Posted by
timothy
on from the sane-versioning-system-is-a-plus dept.
Dreadlord writes "Gentoo has released 2004.3 for x86, amd64, hppa, ppc, sparc, and an initial release for ppc64. You can read the information page, the changelog, or go straight to the mirrors, or better yet, the torrents."
Re:Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
BlindSpy
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· Score: 5, Informative
these are only the versions of the live CD. Your actual Gentoo install has no version number because its always the latest. So regardless if you used 2004.0 or 2004.3 to install - you ultimately have the same version after you've completely installed.
-- Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
Re:Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You're obviously lying. If you were actually compiling 2004.2, it would still be compiling by now!
Re: Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
Black+Parrot
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· Score: 1
> So regardless if you used 2004.0 or 2004.3 to install - you ultimately have the same version after you've completely installed.
What about last time's switch to x.org ? Is there a reasonably easy to switch on an already installed system?
Yes. All you have to do (not in Gentoo at the moment, so forgive my lack of specifics) is change the make.profile symlink to the new profile (the one which corresponds to the liveCD release using x.org) and do an emerge -uvD world.
Likewise. However all jokes aside, it's still a pest because I always do an emerge world -UD any time I install Gentoo. Had I downloaded the 2004.3 livecd, many/most of these upgrades would be included in the stage 3 tarball
What makes it worse still is that this was done on a PIII-667.
Re:Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
Frymaster
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· Score: 3, Funny
What makes it worse still is that this was done on a PIII-667
i believe the minimum hardware requirements for gentoo are defined as "any machine capable of compiling the latest release in less time than the stated release period".
i believe the minimum hardware requirements for gentoo are defined as "any machine capable of compiling the latest release in less time than the stated release period".
And I believe you can circumvent that by using distcc.
If you're paranoid that it will break something, use quickpkg to make a package of your existing install first, and build a binary package of xorg using emerge -b, so you can switch back and forth until you are satisfied.
Re:Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
daybyter
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· Score: 2, Interesting
No need to complain. I installed Gentoo on a 486/133, then on my P1/200 neighbourhood router and my next target is a P1/166 machine. My main problem is, that my x86 stage 1 seems to require a MMX processor, and the P1/200 is my only MMX capable chip here...:-(
Whats that you say, X is archaic, opaque, poorly documented and difficult to configure? Saying that sort of thing around here will have the X fanboys frothing at the mouth and posting three thousand word essays on why X isn't holding back Open Source on the desktop and it's all the fault of KDE/Gnome/the window manager/XFree86/the distibution/the graphics card manufacturers/you.
You can also use any remotely recent LiveCD with more recent stage tarballs. This doesn't work across architectures though, even ostensibly-compatible ones.
(I discovered these facts when I didn't want to wait for the 2004.2 AMD64 liveCD to download, but had perfectly good x86 2004.2 and AMD64 2004.0 liveCDs on hand. The sticking point for the x86 liveCD and AMD64 stage 3 tarball was the chroot step.)
-- Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.
Re:Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
Sweetshark
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· Score: 2, Informative
i believe the minimum hardware requirements for gentoo are defined as "any machine capable of compiling the latest release in less time than the stated release period".
And I believe you can circumvent that by using stage3+GRP.
Great stuff for the compiler junkies.... I personally think it is an obsessive compulsive disorder that eneds treatement.. I mean, why would you compile somehting? Did you write it? Did you modify it? Heck did you even read the source code? Granted, for somethings you probably played with the config because you saw an option that looked cool..
I think Gentoo is a big fat hairy waste of time, but that is the same as my opinion about soap-operas on tv.. you chose..
Me? I like a good solid binary distro that powers up out of the box, heck that is why we pay for OpenSource after years of pirating Microsnot right? LOL!!! What a flame..
Re:Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
jmcarson
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· Score: 1
Compiling when installing is optional. You can use the binary packages and have a Gentoo system up and running with X and Gnome or KDE in under 1 hour. RTFM
Re:Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I'd mod you up if I could, thanks for the info! I just downloaded 2004.2 and was about to start cursing until I read your post.
Re:Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
EvilGrin666
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· Score: 1
You will have to update your profile occasionally though. eg, my fileserver was still using the 1.4 profile which is now apparently depreciated. Just symlink/etc/make.profile to the 2004.3 like so:
substitute <arch> with your arch # rm/etc/make.profile # ln -s../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/<arch>/2004. 3/etc/make.profile
You need a program call xkeycaps to help save your key layout. It's on the net and although it's not available for Amd64 under portage the 32 bit version ran just fine the other day for me. Once you got your keys the way you like save them in an.xmodmap file and use xmodmap to update X11. Job sorted.
-- All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Makes sense. You were booted using an x86 kernel, which only understands the 32-bit x86 world. The amd64 stage3 tarball contains 64-bit binaries, and an x86 kernel has no idea what to do with those.
You probably could install it the other way around - booting off an amd64 CD and installing the x86 tarball. The amd64 kernel (assuming multilib is supported on the CD version) understands both archs and could install a 32bit x86 stage3 and run it. Of course, you'd still need an amd64 in order to pull this off (can't boot an amd64 kernel on an x86 chip).
Just remember, the amd64 is backwards compatible (with suitable configuration). The x86 is NOT forwards compatible...
>What makes it worse still is that this was done on a PIII-667.
I'll see your PIII-667, and I'll raise you my K6-3-400 and Celeron-333. (Mendocino - it has an L2.)
Compile time is only bad if you wait around and watch it. Otherwise just "nohup emerge -uD world &>20041115.lst &" and carry on with whatever you've been doing. Only hitch - leaving the system on for 48 hours solid so it can build OpenOffice. Normally I shut it down at night.
-- The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Re: Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
nospmiS+remoH
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· Score: 1
Theorem: In any/. discussion about Gentoo someone will make a comment (comment A) about how hard Gentoo is to install. Comment A will be followed by a comment (comment B) about a one or two line command to show how simple Gentoo really is. Then, following comment B, there will be 2 dozen or more short comments about a few little tweaks that really need to be done for the 'simple' stuff to work in comment B.
Disclaimer: I Have Gentoo installed and I a very big fan of Gentoo.
-- !hoD
Re:Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
daybyter
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· Score: 1
I'm currently searching 400+ MHz machines for several folks in the neighbourhood. Last machine I installed was a P3/450, 128MB ram, 6,4GB hd. I installed Gentoo, KDE 3.3, firefox. Total cost was less than 100 euros + about 62 euros for a d-link ap 900+ (required to connect to our neighbourhood net). Monthly online costs are 5,- flat.
My 57year old neighbour had never owned a PC before and after less than 2 weeks, she uses KMail for her mail correspondance and firefox to explore eBay. She has never seen Windows (ok, maybe on TV) and is more than happy with her purchase. I already have 2 friends of her, who want a similar PC.
I'm currently looking for a 64MB ram extension, but that's just because she wants to use OpenOffice 1.1.3 a bit more and it starts somewhat slow. Maybe I should just install KOffice.
Point is: Linux is a solution here. It's not a Win alternative, because Win licenses would be too expensive and would require much more expensive hardware. Many people here cannot afford new machines anymore, and access to the net becomes essential for job hunting etc.
If you have any spare machines around, install gentoo, add a cheap modem or any other net access and give them to someone in your area!
Most important: sit down with those folks and teach them the basics! Organize a free mail addy, explain Google to them, try to find any contacts (mailing with long lost relatives boosts the motivation extremely as an example) or help them with a personal homepage.
Before I forgot: thanks a lot to the Gentoo folks! We need the fastest software here, because our hardware is so slow. Compilation time is not such an issue, since most people are willing to wait another week, but once it's installed, the software must fly. Exactly, what Gentoo provides.
Re: Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
nadadogg
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· Score: 1
Addendum to previous statement: In any thread, anywhere on slashdot, add "on my gentoo box(en)" or "...switching to gentoo from windows" for extra positive moderation.
Disclaimer: I primarily run windows at home, but will be building a mythtv machine pretty soon, it will run either mandrake or ubuntu. At work it's 90% windows, 10 % redhat8/debian.
-- i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
I didn't even bother trying to put Gentoo on my Cyrix P150+ with 64MB. I'm slowly migrating those functions (+ new stuff) over to the Celeron machine, and then the old server will either be retired or turned into a tarpit.
-- The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Re: Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
th3d0ct0r
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· Score: 1
x.org is great!!!
yes... definitely do the quickpkg thing just to be sure
plus, if you dont want to be left without an X while compiling, i suggest you use following command:
that way your system will fully compile xorg, while you can still use xfree.
after it compiled you can then unmerge xfree and merge x.org manually
the fonts in xorg are really nice!
1. Gentoo is hard to install 2. Gentoo is in theory easy to use 2a. Using the easy-to-use features will almost never work 2b. Eventually (after 4 hours) the user will stumble on some obscure.conf file which has a setting wrong, thus fixing his problem. 4. Gentoo is not for the faint of heart
Disclaimer: I use Gentoo too. I love it, but it has very low JustWorks factor.
-- **This begins my ever-changing sig
We need a -1 RTFA moderation option!
**This concludes my ever-changing sig
Re: Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
opqdonut
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· Score: 1
The JustWorks factor of gentoo has been quite high for me. Gentoo has worked as smoothly as debian (and IMO debian is very smooth) and conffing everything with emacs has been kinda fun...
Then you, my friend, are a very lucky man. Maybe I'm just spoiled by the Fedora/Mandrake/Suse "detect hardware automatically and make conf files appropriately" philosophy. This, I think, is why people use Windows. If there is one good thing about Windows, it's that people don't have to tweak.conf files for hours to get something to work. (Although the USB wireless network adapter on the WinXP box in the other room of my house seems to disprove this)
-- **This begins my ever-changing sig
We need a -1 RTFA moderation option!
**This concludes my ever-changing sig
Re:Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Ahh. Well that explains why it'll complain your profile is out of date if it reflects 2004.1 values, when your actual packages are past the 2004.2 point.
I don't think you thought this through, did you?
Re: Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
Carnildo
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· Score: 1
I did it the other way:
install x.org uninstall xfree
Doing it like this let me keep using the computer while X was compiling.
-- "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Re: Obligatory Gentoo Joke
by
yo_tuco
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· Score: 1
No, not so easy...
On a ppc platform, I did:
# emerge -C xfree
# emerge xorg-x11
90 minutes later...
Error: Xcursor -- segmentation fault.
What gives? I'll hope there is a binary version out there.
The stage tarballs themselves, iirc, are pretty small. If you use stage 3 there should be enough to alllow you to emerge bittorrent if it isn't on the livecd already and then use it to get the GRP or whatever other CDs you want.
-- There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
No there isn't, to my knowledge. You can downloaded the stages using bittorrent and either burn them to a CD or store them on another partition. The stages themselves aren't particularly large files (relative to several CDs like other distros), so it wouldn't be that much help anyway.
Re:Just stressing..
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The point of BitTorrent is that people who have finished d/ling will leave the BT client open and help out others who still need some of the file.
How many people would be willing to leave the installer running for a few extra hours to help out the torrent? I doubt very many.
no. but you could just wget/fetch them from the ftp servers.
they include a mirror list, with the livecd's.
or you could just boot into knoppix, and do your must dos, like fdisk, etc.. and then format, mount, extract stages, configure, reboot ...and then build for the rest of the week;)
Anyone can seed the torrent, not just the people downloading it.
Instead of running 20 100mbit HTTP/FTP mirrors, run 20 100mbit HTTP/FTP mirrors that each seed the torrent adding 2gbit of bandwidth for everyone downloading.
-- Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive.
Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Re:Get them over with
by
PeterPumpkin
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· Score: 3, Informative
USE flags are very powerful - if and only if - you set them on a per package basis. If you just leave it to setting them globally like they suggest to you in the manual, you will forget/not realize something, screw it up and cause problems.
The USE flags are pretty straight forward when looking at them in the context of a particular package. Pass the -pv ([p]retend to not install the package yet, and [v]erbose to see what USE flags the package will do) option to emerge. Say you do emerge -pv kde. You will probably see that samba support is off by default! Big issues there if you need access to Windows network shares.
If you don't get what a USE flag means, you can always do a "less/usr/portage/profiles/use.desc" to get a description of most of them.
Re:Get them over with
by
Rellik66
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· Score: 0, Troll
hmm. but if you need to access window boxes, you probably want to access them from everything that offers samba-support and so you likely want to have samba-support build into everything that supports samba. So this sounds like a job for global useflags to me...
I recommend ufed to edit the useflags. nice ncurses-frontend. reading their description and turning them on/off on the same line:-)
-- bickerdyke
Re:Get them over with
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I have a MS Virtual PC running Gentoo....I 'R' t3h win! Now all I need is the Microsoft sponsorship decal on the side of my box to really have bragging rights! That might happen pretty soon, after I take the training wheels off...
Re:Get them over with
by
qtothemax
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· Score: 2, Informative
That joke is so damn old. I installed gentoo on my p3 900 laptop in 2 days, including X and KDE and firefox. Did it from knoppix, so I had a fully functional system the whole time it was working. Also, theres binaries for a lot of big packages, so I probably could have done it in a couple hours if I really felt like it. Think of a new joke already.
Re:Get them over with
by
NotoriousQ
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· Score: 2, Informative
If you have time, you might consider emerging ufed, and going through ALL (including local) flags, deciding whether you need it or not. Gives an ok curses interface for setting them. Careful not to accidentally exit without saving -- a common problem.
-- badness 10000
Re:Get them over with
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You forgot the small, but growing, number of people who have realized that Gentoo is following in the path of BSD, the path to oblivion.
If you don't get what a USE flag means, you can always do a "less/usr/portage/profiles/use.desc" to get a description of most of them.
If you emerge gentoolkit, you can also run "equery uses packagename", which brings up a list of USE flags for that package and their descriptions. For some reason, one or two USE flags for that package might not be listed tho...
Also, there's another file, that has the descriptions of the less-common USE flags:/usr/portage/profiles/use.local.desc -- if it's not in use.desc, it's in this one.
And I wholeheartedly agree about not setting USE flags globally. I've been setting the USE flags on the command line for each emerge for months now.
I will tell you how it works in 4 weeks when it is done emerging...
I know it is supposed to be a joke but just to clear some air.. you can very well install gentoo using the 3rd stage and grp. You can then emerge -uD world to get everything recompiled. Atleast this way you are not forced to watch the compile output scroll by in a tty and you can surf the net chat on irc or whatever you do normally, while the system is compiling.
You end up recompiling the whole system anyway, so whats the point in doing it the bootstrap way when you can just upgrade your system while watching pretty widgets?
-- [ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
Re:Get them over with
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
USE flags are very powerful - if and only if - you set them on a per package basis.
However, there are a couple that are only safe to use if you set them system-wide (Xprint was one, until its behaviour got changed to work more nicely with Firefox binaries). What happens when a library doesn't get built because a USE flag isn't enabled in one package, but you then enable the same USE flag in another package, which causes it to link to said non-existant library? I'd say that setting them per-package is more likely to make you forget/not realise something, and screw up.
For example, the first application that is emerged with USE="mysql" will also build mysql and it will permanently be on the system until you unmerge it youself. You can tell some apps not to link against it, but mysql would still be on the system for those that need it.
The way people break Gentoo is usually by giving USE flags on the commandline with emerge instead of adding them to the correct configuration file. This causes random, undocumented USE flags that are then changed when you upgrade. Upgrades read the configuration and if it isn't there, it uses the defaults.
The other common way to breakage is by unmerging something without rebuilding all the things that depend on that lib/app. There is a command in Gentoolkit that does this for you and IMHO it should be standard instead of an extra component.
The biggest failing with Gentoo documentation is informing people how to set USE flags on the commandline PERIOD. There is a configuration file to tweak to get the same effect as any commandline (yes, even on a per app basis), plus you can upgrade your system safely from then on.
-- If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
I think I know how to break a Gentoo system, thanks. One of those ways is setting USE / ACCEPT_KEYWORDS on the commandline. Another is being careless with unmerge / depclean. Another is being overly reckless with per-package USE flags.
I'm not talking about USE=mysql bringing in mysql as a dependency. I'm talking about the xorg-x11 ebuild building the Xprint server code only if xprint is in USE. The behaviour of xprint has changed slightly recently, so it might have been fixed now, but building a client app with USE=xprint and the server without was easy breakage.
I know better than most how portage works, and it's quite possible to break things with per-package USE, at least until the new dep resolver comes around with the ability to depend on a use flag being enabled in a particular package.
You realize the 'joke' is an exaggeration used to point out how long it takes to install/update Gentoo, compared to binary distributions and Windows/MacOS. You verify this fact yourself: I installed gentoo on my p3 900 laptop in 2 days.
Just curious...but isn't something giving a curses interface supposed to be making it EASIER for the end user? If that is the case, then how come accidentially exiting without saving is a common problem?
I'd venture that this is just symptomatic of Gentoo being for geeks and tinkerers and not really being ready to be a serious distro for people to use in a day to day basis.
I like the ideas behind Gentoo, but I do not like the current implementation of them nor how the end user is expected to configure them.
One example that comes to mind is selecting a kernel during Gentoo install. Last time I tried that I had something like 30+ different kernels to choose from and not all of them were very clear on just what the hell the differences were always.
USE flags is another big issue. If the Gentoo docs steers people towards using global USE flags, yet this results in not the smoothest experience for the end users then why hasn't the docs been updated to reflect this new thinking? Additionally because of USE flags you, the end user, now have to become a subject matter expert on what libraries and dependacies all programs you are ever going to complie/install on your system needs? This seems like asking a lot, even from knowledgeable geeks.
If someone could come up with reasonable way to talor USE flags without having to become a SME on library deps in all programs then that would be a boon to Gentoo.
