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Gentoo Ricer Comparison
Dozix007 writes "The folks over at Funroll-Loops have created a funny comparison between the Ricer fad gripping the US, and Gentoo Linux. In a quote from the site 'Like the annoying teenager next door with a 90hp import sporting a 6 foot tall bolt-on wing, Gentoo users are proof that society is best served by roving gangs of armed vigilantes, dishing out swift, cold justice with baseball bats...'"
Jesus Christ, is there a /.er who hasn't been here? I've seen it linked dozens of times, just about any time there's a Gentoo story. Old news.
The website is a joke, don't take it so seriously.
Up tight morons who spend their lives getting so offended by these 'ricers'.
I couldn't give a rat's arse about these people. If they want to spend weeks getting an imagined 1% performance improvement then great, I'm quite happy to ignore them.
Seems like here we have a case where something is so good that people start to downplay it. I find gentoo to be a great distribution, while some people might say they are 1337 by installing it, its a rather simple installation where you just follow the instructions. And I love it because of how minimalistic it is, I install what I want and nothing that I don't want. That's what I love about gentoo!
... or does entire article deserve a -5 for Troll, and Flamebait? This isn't informative, enlightening, or particularily funny whatsoever. Slashdot is supposed to be 'News for nerds. Stuff that matters.' What some kids do in their spare time to flip off an entire community of hackers, users, and people has no place on a site like this. I've learned more about Linux hanging around in #gentoo and being apart of the forums these short six months than I have anywhere else in the last two years.
My morale with this is the same when playing Unreal Tournament - Don't bash the newbies. We were all newbies once.
ahh, this is golden:
To me, an extra 0.1% performance increase, even if I am only imagining it to be faster, is certainly worth one day a week recompiling all of the latest packages from source code. Even if I do occasionally get my CFLAGS in a muddle! I think I speak for Slashdot when I say that Gentoo is the only sane option for getting the most from your hardware!
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I saw one of those oversized wings on a 2002 Mustang today. Nice car, kept clean, but with this ragged looking elevated flap marring the back like a vast plastic hangnail. It wasn't even the same color. I swear, I wanted to make a citizen's arrest. Then I noticed it was a V6, so I let the loser off with a warning.
--- Ban humanity.
...I am a Gentoo user and fan.
/etc/inittab file.
Gentoo is not necessarily good because of the product, but in large part because of the process. When you finish doing a stage whatever (especially 1) install, you end up learning an awful lot about Linux that someone that drops in a SuSe/RedHat/Fedora Core/whatever disk doesn't know. Most experienced Linux users will see that a user that understands whats going on under the hood will fare better than one who gives you a thousand yard stare when you mention the
I think the benefits of compiling from source on everything are varied at best, and only sometimes outweighed by the time necessary to do it. That said, in some cases it is a good thing - if used correctly, the USE flags are nifty and let you compile without support for features you don't need. This can be quite useful, and provide a modest speed up in some cases.
Ricers aside, Gentoo provides a superb package management system in the spirit of apt/yum, and is also source based. It boosts users with moderate knowledge level to a better understanding of the architecture of a Linux system, and this can lead to some absurd enthusiasm about the distro for the younger/more impressioanable types, but I take it much the same way I take any fanboy mentality: you'll see the upsides and the downsides as time goes on. I happen to think Gentoo is great on the whole, so I use it.
Its just as childish for the folks annoyed by the Gentoo zealots to turn around be be anti-Gentoo zealots, creating webpages and ranting on about how horrible a community it is. Stop by the forums and you'll see its a responsive, well informed group, the majority of whom are quite reasonable.
Well, I'm a Ricer and a Gentoo fan, you insensitive clod.
x-(
Okay, am kidding. I just drive a rickety old Toyota and use Windows ME.
You know, I don't want to be always be the politically correct one, but the term ricer has always seemed inappropriate when coming out of a non-asian person's mouth.
