any other story involving being in another galaxy would be "tainted" and the IP of George Lucas, just because I saw the movie.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  26. WineX by dakryx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anyone else hear about how Transgaming forced gentoo to stop having ebuilds of their source? Transgaming said gentoo was making it trivial to install from gentoo. All in the pursuit of profit eh?

    1. Re:WineX by nagora · · Score: 3, Informative
      Anyone else hear about how Transgaming forced gentoo to stop having ebuilds of their source?

      To be fair, the ebuild was installing from the CVS tree which was provided for the use of developers, not for massive numbers of downloads.

      TWW

      --
      "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
  27. Converting from Redhat to Gentoo by caluml · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could I convert an existing Redhat server to Gentoo - without rebuilding from scratch? Can I not download "emerge" and start emerging system? Has anyone done it? How did it work? How to get rid of the "cruft"?

    I don't have a backup of that server, so I can't go for the wipe and rebuild - also, it is running a 24/7 e-commerce site.

    (Of course I have a backup.)

    --
    Get your own free personal location tracker
    1. Re:Converting from Redhat to Gentoo by tangent3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes you can.

      http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=8884
      h ttp://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=28559

      Enjoy! :)

    2. Re:Converting from Redhat to Gentoo by dotgain · · Score: 2, Informative
      Parent is informative, but just to add a bit to the discussion:

      About the easiest way to set Gentoo up is on a system with free space already up and running any other Linux system. You simply partition and format the space, and using your existing system download a stage1 and unpack it there.

      You then "chroot" into this new install (of course still running RedHat or whatever) using a terminal and being building your system, Gentoo's install docs are pretty good these days.

      One thing makes me wonder about Gentoo though, just how much redundant compilation is going on here - surely many people compile effectively identical binaries every day, it's not as if there's a million different instruction sets / archs / etc, and I wonder how much collective cpu time could be saved (read: not wasted) by using platform-specific binaries.

      You can say all you like about rpm, but installs of them are sometimes hours faster. But at the end of the day, the only thing I'd change about Gentoo is it's extensive use of Python, I think it's a slow dog. Bite me.

  28. Re:LiveCD for Apple PowerBook 17"? by Drakon86 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hello! You should download livecd-ppc-1.4.iso to get a bootstrap system. Then you may choose the GRP CDs for your appropriate architecture to get a wide range of precompiled packages. Sincerely, Alex

  29. Tried it, but ... by mbirk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Was I the only one who dropped Gentoo when they went from 1.2 -> 1.3 and you couldn't do a simple "emerge -u world"? There was something like four manual update scripts to run. When that didn't work right off the bat, I decided to punt. Not that I couldn't have gotten it to work, but I was worried that this would happen with every major (or even minor) release.

    Emerging applications was sometimes flakey as well. I particularly recall having difficulty upgrading KDE.

    I was also occasionally frustrated with portage scripts lagging the latest tar balls (or not existing altogether), but of course that happens with every package system.

    I had always wished the USE variables would get set automatically, too. So that if I had, say, Postgres and TCL installed the --with-tcl configure option gets set without having to fiddle with the USE variable. That's a weak complaint, though, since that feature is pretty unique to Gentoo anyhow.

    Now I'm using Red Hat fairly happily. However I seem to spend a lot of time building custom RPMs to get the equivalent of Gentoo's USE. *sigh* Still, grabbing whole suites of packages from jpackage.org et al via apt-get is pretty sweet.

    Anyway, not trying to spread Gentoo FUD. With the amount of popularity and support Gentoo has going for it, I'm sure some or all of these issues have already been addressed, right? I'll have to check it out when I finally decide to cannabalize my Windows box! :-)

  30. Re:Here's the thing... by quigonn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Gentoo is only a hobby distribution, simply because companies cannot afford recompiling Gentoo for 2 days. Face it, this takes quite a lot of time, and time is money. That's business. That's why my company only deploys Debian and RedHat installations, simply because they're done quickly. No customer wants to pay 960 euros for a Linux installation, but 120 euros (given that one hour of work costs 60 euros, that's what we charge to most customers) are still OK. That's business.

    --
    A monkey is doing the real work for me.
  31. Re:OT SCO: Re:Great release by gilesjuk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If they win (by that I mean there really was SCO code in the kernel) the code will be removed from Linux or rewritten. The person who added it will be sued by many Linux vendors for putting it there. SCO's case is with the person who put the code into to the kernel, not with Linux users. But of course by creating this fuss they're hoping to make money and get people to use their crusty Linux distro.