But I have to say, installing OpenBSD takes usually less then 15 minutes and afterwards, installing packages from the ports works rather well. Why can't Gentoo mimic that kind of success?
how come accidentially exiting without saving is a common problem?
It is just a bug, where there is a button for exit that does not ask if you want to save settings. Also if you press escape, it will not ask you to save. A minor problem, that someone will fix at some point.
As for USE flags, global flags are a way to go. For example, I do not wish to have KDE on my laptop, yet I want to run KDE based programs. Setting -kde as my flag lets me compile those programs with QT support only. That way these programs will not start spouting kbuildsycoca processes and try to place icons on a bunch of toolbars that I do not have.
Local flags are useful for enabling very specific features. For example, do you want gnucash to be able to grab stock quotes? Set a flag.
For the most part, you can simply not set any flags. The gentoo system comes with a set of default flags set, such that the most common options are configured. If you have kde installed, you get a +kde flag etc. They are there for customization only.
Additionally because of USE flags you, the end user, now have to become a subject matter expert on what libraries and dependacies all programs you are ever going to complie/install on your system needs?
No. The gentoo system has a flag based dependency lists. If you do not have a kde flag, then kdelibs are not a dependency for any program that does not have to be a part of kde, etc.
One example that comes to mind is selecting a kernel during Gentoo install. Last time I tried that I had something like 30+ different kernels to choose from and not all of them were very clear on just what the hell the differences were always.
As far as kernels go, choice is not bad. All these packages are, are just kernels with different patchsets. If you do not know how to pick one, chose the one that the manual recommends. It is not that hard.
Meanwhile my gaming-sources come with the patches that I want without me having to look for them. Other distros simply do not have it.
But I have to say, installing OpenBSD takes usually less then 15 minutes and afterwards, installing packages from the ports works rather well. Why can't Gentoo mimic that kind of success?
Assuming you know the partitioning you want, the complete gentoo install takes less than 15 minutes too. Simply grab stage3 system and unzip it on your root partition. Grab the kernel and bootloader. run the gen-kernel and then the bootloader. You are done. The most time consuming step is compiling the kernel.
So to completely answer your question, Gentoo is a success. It is not a success for everyone. It is expected that you know the system to use it functionally, but a system will work flawlessly even if you do not understand how use flags will change your system.
I am sure some will immediately post the "gentoo is rice" link underneath. Just to preemptively answer that question, I will say that gentoo is anything you want it to be. It is a customizer's distro. You want to try to gain a possible speed improvement by using compiler flags, go ahead. You want to not have a single kde binding, even in kde programs, go ahead. Best of all you do not have to break the system to do it, or spend forever trying.
Suppose you want debian to have a different kernel, that continues to be under package managers regulation...well then I hope you know your kpkg syntax. Want to run kstars, but without kde dependency (I am assuming it is possible with just QT), then it time to break out the source and build your own package. Gentoo is simply easier in this respect.
Does it gain you much? Not really. But some of us are perfectionists, or just simply like flexibility. Hence Gentoo is our choice.
(I still would not recommend it for the server though.)
So yes, Gentoo spends more time in package management because of compiling. So what? It's a choice! Get over it. If you don't like compiling all of your software, use a binary distro. I really fail to see the problem here.
Gentoo is not designed to fit all users, and the developers will be the first to tell you that.
Use whatever you like. Some people don't want or need the low-level control that Gentoo provides, or the rapid release process... and therefore Debian, Slack or Fedora is probably more appropriate for them. If that's you, then rock on with your binary distro. I suspect that most, if not all, Gentoo users don't really care. Someone else's OS choice is not for your benefit.
"(I still would not recommend it for the server though.)"
And that is my biggest issue with Gentoo. I have no problem with people being able to customize their distros to their hearts content, but for a server there has to be consistency and it has to install quickly!
I've seen the Gentoo is Rice link. I would say I agree with some parts of their argument.
However, I am sure there will be people who would say "But a Stage 3 install isn't REALLY optimized to the FULLEST extent possible! It's *gasp* suboptimal!"
I love to get the most performance out of my hardware just like most others, however I don't want to do it at the cost of excessive use of my own time spent waiting for things to complie or emerge.
As for your "minor bug". I don't know about you, but if I was in Word and selected "Exit" and my work had not been saved rectly I would be very pissed had the program not at the very least reminded me to save the current open file before exiting. The "minor bug" would also have been fixed right away. This kind of attitude about UI experience and bugs on Linux is the kind of thing that keeps it from taking over the MS desktop. Granted, you could make the excuse that its not an app like Word and its output isn't necessarily losing you X man hours of work to the luminiferious aether, but its still time wasted on the end users part.
Computers were supposed to make us more productive, not waste more of our time.
Now as far as the kernel choices go....I'm not in agreement with you on this point. At the time I last installed Gentoo this page: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-kernel.xml didn't seem to exist in the current state (which helps clear stuff up). But when you are in the install on the system itself you don't have anything more then a very short one line text description that doesnt do much to convey what the hell the differences are.
Which gets me to my main point. If you try to install Gentoo linux with just the User Guide printed out, it can be done, but there will be a lot of questions you can't fully research without a second machine lying around to do various searchs on Google to fully understand the answers to some of Gentoo's questions. For example, according to a page outside of the Gnetoo Users guide my old Pentium III 667 CPU is considered a Klamath PII CPU for Gentoo march compile time flags. This was something I had to bang my head against the wall on for a while until I finally found a third party site that had a list of optimize flags based on specific CPU archs.
It just seemed to me in the end to be a big waste of my time to gain a small percentage of performance. Maybe the process has gotten better since I last tried it but who knows. I use mostly OpenBSD and Debian Sarge now.
Those who want to optimize the machines to use all the flags, let them. For me I do not care. -O3 and -march are good enough for me (well -fomit-frame-pointer for x86). Those are the sane optimizations that produce visible gains. Anything else and you are possibly not even gaining the performance at all.
It is a minor bug because it is easy to fix, not because it is not annoying. If I though it was worth the time, I would fix it myself, it will take me a couple of hours from start to finish, but so far I do not care. I have fallen for it once, and now I do not even notice it. If I fall for it a second time, I will fix it and send the patch.
As far as the install argument goes, 2.5 years ago when I was a linux newbie, I followed the instructions and got the install the first time without any real problems. (2.5 years ago was the time when you assumed the sound would not work after initial setup). I have done it by simply following instructions on the CD. No problems. It even told me which kernel to emerge. No -- it did not give me the reasons for anything, but a newbie does not need reasons, he needs instructions.
In the end I use gentoo because it saves me time. The flexibility is the reason. Where in the other distros I would have to get something done my way, I would have to spend more time. To each his own.
-- badness 10000
Re:Get them over with
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"...but for a server there has to be consistency and it has to install quickly!"
Why the heck a server has to install quickly? Well, not quicker than a workstation, at any rate.
Usually, the servers can stand its installation being longer (sometimes weeks, even months!), what they can't stand is outtages, once in production, so once "launched" it must be rock solid.
That, by the way, is not the way Gentoo goes, so I won't consider it for servers neither.
Re:Get them over with
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Argh... The Gentoo Moderator Nazis have really come out in force here.
I mention the quick install requirement for a worst case scenario where hardware has failed...backup hardware has failed and you've just had to go out and buy new hardware onthe spot to get *something* back up ASAP. I consider it the Murphy's Law reasoning. Assume everything goes to hell and you have to build a server from scratch to fix an outage. Do you want to be waiting for crap to emerge or complile? No, you just want it to install and be quick to configure. Debian meets these requirements nicely. Gentoo is nice to play/learn/tweak on, but aggrivating as all hell for a server environment.
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
x.Draino.x
·
· Score: 3, Informative
emerge sync, then emerge --update world
done. no need to download a new iso.
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
Aneurysm9
·
· Score: 1
so just link/etc/make.profile to the new profile in/usr/portage/profiles and emerge -uD world. It's not like you have to recompile the entire system from stage1.
-- There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
mrchaotica
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Nice troll. I'm sure with you as his guide, he'll have much fun reinstalling and then ending up with THE EXACT SAME SOFTWARE!
--
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The plan is to start doing 2 releases per year, rather than 4. This will allow the devs more time to implement changes and fix bugs. Apparently the new cycle starts 2005.0 (The release that will likely also have an installer of some kind).
This is insightful, and the parent was funny? I'm sooo confused.
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
ScytheBlade1
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Good job not RTFA'ing people. If you'll note, he was on an AMD64, and in this release, they switch to a diff compiler, gcc 3.4. I know that it has the same software, so quit telling me that.
A different compiler though for a stage one might actually mean something:P
What I wish Gentoo had
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
It's been awhile since I used gentoo-- the computer I had it installed on physically broke a few months ago-- but the thing I really wished for when I last used it was some sort of way to figure out, when you've installed a package, what is the first thing you do to make it work? Like, some sort of emerge info packagename command. I would install ircd and go "okay, i have ircd installed on my computer... now what? is it configured for me? is it enabled?" and not have any idea what to do except try to poke through the only-sometimes-relevant gzipped files in/usr/doc or whereever.
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Yeah, about that: There's only manpages for commands (well, most of them, if not all), not package names. One of my main complaints was sometimes that after installing a package for some program I'd find that the executable, like the command I was supposed to type in, for that program was something completely unexpected and not the name of the package, and I couldn't just look up the manpage because the manpage was under the name of the executable.
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
PeterPumpkin
·
· Score: 1
Usually what you do is blindly try "man ircd" at the terminal prompt, for example, or if that doesn't work, go to packages.gentoo.org , type in the package name, follow the homepage link, and find instructions there.
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
timeOday
·
· Score: 1
Another thing to try is qpkg -l . This lists the files in the package, so you can pick out any man pages or other docs. If nothing else you can see what binaries were installed and try running them with -h.
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
jesterzog
·
· Score: 1
Doesn't Gentoo manage something like a/usr/share/doc/package-name/ directory?
At least, that's often the first place I look after installing a Debian package. It's just the upstream documentation and readme files, as well as any distro-related documentation.
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Gentoo does have this, but reading documentation is no fun when you can grep in the qpkg -l output;-)
Actually, I just scroll up to the emerge output and pick the/usr/bin/.. name from there.
-- Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
NotoriousQ
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Most packages that have user-based postinstalls will print out a message after they complete the install with instructions on what to do.
A good example is GAIM: which prints out a giant message that tells you not to seek help in #gaim for fear of ridicule.
For the packages that do not have instructions, then if it is a/etc/init.d starting package, there is probably a config file in/etc/conf.d. In most case you can always assume there is a default configuration that comes with the package (if one can exist) is going to be used. The program is never started, or set up to start at boot for you.
Yeah, it can be better, but it is not horrible. The only thing that I have had problem figuring out what to do was kismet -- but that is due to poor drivers for my card.
-- badness 10000
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
BoldAndBusted
·
· Score: 1
Hmm... How about this: You could go to The Web-ified Gentoo Package Database . Next, search for "ircd" or whatever the package is you wish to use. Then click "Homepage". Read that application's docs available on the upstream developers web site. Then, if the default config is ok, "/etc/init.d/ircd start". Hint: Gentoo devs generally create a config that is "average" and "enough to get the application running it it's most common secure configuration."
That's what the homepage and documentation of that package is for.
Spamming the console with duplicate information just desensitizes people to information.
Portage is a CLI tool executing batch processes, it usually installs/upgrades many packages in one go. If I was installing koffice (and did not have kde before) - I would get loads of documentation for my dependencies too. Probably too much. Not exactly helpfull.
Last time I checked, no other command line package managers had such a feature (at least none I've used). Some gui tools may, or may not, have that type of feature.
AFAIK most packages in gentoo have a basic default config on install.
IMHO the problem arises when people install random packages with interesting names out of the blue - just because they're in/usr/portage. (Who? ME?)
So it seems to me that a GUI frontend for portage would be better suited for that type of problem. Such a frontend could handle both information about what the program is/does, and postinstallation information. (A port of synaptic perhaps?)
-- Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
Christopheles
·
· Score: 0
Besides the post-install messages that have been mentioned, I often just use qpkg -l to find the files belonging to it, this'll show you the binaries and init scripts and config files.
The "problem" with this is when you do an emerge world and 30 packages go zipping by. Maybe you didn't realize a few would be installed, and now you have no idea.
Of course, you can dump all that output into a file, but if you forget... tough noogies.
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Half the time, you don't know what command to run, so looking for the man page is near-impossible. (I know, it shows the binaries installed, but oftentimes that flies off the screen, or is way way too much stuff to process.) Really, all I want is something that prints at the end, a three line summary that explains what to do.
For me, this is only an issue with maybe one out of ten packages, but the frustratration makes up for the infrequency.
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
fiksardas
·
· Score: 1
grep LOG/etc/make.conf # PORT_LOGDIR is the location where portage will store all the logs it PORT_LOGDIR=/var/log/portage
you can see all meseges there;-)
Re:What I wish Gentoo had
by
LearnToSpell
·
· Score: 1
I know it's a troll, but just in case people are curious, look for GRP.
What is the Gentoo Reference Platform?
The Gentoo Reference Platform, from now on abbreviated to GRP, is a snapshot of prebuilt packages users (that means you!) can install during the installation of Gentoo to speed up the installation process. The GRP consists of all packages required to have a fully functional Gentoo installation. They are not just the ones you need to have a base installation up to speed in no time, but all lengthier builds (such as KDE, xorg-x11, GNOME, OpenOffice, Mozilla,...) are available as GRP packages too.
Unless you use it for a networkless install (i.e. Stage3+GRP), whenever you install Gentoo you will download stage tarball(s) from the internet, so they will always be pretty much the newest available. In fact, the only real reaons I see to use newer LiveCDs is better hardware support and newer versions of things on the LiveCD (like links2 and irssi). And for those who already have Gentoo installed, you do not need to "upgrade" to 2004.3: a simple `emerge --sync && emerge -uD world` will upgrade everything you have installed and all the dependencies required therein.
Someone's got to say it
by
Stevyn
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Before all the dumb jokes start, here's what this means:
If you want to install Gentoo for the first time, you can download a bunch of precompiled packages and complete an installation in a few hours or so, probably less.
If you already have Gentoo on your system, this won't mean much since you can update the everything by with the command(s) "#emerge sync; emerge -uDp world"
This does not mean everyone with Gentoo is going to be compiling for days. You're still stuck with us for a while.
If you want to install Gentoo for the first time, you can download a bunch of precompiled packages and complete an installation in a few hours or so, probably less.
I hope they fixed the problem with the AMD64 release where some packages were missing on the package-cd: I tried to do a network-less install, but in the end I needed internet-connectivity after all.
Re:Someone's got to say it
by
nephlim
·
· Score: 1
Just to clarify: you still need to run
emerge sync
before running
emerge -Duav world
to insure that you have the latest packages from gentoo.
Re:Someone's got to say it
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
the --ask switch is friendlier to the server if you intend to install anyways, as you only calculate dependancies once:-D The -s flag is nice if you're just searching for a package by name, too.
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
Aneurysm9
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Not really, I did that a few months back when I switched to gcc34 and did emerge -e world, didn't notice much difference. Just keep gcc33 around and eventually most packages will recompile during the normal update process with gcc34. Now, I'm not using an AMD64 though, so you have to decide whether whatever improvements have been made in gcc34 are worth doing it all over again.
-- There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Why announce new Gentoo releases??
by
riprjak
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Since I could install from 1.2 and after my emerge sync emerge world at the end would be as up to date as someone who used 2004.3.
Gentoo linux simply does not, now or ever, warrant release notification. It is released and will remain so; up to date today, regardless. This is why I choose it...
However, release announces are no better that SCO stories, redundant and old news.
just my $0.02.
err! jak
Re:Why announce new Gentoo releases??
by
micromoog
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This isn't exactly true, particularly with respect to profiles (which dictate things like which packages are system packages). Read section 2 here.
And, of course, release notices are a form of marketing, as with all software.
Re:Why announce new Gentoo releases??
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
The recently conducted poll of Gentoo users indicates that most of them do want regular releases. I'll leave you to ponder why that may be, or not.
Re:Why announce new Gentoo releases??
by
Ozric
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You might want to relink your/etc/make.profile to they correct 2004.3 for your platform, as well.
oz
Re:Why announce new Gentoo releases??
by
MooseGuy529
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Gentoo does warrant release notifications.
The older your LiveCD gets, the older its packages are and the more stuff needs to be recompiled for the final system. An older version also has worse hardware compatibility. Lastly, for people who use binary packages, an out-of-date install CD makes binary packages worthless, as you have to compile new versions of most packages.
--
Tired of free iPod sigs? Subscribe to my blacklist
Re:Why announce new Gentoo releases??
by
RichDice
·
· Score: 1
Since I could install from 1.2 and after my emerge sync emerge world at the end would be as up to date as someone who used 2004.3.
For me, the helpfulness of a new release is that the installer aspect of it is updated with new information, new hardware configs, etc. (No, I don't install from Stage 1, even if that would make a difference. That's just stupid.)
I happen to work on a laptop that is the Linux Machine from Hell. I'm not sure if it's just that the Dell Inspiron 600M as a line is Linux-unfriendly or if I just happened to luck out and get the cursed one, but basically nothing on this computer works right. (Built-in wireless, sound, PCMCIA, on-board ethernet... it's all shite.) Any given distro that I've installed -- and I've installed a score at least -- manages to get most things working, but not everything. I've tried out 3 different Gentoo releases, and each one got more things right than the last, but it didn't work all the way even with 2004.2. Maybe I'll have better luck with this one once I get around to trying to install to it.
I really like the Gentoo installation procedure. Very Slackware circa 1994.:-) [Yes, I have been doing the Linux thing since then.]