Now, it does so happen that many "ricers" are asian, that the practice probably originated in west-coast asian-american subculture. It is likewise true that East Asians consume large amounts of rice, although this is not necessarily true of Asian Americans (many of whom are sadly about as out of touch with their culture of their ancestors as that white guy who says he's German-Irish-Italian).
But I guess it just seems crass to me to take a practice and associate it with the race that does it. It would be like calling Karaoke "Yellow Yodeling". Sure, it's funny, but I would imagine that for the vast majority of non-ricer Asian-Americans it might get tiring to constantly hear their ethnicity lampooned by non-asians who lack the sensitivity to seperate a culture from a steryotype.
But maybe that's just me. Personally, I wouldn't use this term.
After all, it really just is modding Asian imports. White americans have been modding American cars since the days of Henry Ford but we don't call them "potatoers" or whatever the staple white american food is.
Oh, I hear someone say, "Potatoes aren't the staple of white america! It's not the same!" Hey, did you know that in the vast majority of northern China, people don't eat rice? They eat mantou, I kind of bread, instead. Why? Because rice doesn't grow in subarctic climates.
Of course, they're all gooks and chinks to us, eh? Man I love ignorance.
It's just a collection of people saying stupid things on the the Gentoo forums. And for the record, I run Gentoo, but NOT for most of the reasons the people quoted say they do.
For some reason I've liked Portage much more than Debian's apt-get, whatever Red Hat uses (the name escapes me now) is just broken, and as for the others, just about none of their package management systems are nearly as good as Debian/Gentoo's, so I won't be touching them for a while. For instance, I'd like to see a list of packages that need updating without going through all of them.
Gentoo's Bugzilla (mainly for ebuilds) is awesome. Just about every time I've had a problem, I can find a solution there. Yes, I'm saying that Gentoo's not perfect. It isn't. But at least I know it's getting better. Not sure if Debian has one, but the mailing lists sure are a pain to sift through...
Speed? I don't care. I've got a working system (AXP 2100+/512mb DDR333) right now. Sure, I have to wait for the new things I get, but I'd rather "emerge mplayer" instead of hunting for the binaries.
Sure, you might say "Go back to Debian". I'm used to Gentoo now, though. I might give it a try again if I'm given a good enough reason, though. I sure as hell hope the installer isn't as bad now as it used to be, though.
Have you been to a generic techie forum where gentoo zealots (different from regular gentoo users) abound?
It's hilarious. People will discuss opt flags like it's gospel when they don't even know what they mean or do.
Drive a rickety old toyota and use winme, eh?
So do most ricers. *badda bing!*
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Its not what distro you use. As I said I like debian. But stable is not a good desktop distro so I try out ubuntu and love it. Gentoo is awesome because it used one of the best things about BSD (source based distribution) to make linux better. OSS is more about a marketplace of ideas, where projects tinker. Just because someone likes gentoo dosent make them a performance whore, and just because someone likes distro X it dosent mean anything except that they are a member of the communtiy and are trying to do the best with the options that they are given. Lets not let our community be destroyed by idiots on websites or idiots on message boards.
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
I use Gentoo Linux, and I'm anything from a hardcore user. I don't care about having the fastest most optimized packages. I use it because I find it the easiest distribution to configure, customize, and get working correctly. If I have a problem I can usually find an answer my searching. If not I can just ask a question on the forums. The Gentoo community is the friendliest, most responsive there is. I've never seen a touch of the inferred elitismm, and their accomplisments are amazing.
I studied math in school, and the seemingly unimportant achievements of Gentoo users which they enjoy remind me of the satisfaction I got out of every proof I completed. They may seem unimportant and pointless to those not in the field. But real satisfaction and results follow from these activities.
There are always people who can not understand intellectual achivement. But I had expected better of slashdot. I suppose I was naively mistaken.
You might as well check out the Gentoo OPTIMIZBATION Guide http://timedoctor.org/index.php?id=2183
White americans have been modding American cars since the days of Henry Ford but we don't call them "potatoers" or whatever the staple white american food is.