  32. Re:Gentoo Trolls by Monty67 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well Spoken. One only has to visit Distrowatch to see that there is a distro for (any)everyone's needs.

    Personally I looked into it along with a number of others. Installation time was a major factor for me so I ended up with VectorLinux. For me, that was
    -my- best choice, for others, another distro.

  33. Re:OT SCO: Re:Great release by blytkerchan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IMHO, the mere fact that they *have* a Linux distro means they published the Linux source code under Linux's license - which means they agreed to the license (but IANAL)

  34. Time out! by BrokenHalo · · Score: 2
    OK, everybody!

    Is it not possible to start a thread on any issue without including 150 posts bashing SCO? I heartily agree that they should be pilloried, but preferably when it's on-topic.

  35. WAIT FOR IT.... by oliverthered · · Score: 2, Informative

    the latest kde packages (3.1.3) are still marked unstable in portage, so unless you want to compile KDE twice in a week wait until the kde packages move to stable.

    Can't think of anything else to wait on though.

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  36. Re:Gentoo on PowerPC? by axxackall · · Score: 2, Insightful
    That is because the packages are build against the *stable* ppc tree instead of the unstable tree :-). Unstable has kde-3.1.3 et al, just set ACCEPT_KEYWORDS to ~ppc

    Then the original poster's point can be re-expressed this way: the stable tree of PPC is far behind the stable tree of x86.

    the unstable PPC tree is even more unstable than the unstable x86 one. I've played enough with all of them and I know what I am talking about.

    The problem with PPC tree is a lack of developers having PPC in hands. You know, x86 is still dominating, even in Linux world.

    --

    Less is more !
  37. Re:Obvious flamebait by omega9 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For the sake of completeness, my original remark was "While I believe there is a genuine advantage to compiling on you own hardware, I also believe people incorrectly prioritize it above the level of potential customization.". This is important for the fact that I was agreeing that the advantage gained by building locally is often incorrectly billed as the greatest feature of Gentoo.

    The attraction to building packages locally comes from the amount of customization available to you. Personally, I enjoy having that level of customization available. We can argue all day about how much CFLAGS can actually impact software performance, but you missed my greater point before and I'm afraid you might miss it again so we'll leave it alone. Interestingly enough, you have a very defined dislike for trolls, but you exhibit the overuse of capital letters, the attitude that your opinion is the only opinion, and site constant misinformation.

    It's my observation that Gentoo users in general prefer it for the ease of keeping the system up to date and the amount that it can be personalized in the process. In the same vein, Gentoo is not dissimilar from LFS, a distro that also requires building packages locally. If the issue you take is one of local builds then you would be better off taking issue against the entire genre of source based distrobutions as Gentoo is not entirely unique in that regard. If your issue is with it's popularity, then perhaps it's worth it to reexamine the fact that a source based disto is in fact that popular right now.

    "the portage system is very handy though, for easy installing. however the biggest advantages of it(individual compiles) fail on the low end computers where they would be most of use"

    The remark "however the biggest advantages of it(individual compiles)" would lend itself to admit that there are actual advantages of individual compiles, just that they're being lost on lower end hardware. If there are, in fact, advantages to individual compiles then I suggest rethinking your arguements against custom CFLAGS, etc. . Also, I'm aware of at least on person who has completed a successful install on a P133, though doing so was for entertaining/educational reasons. I would agree that Gentoo is not the best suited distrobution to use on such hardware, but it is possible if you have strong enough reasons.

    "(the biggest advantages of gentoo have been available on other distros for years). the biggest gist in the linux community against it is the over hyping by (newbie)users"

    I would argue that if the biggest advantages of Gentoo have always been available, then Gentoo would not be nearly as popular as it is today. It's true that Debian's apt system is a stunning package manager, and ports have been around on FreeBSD for years, but the biggest advantage of Gentoo is not any individual component, but the way they function and are tied together. Maybe what you perceive as over hyping is just the general noise created by a user community excited about a distro they like. Gentoo wouldn't be the first distro to have users with a common aura or excitement (ex. Debian).

    "oh yeah, i don't even have a linux machine currently..."

    I may be wrong, but now it seems like you most likely haven't spent any time on a Gentoo machine and all your points are purely academic.

    --
    I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.