Cheers,
Richard
Re:Why announce new Gentoo releases??
by
nephlim
·
· Score: 1
While I agree with the parent poster in saying that you will always be up to date (as often as you run emerge sync; emerge -Duav world) I don't agree with the poster in saying that the releases don't deserve a place on the front page. The reasons that the releases are important is two fold: 1. Installing a new system. While true that you could start from an earlier edition of a live cd and emerge the updates, most likely it will take you a significantly more time to update your system than it would if you had started from a newer version of the LiveCD. 2. The LiveCD team is always improving on hardware recongnition and ease of installation (though allot of people think that the installation still needs to be improved). What might not work with an earlier LiveCD may work with a current one.
Re:Why announce new Gentoo releases??
by
brix
·
· Score: 1
Thank you - Very informative link. I'd already updated the profiles to 2004.3 based on the recommendation of one of my portage upgrades last night, but I was curious about the structure and use of profiles. This cleared it up.
Re:Why announce new Gentoo releases??
by
MrNemesis
·
· Score: 1
There are some advantages to the new release ISO's - almost entirely due to hardware support.
The Gentoo ISO's run pretty cutting-edge kernels, so you've got support for XYZ hardware as soon as the CD has booted. If, for instance, you want to install onto a 3ware 9500 SATA RAID card, you won't be able to do this with a 1.2 ISO, since the drivers weren't added to the kernel until 2.6.8.1. Same story for an awful lot of other hardware (SATA support, NIC's, that kinda thing). Bootstrapping a system from an installer that doesn't support your hardware is a complete PITA, even with the fairly complete dev environment the gentoo liveCD's give you.
I agree on the "this isn't really news" though. It might be worth a mention when the installation process gains support for a brand new piece of hardware that's had everyone putting off installing Linux, but for most people the gentoo updates are cosmetic.
Yeah, you know, now that you mention it, it also looks kinda like this one
Jiminy Krikes!!!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Did you see that version number?!? These guys are WAY ahead of the others!
Re:And they still don't have an installer
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Haha, measure of quality is whether there's a slick installer that'll do everything for you.
If you can't handle installing Linux on your own, go pay Microsoft a couple hundred bucks. They've got a nice installer for Windows for you to use.
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Man I'm just finishing up a 2004.2 installation tonight as well. In my case, I had some trouble getting everything running because I was installing onto a SATA drive and the 2.6.7 (I think...) kernel on the LiveCD didn't have the libata driver included (or something like that...). Does anyone know what kernel version is on the 2004.3 disc? If it's got 2.6.9, it sounds like my life could have been slightly easier if I waited one more day!
-Mark
Just finished installin 2004.2
by
beyonddeath
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
I literally just got 2004.2 running on my new dual opteron system today, is there an easy way to update my system (i'd imagine emerge can do it?)
Thanks
Re:Just finished installin 2004.2
by
nephlim
·
· Score: 1
As someone has already pointed out, a better way is
emerge sync && emerge -uDav world
That way emerge doesn't have to caculate the dependencies again (because you should always see what emerge is about to do before upgrading) and you get to see how big the updates are before downloading them.
"--deep (-D)
When used in conjunction with --update, this flag forces emerge to consider the entire dependency
tree of packages, instead of checking only the immediate dependencies of the packages. As an
example, this catches updates in libraries that are not directly listed in the dependencies of a
package."
In my experience, doing a 'emerge -vuD world' is something you should only execute once in a while, and it is vital that you include the "--pretend" option in case some packages wants to downgrade others. Essentially, the "--deep" option will do a more thorough scan of portage to locate packages which are not directly affected by critical or new ebuilds, or something like that.;)
--
"The only clear view is from atop the mountain of our dead selves." - Peter Carroll
Re:Just finished installin 2004.2
by
ali3nxx
·
· Score: 1
updating from gentoo 2004.2 to 2004.3 is extremely simple. Portage will give you a warning after emerge sync.
>>> Updating Portage cache......done!
!!! Your current profile is deprecated and not supported anymore.
!!! Please upgrade to the following profile if possible:
default-linux/x86/2004.3
To upgrade do the following steps:
# emerge -n '>=sys-apps/portage-2.0.51'
# cd/etc/
# rm make.profile
# ln -s../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/x86/2004.3 make.profile
* IMPORTANT: 8 config files in/etc need updating.
* IMPORTANT: 1 config files in/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb need updating.
* Type emerge --help config to learn how to update config files.
Why all this hate? D:
by
talornin
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I wonder why so many non-gentoo user goes out of their way to flame gentoo because you have to compile everything from source. If you dont like it, dont use it. I like it, I use it. This is almost like Linux VS BSD:(
-- When in danger, whewn in doubt! Run in circles, scream and shout!
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0, Informative
Easy. Gentoo, like slackware and the BSDs are fine as hobbyist systems but there is a flood of windows converts looking for alternatives and its the community's responsibility to point them at something that doesn't suck. Gentoo is a bit of a fad. Newbies are getting confused.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
diablobsb
·
· Score: 2
except that gentoo is still alive:)
-- I for one, welcome our new hot grits... PROFIT!
Probably think we'd be using thier distro of choice if it weren't for gentoo.
-- True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
NerveGas
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Newbies to Linux are almost *always* confused. Sad, but true. At least in my dealings with family, friends, coworkers, and faceless persons online, that's what I've seen.
Not that it's unique to Linux, it happens with newbies to most all operating systems.
steve
-- Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Nobody cares that you compile things form source. It's the inappropriate evangelism.
Gentoo users have a tendency (not true of all users, but enough) to be so in love with the flexibility that they can't put themselves in the place of other users with different needs.
-- I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
What is the flexibility? Where is it?
Most Gentoo users I've talked to (or heard from:) just compile a default install, and very few bother to create their own custom filesystem layout, or anything that would showcase the "flexibility" of Gentoo.
Many of them say "I get to install exactly what I want." So do I, and so does every other Linux user.
Don't even get me started on the belief that everything must be processor optimized!!! What if you want to move the system to a different CPU type? It will either not run, or will run worse with CPU-specific optimizations than it would with generic i386 opts.
It's not that I hate Gentoo. I've just come into contact with far too many trendy and brash Gentoo users as of late:)
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
BoldAndBusted
·
· Score: 1
Wow, I'm the victim of a 2+ year fad. A fad that gave me a more stable and reliable system than Red Hat. A fad that allowed me to go past the Package Management System to see how the pieces that are the Linux operating environment fit together. In other words, a flexible system that allows for a very tailored installation of Linux and the applications you wish to run. And it is soooo much cleaner - not so much bloat as with Red Hat and Suse. I mean, come on, do you feel the same about FreeBSD and it's Ports system? Gentoo's Portage was based on that, and it works very well. FreeBSD is certainly NOT a "hobbyist" system (though hobbyists do happily use it). And neither is "Gentoo".
Really, the people who seem to be really mad are people from Debian. And I really don't understand why, except that they lost some developer mindshare to Gentoo. And, "newbies" will always be confused initially. They'll get it eventually. Just as you did. Just as I did. That is no reason to slag a distro with unfounded accusations.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Mornelithe
·
· Score: 1
Gentoo has a pretty good way of passing configure flags and the like into the compiling package (use flags). I'd be willing to bet that most people use those.
So if I don't want to use X, it's easy to have everything compile with svga support, but not waste time trying to support and link to X libraries. And if I want X but not svga and DirectFB support, it's easy to do that as well.
For example, at one time I had mplayer compiled with support for all three. Then later I deleted DirectFB (since I never use it), and mplayer failed to run, because it was trying to load libraries that weren't there. I was a bit confused at the errors at first, before I realized that I needed to recompile, so I googled for the error messages I was getting, and found a bug report for some other distribution. I believe their fix was, "You must have DirectFB installed," whereas the Gentoo solution would be, "recompile without support for DirectFB."
There are other examples, like support for various databases, GUI toolkits (mozilla could be either GTK 1 or GTK 2 for a while) and desktop environments (do you want package Z's support for Gnome, KDE, both or neither?).
That flexibility is much more interesting than creating a custom filesystem layout (which, incidentally, you can do on any distribution I've ever tried).
--
I've come for the woman, and your head.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Most of those options are available when you compile most any application from source, which is what I do most of the time on Slack. Package-based distributions usually do incur an unnecessary amount of dependancies when using their packages, as most packages support all features of a specific application.
So, besides having emerge available to fetch and configure sources, what other advantages are there?
No reinstalls. The system keeps itself up to date. A release announcement means virtually nothing to me. I previously used SuSE, and the system would slowly start to show its age. Compiling new stuff bumped into old libs, etc In time, I always needed to reinstall
Excellent docs. Gentoo has much better docs than either Debian or the BSDs which also present no need to reinstall ever.
So, there you have it. It has nothing to do with flexibility, but more with time savings.
-- If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Gentoo is a fad which has attracted far too many fanboys who are loud, obnoxious, clueless and want you to believe that Gentoo is the answer to any and all problems. These people seem to think that running Gentoo on their Duron machine at home makes them an "administrator" and because they use emerge to build stuff from source that makes them a "hacker". These kids couldn't find their way around a real Unix system with a flashlight and man -k.
These kiddies are obnoxious and annoying and by association Gentoo is obnoxious and annoying. Luckily for Gentoo the favourite kiddie fad seems to be Unbuntu, so maybe the obnoxious annoying kids will go and make that look bad instead.
These are all optional dependencies for mplayer (just a small subset of them). If you don't have the associated use flag set, then the dependency isn't checked and isn't compiled in.
Why configure all this stuff yourself when somebody else has already taken the trouble to?
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Oddly_Drac
·
· Score: 1
"because you have to compile everything from source."
I must have missed something. I always compile from source. But then I also check MD5 hashes.
"This is almost like Linux VS BSD"
That explains it. I'm a BSD admin with a distaste for packages.
-- Oddly Draconis Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
-- Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Hey, in the past I had thought exactly that about Slack, RH, SuSE, Debian and Mandrake. They all sucked! And most still suck today *even* with far less 'fanboys' than before. Er, wait! Were'nt you trolling back then about how cool was your distro of choice?
"A release announcement means virtually nothing to me. I previously used SuSE, and the system would slowly start to show its age."
Some awareness of the current state of things is required, as things have a higher probability of breaking when they're trying to put everything together for a release.
"Excellent docs. Gentoo has much better docs than either Debian or the BSDs"
That's bull. I can't speak to Debian's docs, but the claim that Gentoo has better docs than the BSDs is bull. The install howto is equal to the BSDs (eg, outstanding), but the docs once the system is running aren't even comparable. I've never seen any UNIX with docs comparable to a BSD.
-- I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Mornelithe
·
· Score: 1
Okay. If I use Linux From Scratch, or even Red Hat, I can do everything that Gentoo does by hand.
I just checked, and I have 459 packages on my system. Sure, you could look at the./configure output for every single one of them, and figure out what optional support they have, and then enable/disable the flags as appropriate, and in addition, fetch all the optional dependencies by yourself. Do you really have the time and energy to do that for hundreds of packages?
With use flags, you can, for the most part, set them once globally and then build your system, and everything will have appropraite support. Let's suppose you're some kind of fanatic and want to eliminate jpeg support from your computer. Isn't it easier to add USE=-jpeg to a config file than it is to track down all (20 or so on my computer) packages that have optional jpeg support and compile them without?
If you change your mind about wanting support for something on Slack, are there tools for evaluating which packages need to be recompiled, and which packages can be removed? Or do you have to do all that manually?
It's not just flexibility that's important, it's the automation of that flexibility. You can get the power/flexibility advantages of any system if you do everything by hand, but if it's not convenient it's rather worthless, since you spend more time preparing for things than actually doing them.
--
I've come for the woman, and your head.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
So, besides having emerge available to fetch and configure sources, what other advantages are there?
Could you please tell me what happens when you compile from source and make install fails leaving your filesystem in a rather sorry state, or the whole package refuses to run correctly, or it installs files in non standard locations?
What if you need to upgrade? How do you make sure no files from the previous install remain there possibly changing expected behavior? What about config files getting overwritten? And... what if you really need something to automate compiling using distcc or you want to use ccache? How do you handle complex tree dependencies?
Do you care to get patches that address problems in the sources? Do you need to specifically tell configure that you want samba support in every package that can support it? What if you only want samba support in ten packages, but don't want it in other five packages? Can you automate it all? What if at some point you decide you wanted some of your software using KDE support? Would you remember which packages need to be recompiled? What about compiler flags known to produce buggy results? Did you care as well?
Seriously man, you don't know how useful it is. It's not that portage is a lame attempt at fecthing/configuring/compiling sources, you know. Getting it down to "it fetches and configures the thing, I could do that myself" is just plain ignorance. It's a lot more than that, and sure, you could do that yourself, but I prefer having the maintainers decide which patches to apply and which compiler flags to use, how to invoke configure, and where should the package install its files. I also prefer having portage to fetch it for me, be it a tarball or CVS sources, figure out all dependencies, keep track of installed files and not mess with my filesystem nor config files in case something goes wrong. Still I happen to control most of the process. And guess what? In the end I just type a single line and the whole thing gets installed the way I want it, without spending my life dealing with every single package.
That pretty much makes a big fat difference for me.
When you speak about *BSD docs, you're talking about this? Or this? Or this one?
I know I'm probably feeding a troll, but I won't let you get away with bashing the best Gentoo feature. BSD docs are a huge pile of paper, when compared to the nicely organised, professional documentation on Gentoo.org. As much as writing stuff down, it's important to make it findable.
Just go and compare the sites.
-- If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
As I said, the installation instructions on both are outstanding. Where the BSDs pull ahead is the man pages. Every aspect of the system is meticulously documented, in an accessible and concise way.
Gentoo specific things tend to be documented well, but things inherited from other Linuxes tend to inherit their documentation as well, which is poor. The Gentoo guides tell you magic invocations, sometimes even several alternatives, but the actual man (or info) page for the tool is just as weak as other Linuxes. It's a lot worse for the C library and system call man pages.
Gentoo docs are better than most Linuxes (at least the ones I've tried), but that's not saying much.
-- I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
zaphod_es
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· Score: 1
We tease you because we love you... and are grateful that we are not you.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Oddly_Drac
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· Score: 1
"These kids couldn't find their way around a real Unix system with a flashlight and man -k."
You mean, of course, BSD and Solaris rather than that home project the Finnish lad wrote, yes?
-- Oddly Draconis Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
But it's growing slower than everything else. IOW, it's dying.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
FreeBSD is the only OS besides win & lin whose market share is increasing (here). IOW you're full of GNU/sh*t.
Re:Why all this hate? D:
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
But it's not increasing as fast. I guess you *BSD fanboys don't understand proportion.
For those who think `emerge sync && emerge -uD world` will update your system:
Don't forget to update the/etc/make.profile link after an `emerge sync`. The sync will place the new profile in/usr/portage/profiles. From the Gentoo Upgrading Guide:
substitute $arch with your arch # rm/etc/make.profile # ln -s../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/$arch/2004.3/etc/make.profile
--
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Re:Upgrading...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
does this overcome having to re-edit the 43/etc/ config files after an "emerge -u world"? that single issue was such a turnoff and the reason i stopped using gentoo...
I brought my Gentoo system up to date after I read this announcement. Took five minutes. Then I read this post:
Don't forget to update the/etc/make.profile link after an `emerge sync`. The sync will place the new profile in/usr/portage/profiles.
So I did. Then I tried to emerge -uD world again, and...done! No more packages. I usually just wait for it to warn me that I need to change the/etc/make.profile symlink.
-- How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
First, just use the etc-update script which does all this interactively. Unless you haven't updated a single packgae in six months you're unlikely to have many important files to actually update. Also, if the only thing that has changed is the version number in the file header the script will just overwrite the file without asking.
Second, how else should it behave? There are really only two viable options:
1. Just blindly overwrite config files. Many other distros I've used did this with at least some other packages and it was a major pain to deal with.
2. Write scripts for every package under the sun to smartly patch config files. This would probably still need to be interactive. Honestly, unless upstream package maintainers do this, I doubt any distro would undertake this. A few packages do have this kind of behavior, but not many.
3. Just never update config files. Often this works OK since defaults are usually sane, however sometimes a security patch involves config changes - and if a user wants to ignore the config change it should be a conscious decision...
Agreed. I use both Gentoo and Debian, and basically Gentoo does it the more "sane" way imho. Debian just asks you while apt-get install/ugrade presenting four options and you got to pick one, halts the install aswell. Its a major pain in the ass when upgrading lets say, 150 packages. Gentoo does it the good way, you can deal with the configs later...
-- It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
There are supposedly significant compiler optimizations for the AMD64 architecture in GCC 3.4; I don't have the details and I'm too lazy to look them up at the moment, but that's what I've heard.
However, addressing the grandparent's original issue, I think that GCC 3.4 has been the default for AMD64 for a while now (maybe even in 2004.2?) so it's not really an issue.
Nice to see...
by
Biomechanical
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I don't use Gentoo myself - the server downstairs runs Debian - but it's nice to see that it's moving forward, being updated, and being used.
It's good for people to have the ability to choose what they want, and if this revision encourages people who've previously tried Gentoo and found it in some way lacking - never tried it myself - then maybe they'll try it again and find what they missed the first time.
Forward my GNU/Linux friends, onwards to a less viral, more versatile, personally empowering digital horizon.
-- His name is Robert Paulsen...
Re:Nice to see...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Funny
the server downstairs runs Debian
And nothing going on upstairs, evident by your choice in distro!
As for the rest of your comment, where did you get the mdma/e from?
--Blade
Re:Nice to see...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Funny
"Forward my GNU/Linux friends, onwards to a less viral, more versatile, personally empowering digital horizon."
And nothing going on upstairs, evident by your choice in distro!
If it works for you, you use it. If you have no reason to change, why would you?
I'll probably get flamed for this but I'll admit it, I run Windows 2000 on my workstation.