According to american culture, at least, those whiteys would be referred to as "greasemonkeys", "gearheads", "rodders", etc. And, again according to American culture, it's becoming known as "pimping out" the car. Which is of course, very politically correct itself. Selling women as a commondity == improving a car.
Hey, did you know that in the vast majority of northern China, people don't eat rice?
Hey, did you know that the vast majority of Asian cars aren't from China? What the hell does that really have to do with anything? Do you even know where the motorsport slang term "rice" comes from?
Of course, they're all gooks and chinks to us, eh?
From the way you're flaming on, I am guessing you don't.
It came from some performance bike racers in Japan mixing their standard fuel with alcohol to help boost power in the small engines at high RPM. Some of them used alcohol distilled from rice wine, and thus caught the nickname of "rice burners". Because that's literally what they were doing. This was way more common 15 -20 years ago, these days it's fallen out of vogue as modern racing fuel mixtures either have methanol in them already, or are formulated to not need it.
Man I love ignorance.
To each their own. You certainly do seem to indulge in it, so...
It's easy to point and laugh at the neighborhood kid with a Neon equipped with spoilers and excessive stickers (or in this case, a computer with overclocked CPUs and case windows), but really, what's the point?
... but bitching about someone's hobby, which they do for fun, is about as lame as you can get.
... so what's the fuss about?
Now, I can understand complaining about overly loud stereos booming down the street in the wee hours of the morning
Yeah, it may be "illogical." Yeah, it may be "a waste of time and money." But it's not your time, not your money, and quite obviously not your interest
Gentoo of course has all the header files as everything is compiled from source. this doesn't make it faster, it just makes it a lot easier to install a new app wich hasn't yet made it into an rpm.
Yes mandrake is easy to use, far easier to use in fact then windows thanks to its very nice installer BUT it was so easy to use that I could learn all kinds of advanced stuff on it. Like compiling my own kernel to take advantage of my own hardware. I have a rather crappy Asus Dual P3 wich for some reason never works in dual mode with stock kernels. I always have to mess around with boot parameters until I roll my own.
If you then roll your own php and mysql because you want to see the beta's and be prepared with knowing the new features when they reach production well. It is just a short step to just roll your own.
There are probably other distros out there that I could use but I will probably never go back to RPM, it is nice if you never want to bother with compiling but to me that is not a bother.
But making harmless and not so harmless fun of other distros is all part of the fun of using linux. There is so much choice available and people have this in build need to defend their own choice that conflict is inevitable. Some people take it to far but that is just part of it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Probably one of the saddest developments in America in the last few decades is the way "abuse humor" has replaced the real thing -- more and more seems to be about making fun of other people, putting them down, and claiming this is funny. I realize that insulting people is easier than displaying real talent, but still. It is sad to me as an American that the best English-language comedians by far and wide today seem to be Brits, while we're paying "shock jocks" milions to spew garbage that wouldn't be allowed on any well-run playground.
What is even more depressing is the complete lack of self-irony in these pieces. Take Monty Python's song "Never Be Rude To An Arab", where the singer makes fun of himself more than anybody else -- these are the masters, go snivel at their feet. "Fawlty Towers" has an episode where all they do is make fun of Germans ("Never mention the war!") but it is done so well that even my German friends can laugh, because John Cleese makes such a complete ass out of himself, too. Eddie Murphy has lots of abusive humor in his stand-up pieces, but he is the first to make poke fun of himself. At least the guy from Jackass is sticking his own tongue in drainage pipes.
And sorry, I think "ricer" is a racest term. Obviously the Slashdot editors and a lot of people here don't agree, but I was pretty suprised to see this article promoted here. Hope they don't get into trouble with OSTG.
So: It is not funny, it offers no insight, and uses racist language for what seems to be its own sake. Even if it has the word "Gentoo" in it and it is a slow day, I fail to see what this is doing on the front page of Slashdot. Me, I'll stick with reruns of the Soviet Russia jokes, and -- and mod the original article down as "troll".
