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Gentoo for Mac OS X Released

Posted by Hemos on from the continuing-the-growth dept.

joeljkp writes "According to today's Gentoo Weekly News, Gentoo has released a new project: Gentoo MacOS (sic). This new distribution adds Portage, Gentoo's package manager, to Mac OS X, among other things."

11 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. I see that it's a catchy headline, but ... by burgburgburg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    how exactly is this a problem for Apple?

  2. emerge karmawhore by Stevyn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Gentoo is one of the best distros out there. I use it on x86 and it was easy to install and set up. I had more trouble on mandrake than on gentoo. The best thing it has going for it is portage. This system of automatically downloading and compiling software is only appriciated when you've gone through RPM hell or dependency hell when compiling from scratch. I was using mandrake previously, and this is definately faster. I encourage everyone who uses a distro like mandrake, fedora, or SuSE to look into gentoo.

    I've only been using linux for a few months and gentoo for a week or so but I already see how well produced it is. I used to get annoyed at gentoo zealots, but I see what they were talking about.

    Oh, and the compiling software isn't that bad. I've spent more time searching for packages and dependecies than typing "emerge k3b". Don't believe all the hype of course, but don't believe the FUD either. Gentoo is where it's at!

    Now to make this a little more on-topic, I'm happy that gentoo is trying to make more headway into apple hardware. I think that this will only encourage apple to help and contribute to the OSS community even more. MacOS is probably the most refined modern operating system, but giving it a little more competition can't hurt.

    1. Re:emerge karmawhore by Joseph+Vigneau · · Score: 5, Interesting

      gentoo's strenth is its' ability to squeeze 0.0008 percent more processing power out of your 2.4ghz computer

      Actually, that is not Gentoo's primary strength. Its strength is from the amount of flexibility that portage provides for package dependency. With binary-oriented distributions, you are forced to use the same configuration settings that were chosen by the package maintainer. Portage has the concept of "USES", which is basically a list of flags that the build uses to figure out what options to use during compilation. For example, many packages can be integrated with GNOME. I don't use GNOME. With other distributions, if the package was built with GNOME dependencies, I'd be forced to install GNOME. If the package was built without GNOME, some GNOME user wouldn't be able to take advantage of GNOME-specific features. With Portage, you can specify via the USES variable whether or not you want to have a dependancy on GNOME or not. As a side effect, you get the CPU-optimization "for free".

    2. Re:emerge karmawhore by bob670 · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I'm going to agree with you on all points. I bought a Shuttle SK41G, GeForce4, Athlon XP 2000+ and 2x256 DDR a few weeks ago. From out of the box, assembly time and then OS install was about one hour 15 minutes with all hardware recognized correctly, all updates installed and a usable desktop, office suite, Internet tools, etc... A quick install of the nVidia driver updates and some extra software gooodness via urpmi and I was off and running in about 90 minutes.

      Compared to a couple days to get the same results with Gentoo, which is an outstanding distro, but not the distro to break Linux onto the mainstream desktop. Any casual PC user who has built a gaming PC or even tinkered around with his Dell could get Mandrake up and usable in less than an hour, Gentoo however is another story. Of course Gentoo wasn't aimed at that market, but the parent poster can't possibly paint Gentoo as easy to install and not expect some rebuttals.

  3. Gentoo MacOS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    um, isn't that 'Gentoo MacOS' a tad misleading? It's like calling x86 Linux 'Linux Windows'

  4. In case you don't get it. by torpor · · Score: 5, Interesting


    This means (sorta, as in 'soon') that a Mac-user will be able to rebuild their own OSX box, using the Gentoo scripts, and still be able to maintain compatability with all OSX apps.

    In other words, a 'better build system: a public one' has been unleashed on a commercial operating system, so that - separate from the company itself - alternative builds of the OS can be done, publically.

    Why is this good? Because with Gentoo you can take personal risks that Apple can't. Gentoo allows you to build a system "Just for You", whereas Apple have to compile/link things "For Everyone".

    Expect to see highly-tuned Gentoo boxes running GentooMacOS in the future, smokin' 'Factory OS' setups. I'll be digging into this a bit further, next point release sort of thing, and if I get the same results out of applying Gentoo to my OSX machine as I have with my Linux boxes, I'm excited. I may man I can put off a hardware upgrade or two and just 'Take Things To The Next Level' on my aging Powerbook...

    Oh, and in case you think Apple should be 'worried about' this, it seems to me that they already get the point. With all the OS releases they've been doing lately, and the upgrades/improvements in the one area 'open source' is lacking: usability, and it seems to me that they're positioned well to be 'competing with the Open Source Base' ... but thats just my personal opinion.

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  5. My Only Question by tunabomber · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Will it handle the X11 dependency gracefully? I spent many, many hours trying to get Fink either to recognize that I had XFree86 installed as a binary or to compile it from source without getting errors all over the place. I'm not a newbie to package managers like apt and ports, but despite this I eventually ended up giving up trying to install X11 apps with Fink because I just didn't have the time to spend trying to get it to work properly. As a result, I am now using Quicken instead of GNUCash.

    --

    pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory71 ...
  6. Re:make sense? by Joseph+Vigneau · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ask these guys.

  7. Re:Yea, and? by Otter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I could well just be missing something, but I've had a lot of problems with the selection granularity in fink -- e.g. trying to build x-chat without dragging in all of GNOME. USE flags would be a very nice alternative.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  8. how's its hygiene? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the most awesomeliest things about Fink is that it installs everything in root /sw, no exceptions (i.e. /sw/bin, /sw/usr/lib, etc). That means you don't have to worry about contaminating the Apple-controlled parts of the OS, and uninstalling all customizations is just a matter of trashing /sw. I would never even think of installing anything in /usr or /usr/local (because it "belongs" to Apple).

    Does Gentoo MacOS do the same thing? If not, why not????

    1. Re:how's its hygiene? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Installing in /sw is the stupidest part about fink. It should be /opt at worst, but /usr/local is perfectly safe to use. It's just a lot easier to use that way. It's a cinch to compile external apps from source because they already know how to deal with /usr/local. It was a pain in the butt trying to get all the right flags when fink was installed in /sw. Apple will not touch stuff that you put in /usr/local. They don't "own" that directory. It exists for the very purpose of the administrator installing his own packages. The "danger" of installing to /usr/local is overstated and you should just ignore fink's stupid warnings.

      If it turns out that Gentoo/MacOS does install to a stupid non-standard directory, I'm going to be very unhappy.