[Waits for booing and hissing to stop.]
There are valid reasons for doing so - certain hardware drivers mainly but also there are applications I use that are simply not on Linux, such as a VRML viewer that follows the entire standard properly (keeping in mind I haven't looked in a month).
So there you go. Debian doing a fine server job that I have no reason to change it, and W2K doing it's job satisfactorily - no blue screens until I do them manually >:)
If you like Gentoo, use it. I applaude your energy and drive to actually find out what you can do with your computer rather than just accepting the crud that might have come with a store bought setup.
As for the rest of your comment, where did you get the mdma/e from?
Gentoo linux simply does not, now or ever, warrant release notification. It is released and will remain so; up to date today, regardless. This is why I choose it...
I've not yet looked at Gentoo, and I'm curious. Does Gentoo have an established way of managing version dependencies while keeping it up-to-date? Presumably there are some packages that break when new versions of other packages are released, unless every package is checked carefully before releasing it into the distro. If they are checked carefully, how long will it normally take to get from an upstream release into Gentoo?
Debian, for instance, has its various releases, where packages tend not to get into testing and stable unless it's believed that they'll happily co-exist with the versions of other packages that are already in those releases.
Gentoo does something similar where ebuilds are "masked" until it is known that they will compile properly and coexist with the rest of the system. Dependencies can also be specified with comparators such as = and so forth to ensure that a newer version of a dependency won't be installed (or will be slotted if possible) if it will break something.
-- There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Re:version dependencies
by
NotoriousQ
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· Score: 5, Informative
To add to this, there are two modes of masking:
the hard mask -- which means that the package maintainer does not deem the package to be safe at all.
the ~ mask -- which is the unstable package. You can tell the emerge system that you wish to have the unstable system, in which case it will ignore the ~ mask.
Also, there is such a thing as profiles. They have things such as the version of gcc and glibc that your system uses. If you chose the right profile, you can continue building the system with gcc 2.95. Although the packages are not well tested with it, and no one wants to specifically check and mask each package with older profiles.
-- badness 10000
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
rincebrain
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· Score: 1
emerge -e world it is, then?
That'll re-emerge EVERYTHING...essentially, it pretends that you have no packages installed, and then does an emerge -uD world, if I understand correctly.
-- It's only an insult if it's not true.
That does it
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I'm switching to Gentoo - just for the version numbering.
Gentoo is widely known for its portage system. If you want something, say irssi, you just type 'emerge irssi' and hit enter and it downloads it and compiles it. This system though is a rip of BSD's ports system (they did a good job though).
Its main shortcoming: its linux. I'll stick with FreeBSD until the day it dies (please no BSD dying jokes)
Re:Sooo...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
What makes it good and different from other linux distro?
Very good and easy to use package management.
Shortcomings? It is an "Expert" distro to some extend. Think of it like a shark knife... in the hands of a trained chef it works wonderfully, but the untrained my cut themself.
Portage is the main act. The side show is that it is compiled exactly how you want. As others have said, if you want something like Gaim, it's baiscly, emerge --ask -v gaim, it will ask you if you want to install gaim, and all of the dependancies. other than that, it's a very very striped down install, and very easy to keep up to date.
-- All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
"I'll stick with FreeBSD until the day it dies (please no BSD dying jokes)"
Why ? (not inteded has a flame or anything, just curious.)
Gentoo's biggest weakness and its greatest strength are the same thing: Portage. Portage solves dependancies and installs packages (programs, libraries etc etc) however it compiles everything from source so it takes for_ever for large packages, especially on older/slower machines. If they added a suite of GUI tools, corporate backing, and came up with a way to install pre-compiled binaries as easily as non-pre-compiled binaries it would be the best distro, probably the most popular. As it stands it has no corporate support/backing, very few usable GUI tools and its a PITA to find pre-compiled stuff unless its a very widely used thing.
All that being said I use gentoo on anything thats a workstation because it takes care of the "dependancy hell" that I was suffering through with redhat. I use openBSD on my firewall and redhat on my fileserver.
-- "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
--Albert Einstein
This system though is a rip of BSD's ports system (they did a good job though).
Ripped, but slightly improved. Portage features USE flags which let you choose what you do and don't want to compile -in support for. If you only want KDE/Qt programs running, you can disable gtk/gnome support in your USE flags. I may be wrong but I think this is absent in ports?
Long story short: if you know your way around linux, gentoo's a delight to use. If you don't know your way around linux, avoid gentoo until you become more familiar with how the typical linux system works.
I doubt the parent poster needs any convincing about the power of portage - As he said, it was based on FreeBSD's ports system in the first place. He just prefers BSD to Linux.
Random musing: I keep wanting to try out BSD some time, but I just never get around to it =/
I'm sure you know it's source based by the dozens of +5 Funny's..
What's good? The package system is transparent and extremely hackable. If you don't touch it, it works just like apt or yum. But if you want to make a change, its extremely easy to pop the ebuild in vim and change it, or fork your own version. Also very easy to produce a "package" for any specific version you like, often as simple as renaming a file.
What's bad? Initial installation takes a while (I can get a useable box in ~ 3 hours. Gnome & co take the longest). Not recommended for slow computers (anything made in the last four years ought to be fine) due to frequent code compilation. Portage moves very very fast. Lots of new versions released every week.
I run it everywhere, including this here Toshiba Tecra S-1 notebook.
I would argue that the few times I have installed gentoo made me much more familiar with linux than playing with Fedora for any period of time would have.
Gentoo is very customisable, you get to choose exactly whats going on.
emerge (a python script to download packages and install them for you, for example emerge opera)
its not neccessary to compile from source, but you can.
USE flags, store these in a central place (/etc/make.conf) and every package will be compiled for support for everything the package wants support for, as per the use flags, eg, if i have 'live' as a useflag and i emerge mplayer, it will emerge mplayer with support for the real networks streaming codec.
there's probably more, but i cant think of it right now.
Re:Sooo...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
judging from your low id, i guess you're just bored right now and want to accidently start a flamewar
My primary reason for using Gentoo is Portage. I couldn't care less about "speed optimizations" or whatnot. But being able to install software with one command is wonderful.
My secondary reason is that it is continuously updated. I have yet to reinstall my system for anything else than major hardware upgrades. This is why I never liked Debian much, which in retrospect might have been wrong.
My tertiary reason is the documentation and community. http://forums.gentoo.org and #gentoo on freenode will get you lots of help.
But beware, there's a downside too. You can more easily end up with a broken system (compared to other "easier" distros) because you accidentaly wrote over some important configuration files. So you need to know what stuff like fstab is. And you need to know how to recover from disasters should something go haywire.
I started using gentoo because of portage, but i keep on using it largely because of the user community; it's true that you may run into more problems with gentoo than other distros, but this is mainly because you're more likely to keep it up to date by updating (ie changing) stuff. Whenever i've had a problem, i've always found the answer in the gentoo forums, and usually within a matter of hours - sometimes minutes, even if posting a new question. i run gentoo on my thinkpad, where portage being so up to date is very important, to take advantage of the latest ACPI/APM/bluetooth/WiFi/GFX packages.
i used to use suse and was happy with it, but try updating suse to new gcc or glibc, then try the same with gentoo. i spent far more time searching suse's help pages than a full system update takes in gentoo (several hours fruitless searching vs having it all done automatically while sleeping). i've thought about trying debian every now and then, but i know i wouldn't get the same level of community support as i do with gentoo.
Seconded. I'd been using Linux for two years (progressing from MDK 8.2 to RH8 to RH9 to Debian)before I gave Gentoo a whirl. It made me realise how lazy I'd been, falling into the GUI trap and never really making the effort to see how it all worked under the skin. All I'd ever done on the CLI before was a few edits to fstab and suchlike, but now I'm fairly confident in mucking about with boot scripts and what have you.
I'd definitely recommend it for someone seeking to learn more about Linux, even if you prefer a less time-consuming distro for general use. Heck, even reading through the installation process can be very illuminating.
I use Gentoo for desktops, and Debian stable/testing for servers.
Actually that part of the post was for the grandparent post.... just figured I would post once and kill 2 birds with one post.
-- "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
--Albert Einstein
Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
Magickcat
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Gentoo's too damn time consuming for my tastes.
I like the fact that you have so much control over your installation, and the fact that you can compile for your own system easily is also very attractive features, but the trade off is how much time do you want to spend on Linux choosing and customising when there's a real world going on outside? In my case, the real world wins out.
Perhaps it's a bit like people who build cars by hand - not for every driver on the road, but a good hobby for some.
--
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses.
If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
Warren_Canuck
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· Score: 3, Informative
Too time consuming? Granted the initial setup may take a bit longer than RedHat or Debian but maintenance takes so much less time.
I don't have to worry about security holes anymore. I have a firewall setup and I emerge -q sync and emerge -up world every night and look at it whenever there is something for me to update. And when it does update I don't have to worry about other programs not using the most up to date versions of libraries, it does it all for me.
I wouldn't run Gentoo on a slow box but it works wonders on my P4 2Ghz.
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
jmwmit
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· Score: 2, Informative
"Gentoo's too damn time consuming for my tastes."
It's pretty obvious that you have never tried using gentoo.
I think that once set up, Gentoo takes much less time to maintain and run than any Distro I have ever used (Redhat 5.2-9, Fedora 1 and 2, Debian, Mandrake, Knoppix (on hard drive), slackware).
I think that this is partly because the package manager is so great (trustworthy, stable and easy to use), and partly because the software that is installed is compiled specifically for all of the other software installed.
The best part is that the work of compiling all of your programs doesn't even have to take that much time or effort. Most gentoo users update overnight, or even compile while they work, neither of which has to dominate the usage of your system. Depending on which settings you use, changing the nice value of an emerge command let's you run it in the background with relatively little side effects. (See Gentoo Wiki - Portage Niceness)
And just to clear up a hole in my argument above ("once you get gentoo set up"), Setting up gentoo is easier than ever with the live CD and pre-compiled packages. You can even re-compile these packages (after the initial install) by installing their non-binary versions once you have your system up and running.
I was a Redhat user for many years, and until Fedora Core 2 failed me, and I could absolutely not get any Distro other than Gentoo to support my Treo-600 syncing, IBM T-40 Hardware, and my sd-card reader - I saw no reason to compile my software regularly. With gentoo, you don't even notice that you are compiling, except that software takes longer to install - and considering that everything I works beautifully (minus the bloat of most Distros), I save myself many lost days of troubleshooting despite compile time.
If you haven't tried Gentoo before, or not for a while. Give it a try, you probably will not go back.
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
binary+paladin
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· Score: 3, Informative
Gentoo often refers to itself as a "meta distribution." In many cases it's like an automated Linux From Scratch. Point is, I use Portage and its tools to roll my own stuff on a local server and create binary packages on the server and all my client machines install from there. I don't rice out with stupid optimisations, but it is nice that all my packages are compiled the way I want them. (By that I mean since no one here runs Gnome, I have no Gnome support compiled in, etc.)
A couple of my friends and I use Gentoo as do our servers. With one central server the setup works well and keeps us all up to date with minimal compiling. From my "real world" standpoint it works very, very well. I even keep my mom's laptop up to date this way without having to physically touch the thing.
Plus, once a machine is customized, just keep your/etc and/home and you're set. I keep some common configurations stored on my server as well. This took me a lot of initial work, but it doesn't take me much longer to do an install of Gentoo than any other OS anymore.
I have to hear the cracks around here about compile times all the time... but seriously, who cares? Do you really need the latest KDE the second the ebuild is ready? Start your updates and go to bed. it's very rare that anything isn't complete by the time I get up in the morning.
It's not for everyone, but as should be stated over and over, no distro is nor should every distro be. All I'm saying is that "real world" is a very relative term and for my real world Gentoo is my choice and besides... I think it's fun. I used to be a Slackware fiend so maybe that explains my problem.
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
brix
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· Score: 1
I think that once set up, Gentoo takes much less time to maintain and run than any Distro I have ever used (Redhat 5.2-9, Fedora 1 and 2, Debian, Mandrake, Knoppix (on hard drive), slackware).
I think that this is partly because the package manager is so great (trustworthy, stable and easy to use), and partly because the software that is installed is compiled specifically for all of the other software installed.
I agree - I've been through a similar list of distributions over the last 12 years and Gentoo is the first one that strikes the right balance of power and simplicity to me.
Two things got to me after a while with other distributions -- First, version upgrades of the distribution tended to be a complete pain. Moving from Mandrake 8.x to 9 basically meant backing up the old system, clearing off everything, installing Mandrake 9, and then selectively restoring the config of the backup. You *could* try it over the top if you really knew what you were doing, but you were going to end up fixing a lot of things after the install either way.
As others have mentioned here, there's really no "upgrade" to 2004.3 since you tend to keep everything up to date along the way with portage. I was in the middle of setting up a local rsync mirror and http-replicator for the Gentoo files tonight when the 2004.3 announcement came along, and the only thing I had to do was change my/etc/make.profile link because one of my boxes was based off the now unsupported 1.4 profile. And, of course, the instructions for doing this were displayed by the most recent emerge.
The second thing that bugged me about other distributions was that I always tended to need to install *some* package from source every now and then. Maybe because of a certain configuration on my system, maybe because the package wasn't available as an RPM for my version of Mandrake, etc. Once I started throwing tarballs into a Mandrake system, I lost the ability to handle the dependencies through rpm. I did create some SRPM's, but this was just too unwieldy at the time. I understand there is now a tool to capture a./configure and make session to SRPM, but I don't know enough about it to know if it's all it's cracked up to be.
The first thing that really drew me to Gentoo was Daniel Robbins' article on IBM Developerworks about the ebuild system being designed to simply wrap around existing tarballs. While Gentoo was still a bit too bleeding edge at the time for me, I came back and tried it out when I got some time this year.
Sure enough, the ebuild system lived up to the writeup in the article from 4 years ago. When I finally found a package that I wanted that wasn't already in portage (well, it was, but it was far, far out of date), it took me less than 4 hours to learn, from scratch, how to write an ebuild file for it. The ebuild simply downloads the tgz from its normal website, untars it to portage's working directory, compiles it and its dependencies, installs it, and handles future package management for it. A very nice change from what I'd seen on previous distributions I'd used.
While Gentoo is certainly not the distribution I'd recommend to Linux newbies (mainly due to the lack of automatic install), portage is making package management and upgrades easy enough for me that I've installed it on four boxes so far in my home.
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
TheLittleJetson
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· Score: 2, Insightful
i think gentoo is sort of an investment. even for someone who knows the system well, doing the install is a pain in the ass. however, once everything's set up, i find it very easy to maintain. it really is just like no effort to keep it all up to date and such. emerge --sync && emerge -u world && etc-update and come back later to finish things up. do this maybe once a week and you're chill.
portage has roughly a gajillion packages which is also good for lazy people (emerge CoolProgram beats going in search of CoolProgram, downloading and compiling it)
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
Magickcat
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· Score: 1
Thanks for the advice chaps. I'll give it a look as your comments make me think it might be worth investigating even if the initial setup is a bit daunting. I'm presently running Suse 9.2, but I get a bit tired of it not having an easy way of upgrading the entire system. Installing and using apt is a pain with Suse too. You might have a Gentoo convert.
--
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses.
If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
Khazunga
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Funny. I'd say Gentoo saved me more time than it cost me during install (which is really time consuming). I've setup my Gentoo computer ~four years ago. It took some time to install and configure to my tastes. However, since then, moving to a different machine is just a matter of grabbing the list of packages in the world profile in the old computer, and emerge'ing the whole list in the new one. It cooks for a couple of days, but the new computer chugs along without interaction. Then, move the homedir, and the new computer feels like home. I've changed computers twice since the first install.
Oh, and naturally, forget burning and installing 'new releases'. The system keeps itself up to date.
-- If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
bdowne01
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· Score: 1
yet you have time to post to... Slashdot.
-- -brain
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
Magickcat
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· Score: 1
Considering that there are other linux distributions that require less time, Gentoo requires a great deal of faith to go about the bother of setting it up.
--
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses.
If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
theLOUDroom
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· Score: 1
Gentoo's too damn time consuming for my tastes.
It depends how you look at it: Gentoo is more time consuming to get up and running, but once you have a working system maintenance is trivial. Installing new software is trivial.
So yes it takes a little more time at first, but you don't have to manually download and spend a day in dependency hell just to have the newest version of mplayer. (I've been there.)
I used to use RH and it was a royal pain in the ass when you wanted that new version of X. With Gentoo, I spend much lest time doing rountine upkeeping than I ever did with redhat. If you use linux every day, you don't want to be stuck with the same version of Gaim for six months, you want the new features.
-- Life is too short to proofread.
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
bdowne01
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· Score: 1
Setting up, that's true.
But once running, I argue it takes less time than other distros. Setup vs. Long run, I'll take long run anytime. Setup is guaranteed to take a certain amount of time, however if I can accurately forsee how long it will take to keep a system up to date over time, I win.
I'm not a Gentoo "fanboy" by any stretch of the means, however I do prefer it over something like Fedora. Why? Because it gives me incentive to keep my system up-to-date. Updating individual packages is easy, simple, and relatively safe in Gentoo.. something I can't say about Up2Date for sure. I've used Gentoo in some low-priority production roles, and it's perfomed fine for years. Our RedHat boxes have as well, but the Gentoo ones are at least running the newest, secure software.
Additionally, I'm not a believer in the "old==stable" crap. If you're using old software, it's probably full of security holes. If it's new it "might" be unstable. I'll take the latter. this article at newsforge only helped me solidify my unpopular (but usually true) opinion.
Then again, opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one.
-- -brain
Re:Gentoo - too much time to commit
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"I've been through a similar list of distributions over the last 12 years"
LIIIIIIAR LIIIIIIIIAR
You haven't been around Linux not even two years, three at most.