Gentoo Sparc is the only sparc distro that is up2date on the sparc cpu/platform. SuSE/Redhat dropped support. :(
So if you want Linux on your Sparc machine, Gentoo has the most up2date desktop and packages.
1. Spot a funny website in the previous Slashdot frontpage funny story. Thanks to the Slashdot moderation system, it is easy finding one, since they are usually moderated +5, Funny.
2. Send your "scoop" to Slashdot.
3. Karma profit!
Well yeah -- if you remember how often one Slashdotter's flamebait is often another's plain truth. In this case, the point of comparison is the Ricer -- an exercise in pure technological ego. A lot of people (including me) find that sort of thing supremely irritating. But the suggestion that many Linux diehards have the same mentality is not far off the mark. Linux nerds (and other kinds of techno-nerds as well) often seem to like the technology for its own sake. Nothing wrong with that, but that means accepting that the picture the nerd projects to the outside world is just a little weird. Worth remembering, no matter what drum you march to.
There is one value of Gentoo that I think many people tend to overlook. While many seem to focus on Gentoo's ability to let the user specify optimization flags and build a system from scratch for performance reasons, I adore Gentoo's ability to use packages that are plainly newer than what most other distributions could hope to offer, especially with what one can get from using breakmygentoo's packages.
Unlike loading my system with an absurd quantity optimization flags, I run my system with just a stable "-O -g." This has allowed me to commit a large number of very complete bug reports--and I mean over one hundred--for many projects--e.g., Gnome, Mozilla, and KDE--in the past year-and-a-half.
What's more is this: I cannot begin to describe how annoying it is on standard, binary-package distributions to go about using and developing for newer software suites and manually having to deal with bleeding-edge dependencies that these distros would never include end up including for a few months, due to their instability.
I am fine with their potential instability on Gentoo; at least I do not have to go about uninstalling nearly all of distro's Gnome's dependencies and rebuilding them from scratch and dealing with very strange conflicts between the distro's older components and the manually installed newer packages.
If I am not believed, wait two months from now, take a fresh Debian or Fedora install, and attempt to compile the development version of Gnome against it without seriously damaging or fudging the distro's packaging mechanism and dependency system. I can attest that this is one virtue that Gentoo has over nearly every distribution that I have used, in that it minimizes the aforementioned dependency and package hell; and believe me: I have used a wide variety of distros in the past seven years, and only Gentoo has pleased me so well. Granted Gentoo does have its problems, but I have not stuck with a single distribution like it for such a long time, since I had been using Slackware and god-forbid, FreeBSD.
On another note, if some want to claim that the packages contained in Gentoo's portage tree are not bleeding edge, I can say that I personally maintain a rather large, manually created portage overlay that contains numerous unofficial packages. The fact that these packages can be compiled uniformally, installed consistently, and removed with ease is wonderful and something that I would dare not do with another distribution.
Even the Politburo concurs with Process of Elimination http://process-of-elimination.net
If so... time it.
I've gone to great lengths and benchmarks to establish whether or not gcc per-processor optimizations are actually as good as ricers (you) say they are, and concluded that the difference is so small only a select few synthetic benches will really benefit. The biggest and only consistent improvement to performance is use of -O1 instead of -O0. Everything else is such a small difference that it's hardly worth reading the manpage for, let alone typing in every time you set up a box.
Here, example of a code and Makefile I wrote to test gcc's optimization, results:
dave@thor inst $ make
-O: 612 cycles
-O2: 615 cycles
-O3: 609 cycles
-O3 -march=pentium4 -mfpmath=sse -fomit-frame-pointer -ffast-math: 626 cycles
(Cycles is how many times it repeated a certain function in a fine-grained time frame) There you are. -O3 is slower than -O2, -O2 is only very very slightly faster than -O (and if you re-run, half the time it will be slower), and a "k-l33t cFlaGz omghax" is only a notch faster than those. This is one of the sources I developed which benefits the [b]most[/b] from this tweaking! In a real-world application it makes so little difference it's not worth recompiling anyway. "hella faster" my ass. You're better off overclocking or something.