Support for new hardware.
by
onesadcookie
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· Score: 2, Informative
I had to use a (late) beta of the 2004.3 release recently to get Gentoo installed onto some only recently-released hardware. 2004.2 didn't play nicely either with the SATA controller or the on-board ethernet.
For those out their too timid to try a beta install CD, this might well be eagerly-awaited news.
Not just emerge -u world
by
ringer9cs
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· Score: 2, Informative
Technically speaking, emerge -u does not completely upgrade your system to the newest release. You need to update your system profiles as well. If you are upgrading from 2004.1 or later, it is as simple as
# rm/etc/make.profile
# ln -s../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux//2004.3/etc/make.profile
However, if you are upgrading from versions earlier than Gentoo 1.4, it is quite complicated. For more information, see the Gentoo Upgrade Guide:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml
Can people stoping saying
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Gentoo is faster than the other distros, yes it is in many cases, but in many others it is not.
This myth that gentoo is some kind of speed demon is just stupid, it's about as fast as all the others give and take etc. etc.
The real benefit of gentoo is in that it teaches people how to put together a gentoo system, it's a learning experience of a sort.
But fanboys who trick noobs into using it for the speed shouldn't do so, it's not.
And also fanboys who try to claim that a hand built distro like that should be used in PRODUCTION servers (I believe there is a company set up by gentoo users to peddle this idea) is just insance.
The WHOLE point of a production server is that it has been tested THOUSANDS of times in a given configuration. Production has always meant, and always will mean a trade-off between the latest and stability.
To try and claim that you can run your server with some loopy custom compilations and expect to be able to get support for it is just ridiculous. The extra money spent on getting all this hand-craftednes should just be spent on a beefier server.
And as gentoo doesn't actually offer a definitive speed-gain, just spending $30 to get to the next CPU catergory up with 5% more performance will decimate any speed advantage created by the gentoo system optimizations.
please, stop the astro turfing, gentoo is great from a system design perspective, customisation and learning about linux. But it is not, and cannot (nothing can) be ALL pros and no cons. Be suspicious of any fanboy who says so because making those claims about ANY distro is just peddling snake-oil.
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
phoxix
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· Score: 1
Stop talking this crazy logic!
What many Gentoo users fail to realize is that compilation time and man hours can become very expensive for a company.
Why does a company exist ? (hint: to make money...)
To make money using whatever tools work ?
or to make less money using supposedly "better" tools ?
If applications aren't tested against Gentoo, and there is no set release cycle with Gentoo, corporate america isn't going to care about Gentoo. Like it or not, they are going to care about perdictability and saving money. Which (surprisingly (or not so suprising at all)) is exactly what near $1000 overpriced versions of Redhat, Suse, Mandrake are going to do for them.
Sunny Dubey
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
And also fanboys who try to claim that a hand built distro like that should be used in PRODUCTION servers
Yea cos as every admin knows you need to use a distro that breaks when you upgrade glibc on production servers.
The benefit to gentoo is the packaging system, not the compiling optimisations.
And btw, you'll find most heavily loaded servers will compile their software with particular optimisations anyway.
Right now I'm about to use Gentoo in "production" environment.
Reason: I need to squeeze every cycle off the CPU. It works on a dedicated LAN separated from the outside world and from security risks, so security updates are least of my concern. As well as software upgrades - it is supposed to run the same, custom setup of several simple programs for years. Sure I lose -a bit- on reliablity, though software I'm going to use doesn't belong to "risky bleeding edge". But the ability to exclude all compile-time options I don't need, to compile it for the particular top-notch CPU to be used in the server, with all its features, to match the system with the hardware 1:1, without any flexiblity but with totally maximum efficiency.
-- Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
mstefanus
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· Score: 1
I agree with your argument regarding production servers, but the latest does not mean unstable.
Gentoo has a really good package management (Portage), with it you can make your install with really old packages or the very latest. It is all up to you.
Secondly, with Gentoo, patching softwares is no brainer and takes very little time, just run emerge [packagenamehere] under Screen and forget it. Suddenly the app is updated.
Third reason is, if you build your install from the ground up, you know what is on that machine. Try installing RedHat or Suse... you will always get something you will not need. The lesser things installed, the easier to control them.
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
So it's the usual hobbyist crap in a basement.
This is not "production".
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
A+beautiful+mind
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, its really dependant on a person's view. If you would rather trust a ms windows xp as a server, just because its tested worldwide, and dump the FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Gentoo server which has custom stuff isp stuff in many cases "make their system unstable with", like scripts, performance-patched daemons, etc. I'm sorry, but if you need support for your production server, well, then you shouldn't be admining it in the first place (ok, don't count some extreme cases).
Btw, im not saying gentoo is perfect. Its just very good.
-- It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Gentoo is faster than the other distros, yes it is in many cases, but in many others it is not.
I started using Gentoo around the first couple versions. Not many people were using it at all. There was no Fedora or anything. I was using Redhat at the time, i386 packages. I had a 1.4Ghz T-Bird and a GeForce2-GTS.
Using X windows in redhat was a nightmare. I could actually see the screens drawing and freshing themselves. If I picked up a window with my mouse and moved it fast, it shuddered around the screen. The mouse would get jerky when another app was loading or menus would take time to appear.
Then I switched to Gentoo and all that went away. I could even run KDE in its fully glory instead of running Fluxbox or Windowmaker. I think it had something to do with an Xwindows compiled to use MMX and SSE.
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
JeThR0
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· Score: 1
I'm NOT a fan boy but I like Gentoo, It works and I use it for production servers - hearing idiots in the background (O MY GOD!!!!!) All of the stable packages I've used for Gentoo have been a couple of revisions back. How new and unstable at that? All of this is the same crap that used to happen at computer meets - My 800XL will blow the doors off your dork ass 286. If it works, leave people alone. If it gets more popular than your distro, then obviously it's doing something right.
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
The STABLE branch of FreeBSD, on the other hand, is production quality, is proven to be more stable than Linux, and you can build all of the newest third-party apps from source.
You don't have to be a non-source-based operating system with ancient software in order to be rock-solid stable. The BSDs proved that a very long time ago.
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
NivenHuH
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· Score: 1
Wow.. a lot of heat coming from an AC.. *shrug*
Other than not having a support contract, I don't know why you wouldn't want to run it on a production server. Like many others on this article have stated, Gentoo is extremely simple to update, is very light-weight (install only what you need), and is simple to administer..
Linux is Linux.. you're using the same nuts and bolts reguardless of what distribution you're running..
-- Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Why does a company exist ? (hint: to make money...) To make money using whatever tools work ? or to make less money using supposedly "better" tools ?
If applications aren't tested against Gentoo, and there is no set release cycle with Gentoo, corporate america isn't going to care about Gentoo. Like it or not, they are going to care about perdictability and saving money.
Indeed. Now I'm just wondering how come an untested and unpredictable hobbyist OS like Linux came to be known and used in corporate environments in the first place...
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Hi, using Gentoo in servers for two years in production environment. And right now, more than one year running Gentoo Hardened. Take it as you want, i'm surely a fanboy.
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
ali3nxx
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· Score: 1
Hours compiling Openoffice 1.1.3 12 system specs gateway ~ # uname -a Linux gateway 2.6.9-mm1 #2 Sun Nov 14 00:43:43 CST 2004 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux gateway ~ # uptime
12:06:45 up 1 day, 9:30, 10 users, load average: 1.70, 1.96, 2.18 and smooth as cream till it hits about 8.00 across the board i have my doubts that many other distros could accomplish this.
And yet with all this testing the other distros, notably RedHat, are not noticably more stable. Methinks stability comparison studies and research into what the various realease philosophies really yield should be accomplished before such assertions are made. The obvious belief that more testing on an unchanging software automatically results in greater stability may well be flawed. I base this idea solely on my perception that, out of the box, RedHat is one of the least stable distros we have used based on a sample install of say 20 out of 100 machines over the past 4 years. The RedHat boxes always gave us the most trouble once put into production. Debian proved to be far more stable, but oddly, Gentoo has nearly equaled Debian for stable production services. All I am saying is that I would not assume compiling from source will equate to less stability, even though it may seem counterintuitive.
-- I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Re:Can people stoping saying
by
jean-guy69
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· Score: 1
i built and manage an shared secured internet access, used by several organisms, it consists of redundant firewall / ipvsadm redirectors and some servers with applicative proxies behind them (redundant too).
security is critical and we need to be up-to-date about it, i just can't wait for binary packages to be available. for critical security components, for example clamav, it's not uncommon i have to hack an ebuild in order to get the latest version that is absolutely needed for detection of some viruses.. fortunately under gentoo it is as practical as it can be.
also, i want to be able to compile the software we use as i need it, not how someone at redhat or another company chosed to compile it. and having to modify a source package every time you need it is at least unpractical, especially when it is source RPM. it's why i love the USE variable (and/etc/portage/packages.use).. and don't forget the stack protectors and other things that are not usually enabled on binary packages, using you own CFLAGS is not only a ricers thing..
for all this reasons, relying of third-party compiled package is clearly NOT an option for me.
i used suse and redhat a lot before (using linux since 1997), and had many opportunities to notice that binary packages don't ensure stability by itself. (for example the squid package from the distribution maker were often subject to problem and i often had to compile it by myself).. my gentoo servers are at least as stable that my older (suse/redhat based) ones, despite some of the new ones being amd64 SMP (and using AMD64 gentoo of course), whereas older ones where only "classic" uniprocessor pentiums 3/4..
also i dislike the release number scheme of redhat and co, where you have to regularly install a new version of the distribution to update your server.. not only i have to take down my so-said production servers but also this process usually have its own problems.. by far i prefer the gentoo concept where you can make your system evolves seamlessly, day by day, like the free software itself.
another point i like in gentoo is it's "meta" characteristic, this distribution is very flexible and can be tuned for desktop use (i use it on my desktops), file servers, networking... better than to multiply distribution variants..
of course if i needed to run proprietary software like oracle i would use a supported distro, probably redhat. but if my servers use free software i use gentoo. i also use devil-linux where it fits the needs.
Hate to break it to you, but my normal gentoo install (not even ~x86 bleeding edge) is more up-to-date than my ubuntu one is. I like both, but Ubuntu is not as up to date as you would be had to believe
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
oddfox
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· Score: 2, Informative
Eh, I've used Gentoo on and off for a long time now (Well over a year and a half, mebbe two years) and I've never had a problem with using portage to keep my system running spiffer. Even if a problem did pop up I know that the forums would have much debate about it by the time I found out about it first-hand, so fixing the problem was usually a case of reading a thread or two.
-- "We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
Compile...?
by
tanveer1979
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· Score: 4, Informative
Umm, Compiling everything is this big misconception. There are prebuilt binary packages available for most common applications for most architechtures. Infact if gentoo binary package is not there, there is a fair chance you will not get the binary package for other distros as well. I am using gentoo on my AMD64, and i do not want to go back to any other distro.
But then its always a matter of choice. And if the only reason of you not using gentoo is compiling everything from source, then its the wrong reason.
-- My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
So why is my x86 gentoo box running gnome-2.8 and xorg-2.6.8 with xcompmgr and transset?
-- All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Re:Ubuntu Rules
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
True. Gentoo rocks.
I have Gnome 2.8 on it for some time now. It's in portage tree, just not marked stable yet. Emerging it demanded a few lines in/etc/package.use, but was otherwise a piece of cake...
the fact that you think a gentoo has to release a new version to be "up 2 date" says how little you understand about gentoo;-)
So, while I'm waiting for it to download...
by
NerveGas
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Have the boot scripts been changed? I tried Gentoo some time ago, and saw that if there was a problem with any of the boot scripts, they would stop and wait for a key press before the boot process could continue. That alone was enough to make me wipe it out.
Yes, I could have re-written the boot scripts, but I had better things to do with my time.
steve
-- Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Re:So, while I'm waiting for it to download...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Funny
Yes, I could have re-written the boot scripts, but I had better things to do with my time.
and so you chose Gentoo? HAHAHAHAHA
Re:So, while I'm waiting for it to download...
by
GumphMaster
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· Score: 1
I am a long time Gentoo user. I can safely say I have never seen the behaviour you describe. Services that won't start get [!!] rather than [OK] and it just trundles on. Like any other Linux/UNIX/BSD the init process it will try to complete if it can.
-- Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Re:So, while I'm waiting for it to download...
by
drinkypoo
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· Score: 1
Like the sibling posters, I've never seen behavior like that. The only thing I can think of that would cause something like that is if you were using ext2fs and the fsck failed. I use XFS and my fscks don't fail, although I am currently having a problem where the kernel panics and my 3+GB/var/log/messages comes back after having been deleted many times, and syncs carried out thereafter.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:So, while I'm waiting for it to download...
by
Taladar
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· Score: 1
It does this only when there is a problem with one of the filesystem checks (like errors that can only be fixed by unmounting and checking the partition manually) in which case continuing might damage the filesystem further. Errors in the other boot scripts are shown but the boot continues.
Re:So, while I'm waiting for it to download...
by
NerveGas
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· Score: 1
DOH!!!
I had it confused with the LFS bootscripts. Mea culpa.
steve
-- Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
qtothemax
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· Score: 4, Informative
The big question... does it actually work and take care of everything?
Yes. The only other thing you might want to do (though its usually not necessary) is to update the profile. After an emerge -u world, everything will be current. With gentoo version numbers mean next to nothing. New versions are usually just updates to the installer livecd itself to fix bugs and support more hardware. The packages are updated constantly, not just when new gentoo releases come out.
If you have an old profile [I know I had 1.4, and it did], Portage will warn you to update your profile by changing a single symlink, which it will explain how to do if necessary.
You may notice a large number of Gentoo-related packages had version updates in the latest tree. emerge sync && emerge -auD world.
That's about it.
-- It's only an insult if it's not true.
Candidate for OSS user friendly award.
by
jotaeleemeese
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· Score: 1
It is not iike that could be, horrors of horrors, scripted somewhere....
-- IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Re:Candidate for OSS user friendly award.
by
ChrisJones
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· Score: 1
Gentoo users enjoy the pain;)
-- Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
Re:Candidate for OSS user friendly award.
by
TCM
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· Score: 1
Well, one thing I noticed: they chose x86 as an $arch name. That eliminates using uname(1) in a script.
Arbitrary decisions like that are the reason why projects around Linux look half-assed.
Take NetBSD for example. You can boostrap a whole NetBSD release for most supported archs on any halfway POSIXish system.
That is, got a Linux on a super fast amd64 platform? Use it to build a complete NetBSD release for a slower i386 box, or an ancient alpha, or a sparc.
Sure, those archs are old and noone uses them for anything serious (maybe). But to accomplish this task as such you have to maintain a very clean code base and a very well thought-out build procedure (look at/usr/src/build.sh).
Seriously, if you like Gentoo as a Linux user, look at NetBSD. The elegance will strike you.
-- Of course it runs NetBSD.
BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Re:Candidate for OSS user friendly award.
by
Zarhan
·
· Score: 1
Seriously, if you like Gentoo as a Linux user, look at NetBSD. The elegance will strike you.
I actually used FreeBSD for a quite a long time. When I learned of Gentoo I switched over immediately. I really liked FreeBSD as a system (ports, neat/etc, configurability), but hated the lack of hardware support. (Sound, ACPI, Network cards...) With Linux kernel I could better utilize my hardware. With Gentoo around it, I could keep to my habits from the FreeBSD. And I'm loving it.
Granted, when I used FreeBSD actively, the stable was still going at something like 4.7...5.0 provided better support (like Cardbus PCMCIA cards...), but it was far too unstable. With 5.3 just out I might want to check it out but I really lack the incentive. Gentoo works like a charm.
emergent reality
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
In theory most of this is not unique. It seems that apt-get similar to portage except for the source vs. binary things. This means I can start with a bare install and the apt-get things as I need them. But pretty soon I have GBytes of stuff and *very complicated* dependencies. This can make some software very difficult to install. It also makes it hard to decide things like whether to compile the kernel the debian way, or the `normal' way. Is there somethings about Gentoo that keeps these things simple?
Re:emergent reality
by
brix
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· Score: 2, Informative
While I've never used an apt-get system, I had the same problem with dependencies on RPM-based systems. It seems that most distributions try to provide as much functionality in the package as possible to meet the needs of the widest possible user-base. The result is that grabbing a small package can result in multiple large dependencies being downloaded and installed.
Gentoo's answer to this is the set of USE flags. You can provide your flags either globally or on a package-by-package basis. For example:
... would compile packagefoo without support for kde or gnome, but would provide support for maildir-style mailboxes. There are currently 309 different USE options available, so you can tweak things just the way you like them. In reality, you would probably want to put the use flags in/etc/portage/package.use so that they will be remembered permanently rather than setting the USE variable on the command line.
As far as managing dependencies after the initial install, "emerge --deep packagefoo" will check for any updates to the dependencies themselves, and the portage maintainers track and flag which upgrades break/block an existing package.
Re:emergent reality
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Is there somethings about Gentoo that keeps these things simple?
Yes. It's the fact that Gentoo is a source-based distro. Most of those problems have their origins in the diverse environments developers use to build their binaries. Using a source-based system, there's only one environment: yours.
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
NotoriousQ
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Apparently not -- I have not synced and updated the profile yet:
[ Results for search key : gcc ] [ Candidate applications found : 25 ]
Re:I HATE YOU TOO GENTOO
by
NotoriousQ
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· Score: 1
Actually, I need to be more specific. The M stands for masked -- as in not valid for install given current settings.
The tilde is the marking for the unstable install. Although it is not visible in the above printout, the unstable version 3.3.4-r2 is not hard masked, while all the 3.4 versions are hard masked.
I will guess that the next update / make.globals change will unmask these versions, and I will upgrade to 3.4.2-r2
Doubtful, someone there really likes nano =/. vi is always my first emerge on a new Gentoo system. Well, except on a slow box, where I set up distcc and ccache first.
Re:Editor ..
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
yeah stupid nano, what an atrocity.
you never know if your file _has_ a line break after the last line or it doesn't. also, it automatically breaks lines when they get too long and you start typing something at the beginning of the line.
When i last installed with the previous livecd (few months ago), vim was included.
-- Go ahead and search, you will never find it all, I am baking muffins as I speak. - ComicBook Guy
Re:Editor ..
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I wish they would just install emacs w/ vi emulation and be done with it. How hard is this to do?
Re:Editor ..
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Until you chroot into the environment. Then you have to phucking compile vim after the bootstrap and/or emerge system. Else, it's those clumsy arrow keys for navigation of config files. :/
If a Gentoo dev reads this, please put vim in the stage tarballs. Please.
Re:Editor ..
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
vim is on the livecd, but not part of the 'base system' you get. like another poster said, it should be one of the first emerges you do (unless you are an emacs clown)
vim is on the install CD, but I don't think it's part of the stage one tarball, tho. So once you chroot, you lose it.
But it's been a while since I've done a gentoo install, so they could have changed it.
-- "Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Dual booting OS X?
by
sejanus
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
hiya,
If anyone knows (otherwise I'll go to the gentoo forums) when you install the PPC version does it give an option to install a bootloader (like GRUB/LILO etc.) to dual boot OS X, or is this something they expect you to do afterwards?
Very familiar with linux on PC's, just a bit of a newbie to my powerbook.
cheers
Gav
Re:Dual booting OS X?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yes, it's called yaboot and you can of course dual-boot.
Re:Dual booting OS X?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I dual boot OSX and Gentoo Linux on my Ali PB 15". Works well, but just note a few wee things. 1. PB keyboards miss a few important keys, like # and Del. Also, when I ried to use the map for the Mac UK keyboard, all sorts of things went wrong, so I stuck with the default (US?) keyboard and live with incorrect mappings. 2. Some things won't complie. GnuCash is the biggest problem for me (doesn't like the 2.6 kernel), but I got it eventually through Fink on OSX instead. 3. The yaboot config on the Gentoo.org site doesn't work. 4. I still can't get sound to work.
I use Gentoo Linux on x86 anyway, but I'm not convinced about Linux for Mac/PPC. Not enough bigger distros offer it and the smaller ones don't quite get it right.
Dual booting between OSX and Linux is easy. Yaboot is very flexible and is as easy to configure as grub/lilo.
Of course, if you'd rather not reboot to use your favorite Apple apps., the MOL (Mac On Linux) project is phenomenal.
Re:And they still don't have an installer
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Credit goes out to SyN-AcK for the text template and Kerin Millar for all the low latency coffee. Go kerf!
Greets to old buds at Betasirc. Wouldn't be the admin i am today without ya'll Davetha, End3r, DR, UnNaturalHigh, OneEightSeven, n30, phantam, metwo, expunge and all the rest of ya.
wow, SyN-AcK, i tremble in my boots in face of such competence-emitting karma.
what follows is a step-by-step "tutorial" without explanations. just "do this do that don't ask".
First up, Gentoo is a pain to install, but once it works I think it's one of the best distros.
Anyway, I've tried the following distributions:
Red Hat (and Fedora) Suse Debian Yoper Slackware Mandrake and more.
Gentoo and Debian are the only ones that don't get on my nerves. Slackware is too demanding (I don't have the patience to manually update my system).
Suse and Mandrake try to do everything with GUIs but their GUIs are poor at times, I had to configure my Wireless card by editing the config files directly, so why bother with GUIs if they don't do everything you want?
Also with Suse, Mandrake and other you have releases, you often have to download an ISO to update the system?!?!
Debian is ok (I'd run it now if I had a 32-bit CPU), but their AMD64 port is behind Gentoo in terms of installation and completeness. With Gentoo I emerged a few emulation layers and I was running 32-bit applications in no time. Even Wine works. Had no such luck witn Debian 64-bit.
I've rarely had any problems compiling code with Gentoo, that's one advantage with it, the compiler is required for installation and so the build environment is well configured.
Re:Gentoo simply works
by
_the_bascule
·
· Score: 1
Also with Suse, Mandrake and other you have releases, you often have to download an ISO to update the system?!?!
Nope, mandrake, point your urpmi lists to the latest install...
How well does this work in Mandrake between major versions? (e.g., from 9.2 to current)? I've always reinstalled Mandrake from the CD when a new release came out, until I moved to Gentoo at home. Still use mandrake on a server at work.
-- Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
Re:Gentoo simply works
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Mandrake, is dog slow. No thank you.
Re:Gentoo simply works
by
_the_bascule
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· Score: 1
It actually works OK, you may find a couple of packages that will need --force because of 'this will break your system' type warnings. The best thing is to strip the rpms to a bare minimum with urpme and build it back up from there.
Some of the ~/. will need mv or rm -r but other than that it's OK, I have done it three times in a row.
Thanks for the info. I just got done updating my mandrake system in this way. So far, the only problem I've come across is X will not start. After running 'urpmi --media 10_0 --auto-select', running startx returned an error similar to 'execve failed to start./etc/X11/X file not found. Can't remember the exact text. Turns out I had to reinstall the actual XFree driver for my graphics card 'urpmi XFree86-Mach64' but then it gave me another error about a missing keyword or something in/etc/X11/XF86Config.
I ran xf86config to reconfigure it, but that didn't help. Interestingly enough, I can open an X session (KDE) through a vnc viewer. I just can't open an X session locally.
-- Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
I did manage to bork the system, during the move GCC2 -> GCC3. The ABI changed, and lots of dynamically linked packages stopped working.
It was not a huge deal. I had to boot from the LiveCD, reinstall gcc2 rebuild world and wait a couple of weeks for gcc-config to be stable.
Morale: This is something tolerable on your laptop, but quite a disaster if done on a production server. Anyway, Gentoo is moving towards having a stable profile a-la Debian, for servers.
-- If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
gentoo on workstations
by
gnarlin
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
A lot of people complain that setting up gentoo on a bunch of machines as well as maintaining them takes to long. Obviously I disagree. This is what I do.
I have made a bunch of i686 optimized packages for most of the things needed. These packages are updated once every weekend. I use those along with glis (glis.sf.net) to bootstrap new machines when I need to. By using glis along with binary packeges it only takes a moment to start the install and only about 30 minutes for it to finish.
I install shfs to mount/usr/portage on all the machines through ssh, so therefore I only need to sync on the one machine. I also compile the packges first on that machine and then build a binary package. Then once a week cron updates all the other machines by installing those binary packages. It also gives me time to test the packages for problems.
The package server is very snappy and compiles usually don't take too long, the workstations are mostly old p3's. Since they don't compile anything and the packages I build are optimized for them the workstations are all utilzed to their full potential (ie probably running solitaire via wine or some such).
There is no need to continually ridicule gentoo. It's small and blue and mostly comes out at night, but I think people wouldn't use it if wasn't useful.
-- A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
Re:gentoo on workstations
by
TeknoHog
·
· Score: 1
The package server is very snappy and compiles usually don't take too long, the workstations are mostly old p3's. Since they don't compile anything and the packages I build are optimized for them the workstations are all utilzed to their full potential (ie probably running solitaire via wine or some such).
I agree with the rest of your post, but this strikes me as a little strange. Why not use all of these machines for compiling with distcc? That's what I use anyway. And NFS for sharing the/usr/portage tree, but that doesn't probably matter as long as your solution works.
If the other machines are not doing anything useful, they might just as well be helping with compilation. Portage can take advantage of distcc readily, by specifying FEATURES="distcc" and MAKEOPTS="-j(2N)" for compiling on N machines. Ccache is another package that can help speed up compilation, and works with Portage likewise. By the way, and old P3 is the fastest machine I've got...
This post was generated by a Horde of Gentoo Boxen for TeknoHog.
-- Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
people say it because its true
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
On most machines there isnt much difference.
At my work, I needed to run a webserver on the intranet. And I use it for some other tasks which require X. And the machine I had to do it with was a sucky old celeron.
I tried Mandrake, but the system was unusable as a desktop, the hard drive just never quite grinding.
I installed gentoo, and it took a bit longer to setup, but the system gives me a usable desktop. It still grinds, but the speed difference is enough to make it usable for the times i need it.
Maybe I could have stripped mandrake down and gotten something usable, but its easier to add packages to a bare system, rather than try to determine whether I can safely remove a package from an overloaded system.
with 18+ million people using Linux
by
suso
·
· Score: 1
With 18+ million people using Linux, you can bet that on any given day, around 49000 people are installing it. And at least 1 of those is whining on slashdot that they just installed Linux before a new version came out.
First off, I had submitted Slashdot an official press release which was much more verbose and gave a nice list of reasons for the release and things changed since the last release, but since the editors are a bunch of tools and don't pay attention to what they're adding to the site, it all got lost.
Anyway, for the x86 platform, the primary reason for the getting a newer release is improved hardware support. The newer LiveCD for x86 supports the new Dell EM64T machines and also has vastly improved SATA support over previous releases. This is also the first release where all of the arch teams worked very closely together throughout the entire release process. This is also our first official PPC64 release. The submitter of this story also completely missed the fact that we have a new Alpha release under/experimental, and you can also find embedded stages for arm, mips, ppc, and x86 under/experimental.
How many press releases do you see on slashdot? Slashdot isn't a "real publication" maybe, but how many press releases do you see in the "real" media, either?
You say your submission was "much more verbose." Was it written like the PR junk I get at *my* old (media-related) job? (Feature lists -- sometimes bullet listed, wordy, breathless, preaching to the choir -- in other words, not ready to run?) PR stuff is rarely worth reading as literature, or even as announcements, because it's written like the table of contents of a book (plus the back-cover blurbs).
Sour grapes, IOW. Maybe things that look like press releases don't get a lot of attention at slashdot the same way they don't get a lot of attention anywhere else.
It didn't look anything like a press release but did manage to list not only primary and our secondary BitTorrent trackers, but also some features.
A look at the front page of www.gentoo.org will give you a good idea of what it looked like.
Re:Amazing!
by
Dreadlord
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I'm the submitter of the story, as I wrote in my journal, I put that story together in no time, minutes after receiving the newsletter, don't know if I was faster and this was the reason, when did you submit your story?
The editors didn't change anything other than the title btw (it was Gentoo 2004.3 released).
I submitted my story at the same time I sent my information to Ulrich Plate, who writes the GWN, so I would say a good 3 to 4 hours before the GWN was published.
Time has nothing to do with it. When the editors receive dupes for a story, they simply pick one, rather than pick the best one or the most informative.
An easy way to solve this problem in the future is to not post Gentoo release stories to Slashdot. We have a PR team that takes care of submitting to OSNews, LinuxToday, Slashdot, and other media outlets.
Compiling from source
by
petrus4
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
Where are my mod points when I really need them? I've lost count of the number of comments on this article that would get modded Overrated or Redundant if I had some right now.
Anyway, the lamers aside...compiling from source can have a number of advantages...the main one to my mind is stack protection. I also like knowing that what is in the tarball I've downloaded is what is going into my binary...that there hasn't been a download/script kiddie backdoor add/compile to binary package procedure. It's like how I don't tend to go to McDonald's any more because I don't like the possibility of one of the people who work there spitting in my burger before it gets to me...same kind of thing.
I realise however that I'm trying to use rationality here to counter irrationality. The only reason why people here *really* don't like compiling from source is because it is clashes with the completely mindless, apt-getting "Debian IS Linux!" groupthink that I tend to observe on an almost daily basis around here.
I've often wondered why Slashdot's bias is so heavily tilted towards Debian in particular, actually. I'm assuming that for many of you it has a lot more to do with Debian having explicitly received Pope RMS's blessing than because of any genuine technical superiority. I find that deeply pathetic.
Re:Compiling from source
by
Zoolander
·
· Score: 1
Hear, hear.
I see these 'Gentoo ricers', and whatever people call them, much more seldom than I see the oh-so old 'I'll just wait a week until I've compiled it' jokes and those tiresome comments about how Gentoo users compile with insane flags and have no clue why things break.
What's the matter with you people? Did a Gentoo user steal your girlfriend?
Gentoo is actually a really good distribution. No need to take it personally.
I hope you're not serious about the McDonalds thing. Honestly, if you're that paranoid about spit in your food, you should avoid *all* food you don't prepare yourself. It's not just McDonalds, it's not just spit, and it's not always malicious, either. It happens.
Oh, and I'm a gentoo user.:)
Re:Compiling from source
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
"I've often wondered why Slashdot's bias is so heavily tilted towards Debian in particular..."
IIRC- Slashdot's founder had at one point stated that he was partial to Debian. I don't know if he's still endorsing that flavour, but I'm pretty sure he's the culprit. Naturally, the fanboy appeal takes on a life of its own after that...
So you're only off by one character... It's Pope RM's blessing. Most people around here just refer to him as Taco. I've never met the guy, but after reading his website, I really, REALLY don't like him... (No offense, Mr. Malda.) But the site is still a great resource in spite of the trolls.
OTOH- RMS is just a living saint.:-P
Re:Compiling from source
by
Anubis350
·
· Score: 1
::sigh::
I'll reply as an intelligent debian user (a class you dont seem to believe exists).
let me be blunt. I compile plenty of software, but when I want to run a program I dont want to necessarily have to comppile it from source to run it. I want to be able to "apt-get install xxx" and have it done a minute later. It makes my life easier.
having said that, I'll address security. Do you really think that compiling from source makes you any more secure? my god, what an awful argument. Do you actually inspec t the code to make sure it hasnt been tampered with? if not, there's not extra security here. If you do.... then more power to you but in my opinion I dont have the time to do that.
It's like how I don't tend to go to McDonald's any more because I don't like the possibility of one of the people who work there spitting in my burger before it gets to me.
you should drink out of a hip flask then too, 'cause obviously someone might have poisened your water. Tell me, do you wear a tinfoil hat?
-- "goodbye and hello, as always"
~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Well.. it's kinda easy,
by
oliverthered
·
· Score: 1
If you look in/var/db/pkg and browse to the package you've just installed you find a whole host of file that tell you exactly what went on in the install. e.g. searching for/bin/ in/var/db/pkg/net-www/mozilla-firefox-1.0_pre/CONTEN TS shows me that firefox has is launched with/usr/bin/firefox which is a link to/usr/libexec/mozilla-launcher.
Generally things come as shipped, which is normally enabled with some sensible defaults (sometimes the sensible default is disabled). Sometimes you have to edit the files in/etc/conf.d to change features. e.g. my apache2_opts are APACHE2_OPTS="-D SSL -D PHP4 -D XSLT"
-- thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Now you've done it! The Gentoo-BSD link
by
dpilot
·
· Score: 1
You've initiated another genre of Slashdot obnoxious messages:
Netcraft says Gentoo is dying!
-- The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Did they fix glibc?
by
marcovje
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
A while ago, they were distributing beta glibc's that rumouredly broke a lot of programs.
There's no such thing as a beta glibc any more. Or, more to the point, there is no such thing as a release quality glibc any more. The glibc team is now just working on glibc and you're expected to take snapshots from CVS, fix bugs, and provide glibc to your users. It takes the responsibility away from the glibc team and puts it on the distribution maintainers. A few people out there are also providing feature-frozen glibcs with some bug fixes.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A user came to me with a problem, and it was that they renamed some of one symbol called from the startup code to something with -first behind it, and one was missing completely. It turned out he was using a beta libc he said was packaged with Gentoo.
__libc_init got first suffixed and setfpucw couldn't be found.
I use gentoo on a few different computers for a few different roles. One is my 'testbed' for whatever I decide I'm going to roll out on the rest of my network. The other is a vmware machine on my laptop.
My Linksys firewall had recently died, so I wanted to conver a Dell Optiplex with three NIC's in it to be my new firewall, running gentoo and chillispot. I tried hooking the Optiplex up, but, for some odd reason, it wouldn't take.
I then took the hard drive out of one optiplex and moved it into a different one to attempt to install it there. Installed, emerge'd, and life was good.
Moved it back....and now nothing really works. I'll get it to boot up, but with only one network card functional, and when I try to emerge e1000 (for my gig-e nic) I get nothing. I try to build a genkernel, and initrd fails.
My project for this week is to either beat the box with a 5 pound sledge, run it over with a backhoe, or install NetBSD on the box in an attempt to get it to work.
Needless to say, i'm no longer impressed with gentoo. At any rate, it was a good learning experience for me.
Re:Gentoo Hell
by
shadow255
·
· Score: 2, Informative
At first glance, it appears to me that you're blaming the Linux distro for what may be a hardware issue. Looks like the hard drive from the Dell Optiplex box is okay, but beyond that it's hard to tell. If I were in your shoes, I would have closed with this line instead:
Needless to say, I'm no longer impressed with my Dell Optiplex with three NIC's in it.
If you're serious about getting your box running, I heartily recommend that you post to the Kernel and Hardware forum at the Gentoo forums site with real details of your issues.
--
Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought. -Terry Pratchett
Re:Gentoo Hell
by
21chrisp
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You may not have been adding the ethernet scripts correctly. Did you use rc-update for each of those cards? You should have something like:
Each point to the correspoding scripts in/etc/init.d/
This may seem assinine, but it's reality for portage based OS's. You can't manually modify this stuff when you continue to emerge changes! Your modifications will get overwritten. That's why Gentoo had rc-update and etc-update.
It's similar to fBSD.. although I never figured out why everyone bashes Gentoo and praises fBSD (I think they're both great).