Gentoo Is Rice. You are a ricer. You got owned by someone who bothers measuring things. HAND.
(Besides, USE is the real advantage of Gentoo, the sooner you take that more seriously the better your life will be)
Sam ty sig.
Maybe you've just never talked to a Gentoo user before.....
Do you realize that taking a single code for measuring the optimization performance is the stupidest thing on earth ? I've coded a few big mathematical projects, and -O3 gives a big *boost*, the code can run two to three times faster. Pickup random projects, compile then and measure. Not some fucking code with only *612* cycles. ***The optimization does *nothing* on small code bases***.
Yes, read the explanation, 'cycles' as in how many times the function was repeated. Not as in CPU cycles.
And I have tried this on many codes, big and small, real-world and synthetic, mine and popular. I don't know what 'big boost' you're talking about - you realise -O3 only adds two relatively minor flags over -O2, right? Read the manpage, and failing that, the source. I have.
And where are your figures?
Sam ty sig.
I contend that it is worth criticising the site by making the distinction that the real enemy is not the aspiring ignorant but ignorance itself. A culture sophisticated enough to invent the term "Newby", "FAQ" and "HowTo" realy should have more tolerance towards aspiring newcommers. You can argue for intolerance but only if you have a concrete reason that improves upon "They annoy me becase they are not as well informed as me". So yes, babys first words are funny, but we dont laugh at baby for trying - or as I should point out in fairness - we dont laugh at them in public, and this web site is as public as it gets.
I'm also mindfull of an idea I once heard that software should be freely available to anybody who finds a use for it as expressed by some of the more political philosophies of the open software movement. It strikes me that giving a potential "ricer" the ability to do very clever things with software despite very little knowledge is a pretty powerfull expression of the idea "freely available". So I have no problem with the idea of Gentoo itself, particularly as its widespread use probably expands the pool of beta testers for new software considerably.
Being L33t with Gentoo is considerably more useful to society than being a gang member despite the similarity of speech and behaviour of the two groups. So I for one wish the very best of luck to all these people we are currently laughing at.
I say let them in and the more the merrier.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
In a real-world application it makes so little difference it's not worth recompiling anyway.
I am not a developer with my own optimization test code. I am a user with an extraordinary real-life requirement to perform a certain application as fast as I possibly can. It has been my job to come up with performance alternatives over the past few months, and I have professionally evaluated Windows, Red Hat, Mandrake, and Gentoo in a lab environment with code that actually does something. I have measured output performance to the millisecond and have more raw analysis data than I can back up to a DVD at the moment.
Gentoo (with -O3 and march=pentium4) significantly outperforms everything else. During run-to-failure testing, Gentoo held up 30% longer than Mandrake or Red Hat, and Windows never really showed up for the race.
The difference between -O1 and -O3 may certainly be rice (but I was able to determine that by reading the gcc docs), but Gentoo itself most certainly is not.
You forgot:
-type=R
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Simple: It doesn't. You're a user, good. Hell I use Gentoo too. I don't, however, claim that compiling from source makes it magically much faster ("hella faster", as the bright lad above pointed out) - sure, sometimes a bit faster, not enough to brag about though, certainly not enough to see with own eyes.
People seem to think I generalised by seeing all Gentoo users are ricers. This is not true. The grand majority appear to be, though, even many of the highly-respected users on forums, and developers aren't exceptions. These people give detailed tutorials on how to tweak a box without actually improving performance, but wasting a lot of time in the process. That's rice. Since they represent the user group which sets Gentoo apart from other communities, it can be said they are ambassadors for the system. Ergo, they are ricers, and their product is rice. Take it how you will, that's how it appears to be.
And I don't think anybody's arguing Gentoo makes a hardcore desktop. I'm not flaming the system, the users are what piss me off, and they're very vocal.
Sam ty sig.