My first Gentoo install ended in a similar way. You have to approach a portage (notice I didn't say source) based distro with the assumption that it will take some time to figure out the differences.
With Gentoo, it takes awhile to get comfortable with the changes to how init works.
Dude gentoo is so rice
by
Nova1313
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Gentoo is totally for ricers. Does this release come with the 6 foot bolt on wing?
-- There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
Because not everything compiles correctly with GCC 3.4 yet, namely OO.o and a few others.
Apparently Gentoo is used in production
by
fumpet
·
· Score: 1
And also fanboys who try to claim that a hand built distro like that should be used in PRODUCTION servers (I believe there is a company set up by gentoo users to peddle this idea) is just insance.
I have played with Gentoo a little at home for a few years and am evaluating Gentoo in the context of desktop and server environments at work (triple-play telecommunications carrier). It is for this reason that I was interested to read the following statements in a comment from chrysalis made on another Slashdot thread:
"I have some experience with administration of web sites with very high traffic. My previous experience was with p0rn sites (lots of sites, lots of concurrent accesses). My current job is at Skyrock / Skyblog, that serves about 25 million pages every day.
"We run Gentoo Linux on all web servers, plus one DragonFlyBSD (mostly for testing)."
For real though. There is much need for this update to the live cd for ppc32.
Oh well...now it's offtopic. I guess being verbose would have scored more points around here. A lot of folks probably don't have much linux on mac (or mac on linux) experience.
The evidence does not suggest that gentoo is inherently slower than other distributions, although sometimes people do use the wrong optimizations. It does suggest that in many cases, gentoo is faster, especially on obscure architectures, or basically anything other than a PPro which is what most Linux distributions are built for; there's an i386 build, and an i686 build.
The real benefit of gentoo is not that it teaches you something. The best way to actually learn what's going on is to install LFS, aka linux from scratch. Gentoo and its install guide hold your hand. Nothing wrong with that, but don't pretend that it's the ultimate teaching tool. The real benefit of gentoo is USE flags, and to a lesser extent, CFLAGS. You can elect to compile everything on your system with support for whatever you need, and only what you need, and you can easily use stuff like propolice.
There's no reason not to use gentoo in the corporate environment. You are not required to perform all upgrades. You have a choice! It's not like gentoo comes with a cron job to ( emerge sync && emerge -u world ) or anything. Meanwhile gentoo will allow you to build (with your customizations or at least options) the latest updates and patches for the software you need, when you need it, without waiting for a binary package to reach your local mirror - all you need is a new ebuild and some patch files.
I would like to agree with you about testing, but the fact is that redhat isn't any more stable than gentoo, nor is any other linux distribution. In many cases, gentoo is more stable; I'm not running the majority of unstable packages or anything, the software I'm running has been tested, and it has the latest fixes which are available for gentoo typically before they are available for any other distribution. (This is not a law or anything.)
Gentoo has one con as compared to the other distributions: Compile time. This is a very real problem which is why there are so many jokes about it. Every stereotype is based (however tenuously) in reality. Other than that, well, if you want to use apt or rpm for some reason, you can. But you're a sick bastard.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Most users see this, compare it to the statistics of other OS/Linux Distributions and think these times are long. What most of the statistics fail to mention is the actual percentage of this time you have to spend in front of your pc and the time it works unattended. Most people's computers have enough idle time that it is worth a lot less than the time of the user. Gentoo saves my time (e.g. not having to reinstall Windows or not having to search Yast or some other stupid distribution-specific tool for a setting for which I know the matching config-file parameter) at the cost of my computer's idle time. I think this is a good deal.
I love Gentoo and use it, but I was wondering what other distros are there that are always "up to date." I've never used any other but Gentoo, Slackware, and Red Hat. I know you can upgrade packages with Red Hat, but after a while it's recommended you just wipe the slate clean and start over when a new release comes out.
Are there other distros that are like Gentoo in that they are always up to date? I'm tired of reinstalling Linux distros every year (I know I don't have to, but it's almost always necessary to stay up to date with the packages for various reasons) and would enjoy using a distro that's geared more toward usability (sorry, Gentoo) like the binary-only distros are, but with the powerful updating that Gentoo has where I can always feel comfortable knowing I won't have to back up all my data and go through the process of reinstalling every six months just to keep up with major version releases. Thanks.
I love Gentoo and use it, but I was wondering what other distros are there that are always "up to date." I've never used any other but Gentoo, Slackware, and Red Hat. I know you can upgrade packages with Red Hat, but after a while it's recommended you just wipe the slate clean and start over when a new release comes out.
You might want to check out the unstable branch of Debian (don't let the "unstable" scare you, it should be similar to Gentoo).
Re:Question...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Does this mean that I can install Debian tonight, and even if a new major release of Debian comes out next month, I will still be up to date? Just like how Gentoo is, where a new release like 2004.3 doesn't matter because the system is kept up to date by the user no matter what version of the installer they used?
I know most binary-based distros let you upgrade packages, but they almost never recommend it when a new version comes out. I don't want to have to wipe everything out and reinstall every six months. Gentoo's Portage seems designed to be upgradable forever, never needing a reinstall. That's what I'm looking for; something I'll never need to reinstall and can always keep up to date. But I'd like it in a nice binary distro that's more mature in its end-user usability and presentation.
Do I need that thing? Will it make my fans go full speed? Whats the reason to use "linux" instead of OS X?
Downloading and serving it via Bitorrent now, wanted to ask...
Re:And they still don't have an installer
by
ali3nxx
·
· Score: 1
Installing Gentoo - The Developers Method - Stage1 and NPTL
[ Goto pageGoto page: 1... 7, 8, 9 ]
hrmmm? 9 pages?!?
replies 216 ?!?
Total hits 37,600 !?!
total amount of praise for writing such a tutorial..
endless
seeing Anonymouscoward shut it and walk away...
Priceless =]
2004.3 .. sparc where?
by
hansoncoyne
·
· Score: 1
you posted it. I want the link to it. seeing as how a live-cd for 2004.2 for sparc never made it, I can't see as how a 2004.3 exists. Please prove me wrong.
etc # gcc --version gcc (GCC) 3.4.3 (Gentoo Linux 3.4.3, ssp-3.4.3-0, pie-8.7.6.6) Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Any more questions?
-- "Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
matter of choice
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
I heared some people are a bit bored about Gentoo - those might like to look into the System Development Environment (or Distribution Build Kit - whatever you name it) "T2" over at http://www.excactcode.de/t2
If anyone knows (otherwise I'll go to the gentoo forums) when you install the PPC version does it give an option to install a bootloader (like GRUB/LILO etc.) to dual boot OS X, or is this something they expect you to do afterwards?
I dualboot Gentoo and Mac OS X 10.3 on a 17" powerbook with no problem whatsoever. As to your question "do they expect you to do it later," I think you may not be aware that the Gentoo installation process is manual (following a very well documented, step by step procedure, but nevertheless, manual). This is in contrast to Mandrake, for example, that gives you a nice install gui and sets stuff up for you automagically... but then becomes a bear to maintain over time (Gentoo a year later is as maintainable and easy to sync up as it was on day one... and as current as the latest download).
So your question is a little orthogonal to the situation, making a "yes/no" answer unrevealing.
Summary: Following the Gentoo docs, you will have a bootable Gentoo system that supports dual booting with Mac OS X. Configuration specifics for the bootloader may need to be cross-referenced with a dualboot HOWTO... it has been a couple of years since I installed Gentoo, so I don't recall the specificis anymore. I do recall it being quite straightforward, however... and it does still work fine today, two years (and countless "emerge --deep -u world"s) later.
You sure you're working from the x86 cd/stages?
by
jensend
·
· Score: 1
gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 3.3.4 20040623 (Gentoo Linux 3.3.4-r1, ssp-3.3.2-2, pie-8.7.6)
&c (retyped rather than copy+paste- I don't have a browser in the install environment yet). You'll also notice that gentoo.org says that 3.4 has been made the default on amd64 and ppc but doesn't mention such a change on x86.
So far Gentoo isn't working too well
by
AaronW
·
· Score: 1
I just downloaded the latest gentoo for sparc64 and am trying to install it on a Sunblade 150. So far all I can say is it's a piece of crap. Everything works until I attempt to create any type of filesystem. fdisk works fine, but often mke2fs locks up tight. It also frequently locks up when it attempts to mount the CDROM when booting up the install CD.
All I can say is I'm not at all happy with this. I've installed and configured many Linux systems on x86 and have spent a lot of time compiling various packages for Solaris on sparc, but so far this is not looking good.
-- This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting
or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
You're probably right. I have ~x86 set and have no idea if the stable branch suffered the same problems. Probably not.
-- If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
Re:Link to official LiveCD...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
+1 True.
My God...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
My God, are you dumb. FreeBSD's proportion is *growing* (at the expense of other OS's). Of course, not as fast as win & lin's proportion, but who cares. In the world, it's a fact that dumbasses are growing at a faster rate than smart people, since they make many more children on the average: this hardly means that smart people are going extinct (observing the logic of some GNU/fanboys, one could argue that the comparison is more appropriate than it seems).
Slashdot Mirror
Damn... I'd just finished compiling 2004.2!
That this is just a new version of the LiveCD. No need to reinstall the core system.
Buckethead
- Nothing to see here...
- But I just emerged 2004.2!
- I will tell you how it works in 4 weeks when it is done emerging...
Did I miss any?Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
emerge sync, then emerge --update world done. no need to download a new iso.
so just link /etc/make.profile to the new profile in /usr/portage/profiles and emerge -uD world. It's not like you have to recompile the entire system from stage1.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Nice troll. I'm sure with you as his guide, he'll have much fun reinstalling and then ending up with THE EXACT SAME SOFTWARE!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
2004.3 falls on April 19, 2004.
Today (November 14) is more like 2004.87.
Good job not RTFA'ing people. If you'll note, he was on an AMD64, and in this release, they switch to a diff compiler, gcc 3.4. I know that it has the same software, so quit telling me that.
:P
A different compiler though for a stage one might actually mean something
It's been awhile since I used gentoo-- the computer I had it installed on physically broke a few months ago-- but the thing I really wished for when I last used it was some sort of way to figure out, when you've installed a package, what is the first thing you do to make it work? Like, some sort of emerge info packagename command. I would install ircd and go "okay, i have ircd installed on my computer... now what? is it configured for me? is it enabled?" and not have any idea what to do except try to poke through the only-sometimes-relevant gzipped files in /usr/doc or whereever.
Unless you use it for a networkless install (i.e. Stage3+GRP), whenever you install Gentoo you will download stage tarball(s) from the internet, so they will always be pretty much the newest available. In fact, the only real reaons I see to use newer LiveCDs is better hardware support and newer versions of things on the LiveCD (like links2 and irssi). And for those who already have Gentoo installed, you do not need to "upgrade" to 2004.3: a simple `emerge --sync && emerge -uD world` will upgrade everything you have installed and all the dependencies required therein.
Before all the dumb jokes start, here's what this means:
If you want to install Gentoo for the first time, you can download a bunch of precompiled packages and complete an installation in a few hours or so, probably less.
If you already have Gentoo on your system, this won't mean much since you can update the everything by with the command(s) "#emerge sync; emerge -uDp world"
This does not mean everyone with Gentoo is going to be compiling for days. You're still stuck with us for a while.
Well,
/etc/make.profile /usr/portage/profiles/default-${YOUR ARCH_HERE}-2004.3
If you emerge sync && emerge -uD world you ARE at the latest version, no matter which live CD you installed with.
If it makes you feel better:
rm
ln -s
ZZ
Not really, I did that a few months back when I switched to gcc34 and did emerge -e world, didn't notice much difference. Just keep gcc33 around and eventually most packages will recompile during the normal update process with gcc34. Now, I'm not using an AMD64 though, so you have to decide whether whatever improvements have been made in gcc34 are worth doing it all over again.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Since I could install from 1.2 and after my emerge sync emerge world at the end would be as up to date as someone who used 2004.3.
Gentoo linux simply does not, now or ever, warrant release notification. It is released and will remain so; up to date today, regardless. This is why I choose it...
However, release announces are no better that SCO stories, redundant and old news.
just my $0.02.
err!
jak
and for the compiler switch:
emerge -e system
emerge -e world
ZZ
Bah! zsh is all the installer I need!
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
It doesn't really affect you until it comes time to re-install or install on a new box.
There are about 50 different versions of Gentoo for bittorrent download, but I think this is the new one everybody here is talking about, right?
- un iversal-2004.3.iso.torrent
http://torrents.gentoo.org/torrents/install-x86
Slashdot Editors,
Since every other Linux distribution under the sun has their own Slashdot icon, how about providing one for Gentoo as well?
Thanks.
Did you see that version number?!? These guys are WAY ahead of the others!
If you can't handle installing Linux on your own, go pay Microsoft a couple hundred bucks. They've got a nice installer for Windows for you to use.
Man I'm just finishing up a 2004.2 installation tonight as well. In my case, I had some trouble getting everything running because I was installing onto a SATA drive and the 2.6.7 (I think...) kernel on the LiveCD didn't have the libata driver included (or something like that...). Does anyone know what kernel version is on the 2004.3 disc? If it's got 2.6.9, it sounds like my life could have been slightly easier if I waited one more day!
-Mark
I literally just got 2004.2 running on my new dual opteron system today, is there an easy way to update my system (i'd imagine emerge can do it?) Thanks
I wonder why so many non-gentoo user goes out of their way to flame gentoo because you have to compile everything from source. If you dont like it, dont use it. I like it, I use it. This is almost like Linux VS BSD :(
When in danger, whewn in doubt! Run in circles, scream and shout!
For those who think `emerge sync && emerge -uD world` will update your system:
/etc/make.profile link after an `emerge sync`. The sync will place the new profile in /usr/portage/profiles. From the Gentoo Upgrading Guide:
/etc/make.profile ../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/$arch/2004.3 /etc/make.profile
Don't forget to update the
substitute $arch with your arch
# rm
# ln -s
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
There are supposedly significant compiler optimizations for the AMD64 architecture in GCC 3.4; I don't have the details and I'm too lazy to look them up at the moment, but that's what I've heard.
However, addressing the grandparent's original issue, I think that GCC 3.4 has been the default for AMD64 for a while now (maybe even in 2004.2?) so it's not really an issue.
Schlock Mercenary
I don't use Gentoo myself - the server downstairs runs Debian - but it's nice to see that it's moving forward, being updated, and being used.
It's good for people to have the ability to choose what they want, and if this revision encourages people who've previously tried Gentoo and found it in some way lacking - never tried it myself - then maybe they'll try it again and find what they missed the first time.
Forward my GNU/Linux friends, onwards to a less viral, more versatile, personally empowering digital horizon.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
I've not yet looked at Gentoo, and I'm curious. Does Gentoo have an established way of managing version dependencies while keeping it up-to-date? Presumably there are some packages that break when new versions of other packages are released, unless every package is checked carefully before releasing it into the distro. If they are checked carefully, how long will it normally take to get from an upstream release into Gentoo?
Debian, for instance, has its various releases, where packages tend not to get into testing and stable unless it's believed that they'll happily co-exist with the versions of other packages that are already in those releases.
emerge -e world it is, then?
That'll re-emerge EVERYTHING...essentially, it pretends that you have no packages installed, and then does an emerge -uD world, if I understand correctly.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
I'm switching to Gentoo - just for the version numbering.
And who says linux isn't easy to use!
Personally I'm a chicken and only update packages individually when I find a need to do so.
For those of us not up on Linux distros, what makes Gentoo good? And what are its shortcomings?
Gentoo's too damn time consuming for my tastes.
I like the fact that you have so much control over your installation, and the fact that you can compile for your own system easily is also very attractive features, but the trade off is how much time do you want to spend on Linux choosing and customising when there's a real world going on outside? In my case, the real world wins out.
Perhaps it's a bit like people who build cars by hand - not for every driver on the road, but a good hobby for some.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
I had to use a (late) beta of the 2004.3 release recently to get Gentoo installed onto some only recently-released hardware. 2004.2 didn't play nicely either with the SATA controller or the on-board ethernet.
For those out their too timid to try a beta install CD, this might well be eagerly-awaited news.
Technically speaking, emerge -u does not completely upgrade your system to the newest release. You need to update your system profiles as well. If you are upgrading from 2004.1 or later, it is as simple as # rm /etc/make.profile
# ln -s ../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux//2004.3 /etc/make.profile
However, if you are upgrading from versions earlier than Gentoo 1.4, it is quite complicated. For more information, see the Gentoo Upgrade Guide:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml
Gentoo is faster than the other distros, yes it is in many cases, but in many others it is not.
This myth that gentoo is some kind of speed demon is just stupid, it's about as fast as all the others give and take etc. etc.
The real benefit of gentoo is in that it teaches people how to put together a gentoo system, it's a learning experience of a sort.
But fanboys who trick noobs into using it for the speed shouldn't do so, it's not.
And also fanboys who try to claim that a hand built distro like that should be used in PRODUCTION servers (I believe there is a company set up by gentoo users to peddle this idea) is just insance.
The WHOLE point of a production server is that it has been tested THOUSANDS of times in a given configuration. Production has always meant, and always will mean a trade-off between the latest and stability.
To try and claim that you can run your server with some loopy custom compilations and expect to be able to get support for it is just ridiculous. The extra money spent on getting all this hand-craftednes should just be spent on a beefier server.
And as gentoo doesn't actually offer a definitive speed-gain, just spending $30 to get to the next CPU catergory up with 5% more performance will decimate any speed advantage created by the gentoo system optimizations.
please, stop the astro turfing, gentoo is great from a system design perspective, customisation and learning about linux. But it is not, and cannot (nothing can) be ALL pros and no cons. Be suspicious of any fanboy who says so because making those claims about ANY distro is just peddling snake-oil.
yeah it would have been. sata support is much better in this release
Hate to break it to you, but my normal gentoo install (not even ~x86 bleeding edge) is more up-to-date than my ubuntu one is. I like both, but Ubuntu is not as up to date as you would be had to believe
Eh, I've used Gentoo on and off for a long time now (Well over a year and a half, mebbe two years) and I've never had a problem with using portage to keep my system running spiffer. Even if a problem did pop up I know that the forums would have much debate about it by the time I found out about it first-hand, so fixing the problem was usually a case of reading a thread or two.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
But then its always a matter of choice. And if the only reason of you not using gentoo is compiling everything from source, then its the wrong reason.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Some would claim that i am Gentoo's installer lol
over 500 systems installed over ssh =]
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=189250/
So why is my x86 gentoo box running gnome-2.8 and xorg-2.6.8 with xcompmgr and transset?
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
True. Gentoo rocks.
/etc/package.use, but was otherwise a piece of cake...
I have Gnome 2.8 on it for some time now. It's in portage tree, just not marked stable yet. Emerging it demanded a few lines in
the fact that you think a gentoo has to release a new version to be "up 2 date" says how little you understand about gentoo ;-)
Have the boot scripts been changed? I tried Gentoo some time ago, and saw that if there was a problem with any of the boot scripts, they would stop and wait for a key press before the boot process could continue. That alone was enough to make me wipe it out.
Yes, I could have re-written the boot scripts, but I had better things to do with my time.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
The big question... does it actually work and take care of everything?
Yes. The only other thing you might want to do (though its usually not necessary) is to update the profile. After an emerge -u world, everything will be current. With gentoo version numbers mean next to nothing. New versions are usually just updates to the installer livecd itself to fix bugs and support more hardware. The packages are updated constantly, not just when new gentoo releases come out.
Unless you have a really old profile, it doesn't.
If you have an old profile [I know I had 1.4, and it did], Portage will warn you to update your profile by changing a single symlink, which it will explain how to do if necessary.
You may notice a large number of Gentoo-related packages had version updates in the latest tree. emerge sync && emerge -auD world.
That's about it.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
It is not iike that could be, horrors of horrors, scripted somewhere....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In theory most of this is not unique. It seems that apt-get similar to portage except for the source vs. binary things. This means I can start with a bare install and the apt-get things as I need them. But pretty soon I have GBytes of stuff and *very complicated* dependencies. This can make some software very difficult to install. It also makes it hard to decide things like whether to compile the kernel the debian way, or the `normal' way. Is there somethings about Gentoo that keeps these things simple?
badness 10000
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, I need to be more specific.
The M stands for masked -- as in not valid for install given current settings.
The tilde is the marking for the unstable install. Although it is not visible in the above printout, the unstable version 3.3.4-r2 is not hard masked, while all the 3.4 versions are hard masked.
I will guess that the next update / make.globals change will unmask these versions, and I will upgrade to 3.4.2-r2
badness 10000
>> Booyah!
I'm not sure why this was marked as flamebait. Maybe when I check in tomorrow morning it will be fixed because a new PPC LiveCD was badly needed.
The 2004.2 version worked on some Macs but was way broken for others (like mine).
Since I've never used anything like Gentoo it's pretty important that it at least be configured correctly for noobies like me.
--Richard
PS: DL'ing right now!
I just wanted to see how fast it would run on my new quad 9M Itanic2 box.
my associative arrays can kick your hash - TCL
I heard that SuSE just releases v9.2 of their distro. It seems they have about 1995 releases to catch up...
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Have they put vi on the install cd yet ?
hiya,
If anyone knows (otherwise I'll go to the gentoo forums) when you install the PPC version does it give an option to install a bootloader (like GRUB/LILO etc.) to dual boot OS X, or is this something they expect you to do afterwards?
Very familiar with linux on PC's, just a bit of a newbie to my powerbook.
cheers
Gav
Credit goes out to SyN-AcK for the text template and Kerin Millar for all the low latency coffee. Go kerf!
Greets to old buds at Betasirc. Wouldn't be the admin i am today without ya'll
Davetha, End3r, DR, UnNaturalHigh, OneEightSeven, n30, phantam, metwo, expunge and all the rest of ya.
wow, SyN-AcK, i tremble in my boots in face of such competence-emitting karma.
what follows is a step-by-step "tutorial" without explanations. just "do this do that don't ask".
really professional.
NOT.
First up, Gentoo is a pain to install, but once it works I think it's one of the best distros.
Anyway, I've tried the following distributions:
Red Hat (and Fedora)
Suse
Debian
Yoper
Slackware
Mandrake
and more.
Gentoo and Debian are the only ones that don't get on my nerves. Slackware is too demanding (I don't have the patience to manually update my system).
Suse and Mandrake try to do everything with GUIs but their GUIs are poor at times, I had to configure my Wireless card by editing the config files directly, so why bother with GUIs if they don't do everything you want?
Also with Suse, Mandrake and other you have releases, you often have to download an ISO to update the system?!?!
Debian is ok (I'd run it now if I had a 32-bit CPU), but their AMD64 port is behind Gentoo in terms of installation and completeness. With Gentoo I emerged a few emulation layers and I was running 32-bit applications in no time. Even Wine works. Had no such luck witn Debian 64-bit.
I've rarely had any problems compiling code with Gentoo, that's one advantage with it, the compiler is required for installation and so the build environment is well configured.
Ask your friend to run gcc -v to see which version he has. When I last checked:
Because gcc33 does not support amd64 at all!
Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
I've been using Gentoo for years and have not seen anything like that either.
BTW, this is probably why you should do it per hand
gentoo and BSD are in the works.x .xml
Links:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/bsd/inde
http://dev.gentoo.org/~g2boojum/bsd.html
Gnome 2.8 was marked stable a while ago
It was not a huge deal. I had to boot from the LiveCD, reinstall gcc2 rebuild world and wait a couple of weeks for gcc-config to be stable.
Morale: This is something tolerable on your laptop, but quite a disaster if done on a production server. Anyway, Gentoo is moving towards having a stable profile a-la Debian, for servers.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
A lot of people complain that setting up gentoo on a bunch of machines as well as maintaining them takes to long. Obviously I disagree. This is what I do.
/usr/portage on all the machines through ssh, so therefore I only need to sync on the one machine. I also compile the packges first on that machine and then build a binary package. Then once a week cron updates all the other machines by installing those binary packages. It also gives me time to test the packages for problems.
I have made a bunch of i686 optimized packages for most of the things needed. These packages are updated once every weekend. I use those along with glis (glis.sf.net) to bootstrap new machines when I need to. By using glis along with binary packeges it only takes a moment to start the install and only about 30 minutes for it to finish.
I install shfs to mount
The package server is very snappy and compiles usually don't take too long, the workstations are mostly old p3's. Since they don't compile anything and the packages I build are optimized for them the workstations are all utilzed to their full potential (ie probably running solitaire via wine or some such).
There is no need to continually ridicule gentoo. It's small and blue and mostly comes out at night, but I think people wouldn't use it if wasn't useful.
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
On most machines there isnt much difference.
At my work, I needed to run a webserver on the intranet. And I use it for some other tasks which require X. And the machine I had to do it with was a sucky old celeron.
I tried Mandrake, but the system was unusable as a desktop, the hard drive just never quite grinding.
I installed gentoo, and it took a bit longer to setup, but the system gives me a usable desktop. It still grinds, but the speed difference is enough to make it usable for the times i need it.
Maybe I could have stripped mandrake down and gotten something usable, but its easier to add packages to a bare system, rather than try to determine whether I can safely remove a package from an overloaded system.
With 18+ million people using Linux, you can bet that on any given day, around 49000 people are installing it. And at least 1 of those is whining on slashdot that they just installed Linux before a new version came out.
First off, I had submitted Slashdot an official press release which was much more verbose and gave a nice list of reasons for the release and things changed since the last release, but since the editors are a bunch of tools and don't pay attention to what they're adding to the site, it all got lost.
Anyway, for the x86 platform, the primary reason for the getting a newer release is improved hardware support. The newer LiveCD for x86 supports the new Dell EM64T machines and also has vastly improved SATA support over previous releases. This is also the first release where all of the arch teams worked very closely together throughout the entire release process. This is also our first official PPC64 release. The submitter of this story also completely missed the fact that we have a new Alpha release under /experimental, and you can also find embedded stages for arm, mips, ppc, and x86 under /experimental.
Where are my mod points when I really need them? I've lost count of the number of comments on this article that would get modded Overrated or Redundant if I had some right now.
Anyway, the lamers aside...compiling from source can have a number of advantages...the main one to my mind is stack protection.
I also like knowing that what is in the tarball I've downloaded is what is going into my binary...that there hasn't been a download/script kiddie backdoor add/compile to binary package procedure. It's like how I don't tend to go to McDonald's any more because I don't like the possibility of one of the people who work there spitting in my burger before it gets to me...same kind of thing.
I realise however that I'm trying to use rationality here to counter irrationality. The only reason why people here *really* don't like compiling from source is because it is clashes with the completely mindless, apt-getting "Debian IS Linux!" groupthink that I tend to observe on an almost daily basis around here.
I've often wondered why Slashdot's bias is so heavily tilted towards Debian in particular, actually. I'm assuming that for many of you it has a lot more to do with Debian having explicitly received Pope RMS's blessing than because of any genuine technical superiority. I find that deeply pathetic.
If you look in /var/db/pkg and browse to the package you've just installed you find a whole host of file that tell you exactly what went on in the install. /bin/ in /var/db/pkg/net-www/mozilla-firefox-1.0_pre/CONTEN TS /usr/bin/firefox which is a link to /usr/libexec/mozilla-launcher.
/etc/ppp /etc/ppp/options-pppoe fa2a5b8df496922fa2fb592115953b6b 1100520849 /etc/ppp/chap-secrets.example d1cb45f1aedb9500ab1c325f887d8f84 1100520849 /etc/ppp/pap-secrets.example e0d80e4e091ba0ca3688784467a8205d 1100520849 /etc/ppp/peers /etc/ppp/ip-up 0fea1d14ab99bdbbbb5b6e652e105bd3 1100520849 /etc/ppp/ip-down 4d031363e70aa42076bf484fa8bdc9d6 1100520849 /etc/ppp/chat-default a2eaeceee980ff6e183abfa370fc685c 1100520849 /etc/ppp/options 300f139554327e63b13b44a2e3040ce0 1100520849 /etc/ppp/options-pptp 2890b47660f967a07ac5b211850e46c5 1100520849 /etc/modules.d /etc/modules.d/ppp 5d83af7b897082a0b1ecd70a2cc2a0c7 1100520849 /etc/radiusclient /etc/radiusclient/realms d31fb4eb263b0ab3ba970cef7f7e9b58 1100520849 /etc/radiusclient/port-id-map c4bd83f8ac89c6e600b9f16d329ca656 1100520849 /etc/radiusclient/dictionary 43dda73aeb8f09e46acb815be7dda41f 1100520849 /etc/radiusclient/servers d04ebe819296aad1a8f67b4823be6e64 1100520849 /etc/radiusclient/dictionary.merit 88ac9472f94481602095184c5378c561 1100520849 /etc/radiusclient/dictionary.compat 22353ce1527f7fdfea63e4cb26bf0bda 1100520849 /etc/radiusclient/dictionary.ascend 6b4d7858f5bd0cb9e561d92d7cef9730 1100520849 /etc/radiusclient/radiusclient.conf 38629365e81b62f0ad2f76d759881209 1100520849 /etc/radiusclient/dictionary.microsoft e29c4871d432a3ce2cd4445ec116eaa5 1100520849 /etc/radiusclient/issue fe15a45db37b077478185d2846c10e6f 1100520849 /etc/init.d /etc/init.d/net.ppp0 ae851489b48d5c639c8c6da1fe02a5af 1100520849 /etc/conf.d /etc/conf.d/net.ppp0 ef28c96687409a340c6cd66e21dc58db 1100520849
/etc/conf.d to change features. e.g. my apache2_opts are
e.g. searching for
shows me that firefox has is launched with
If I open up ppp(which I've just re-installed) I find
dir
obj
obj
obj
dir
obj
obj
obj
obj
obj
dir
obj
dir
obj
obj
obj
obj
obj
obj
obj
obj
obj
obj
dir
obj
dir
obj
and a whole host of doc files.
Generally things come as shipped, which is normally enabled with some sensible defaults (sometimes the sensible default is disabled).
Sometimes you have to edit the files in
APACHE2_OPTS="-D SSL -D PHP4 -D XSLT"
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You've initiated another genre of Slashdot obnoxious messages:
Netcraft says Gentoo is dying!
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
A while ago, they were distributing beta glibc's that rumouredly broke a lot of programs.
Did they finally got around to fix that?
I use gentoo on a few different computers for a few different roles. One is my 'testbed' for whatever I decide I'm going to roll out on the rest of my network. The other is a vmware machine on my laptop.
My Linksys firewall had recently died, so I wanted to conver a Dell Optiplex with three NIC's in it to be my new firewall, running gentoo and chillispot. I tried hooking the Optiplex up, but, for some odd reason, it wouldn't take.
I then took the hard drive out of one optiplex and moved it into a different one to attempt to install it there. Installed, emerge'd, and life was good.
Moved it back....and now nothing really works. I'll get it to boot up, but with only one network card functional, and when I try to emerge e1000 (for my gig-e nic) I get nothing. I try to build a genkernel, and initrd fails.
My project for this week is to either beat the box with a 5 pound sledge, run it over with a backhoe, or install NetBSD on the box in an attempt to get it to work.
Needless to say, i'm no longer impressed with gentoo. At any rate, it was a good learning experience for me.
I disable sigs...do you?
Gentoo is totally for ricers. Does this release come with the 6 foot bolt on wing?
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
Why is gcc 3.3 still the default on x86?
I have played with Gentoo a little at home for a few years and am evaluating Gentoo in the context of desktop and server environments at work (triple-play telecommunications carrier). It is for this reason that I was interested to read the following statements in a comment from chrysalis made on another Slashdot thread:
"I have some experience with administration of web sites with very high traffic. My previous experience was with p0rn sites (lots of sites, lots of concurrent accesses). My current job is at Skyrock / Skyblog, that serves about 25 million pages every day.
"We run Gentoo Linux on all web servers, plus one DragonFlyBSD (mostly for testing)."
For real though. There is much need for this update to the live cd for ppc32. Oh well...now it's offtopic. I guess being verbose would have scored more points around here. A lot of folks probably don't have much linux on mac (or mac on linux) experience.
The evidence does not suggest that gentoo is inherently slower than other distributions, although sometimes people do use the wrong optimizations. It does suggest that in many cases, gentoo is faster, especially on obscure architectures, or basically anything other than a PPro which is what most Linux distributions are built for; there's an i386 build, and an i686 build.
The real benefit of gentoo is not that it teaches you something. The best way to actually learn what's going on is to install LFS, aka linux from scratch. Gentoo and its install guide hold your hand. Nothing wrong with that, but don't pretend that it's the ultimate teaching tool. The real benefit of gentoo is USE flags, and to a lesser extent, CFLAGS. You can elect to compile everything on your system with support for whatever you need, and only what you need, and you can easily use stuff like propolice.
There's no reason not to use gentoo in the corporate environment. You are not required to perform all upgrades. You have a choice! It's not like gentoo comes with a cron job to ( emerge sync && emerge -u world ) or anything. Meanwhile gentoo will allow you to build (with your customizations or at least options) the latest updates and patches for the software you need, when you need it, without waiting for a binary package to reach your local mirror - all you need is a new ebuild and some patch files.
I would like to agree with you about testing, but the fact is that redhat isn't any more stable than gentoo, nor is any other linux distribution. In many cases, gentoo is more stable; I'm not running the majority of unstable packages or anything, the software I'm running has been tested, and it has the latest fixes which are available for gentoo typically before they are available for any other distribution. (This is not a law or anything.)
Gentoo has one con as compared to the other distributions: Compile time. This is a very real problem which is why there are so many jokes about it. Every stereotype is based (however tenuously) in reality. Other than that, well, if you want to use apt or rpm for some reason, you can. But you're a sick bastard.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Most users see this, compare it to the statistics of other OS/Linux Distributions and think these times are long. What most of the statistics fail to mention is the actual percentage of this time you have to spend in front of your pc and the time it works unattended. Most people's computers have enough idle time that it is worth a lot less than the time of the user. Gentoo saves my time (e.g. not having to reinstall Windows or not having to search Yast or some other stupid distribution-specific tool for a setting for which I know the matching config-file parameter) at the cost of my computer's idle time. I think this is a good deal.
Linux is not Windows
I love Gentoo and use it, but I was wondering what other distros are there that are always "up to date." I've never used any other but Gentoo, Slackware, and Red Hat. I know you can upgrade packages with Red Hat, but after a while it's recommended you just wipe the slate clean and start over when a new release comes out.
Are there other distros that are like Gentoo in that they are always up to date? I'm tired of reinstalling Linux distros every year (I know I don't have to, but it's almost always necessary to stay up to date with the packages for various reasons) and would enjoy using a distro that's geared more toward usability (sorry, Gentoo) like the binary-only distros are, but with the powerful updating that Gentoo has where I can always feel comfortable knowing I won't have to back up all my data and go through the process of reinstalling every six months just to keep up with major version releases. Thanks.
Do I need that thing? Will it make my fans go full speed? Whats the reason to use "linux" instead of OS X?
Downloading and serving it via Bitorrent now, wanted to ask...
Installing Gentoo - The Developers Method - Stage1 and NPTL [ Goto pageGoto page: 1 ... 7, 8, 9 ]
hrmmm? 9 pages?!?
replies 216 ?!?
Total hits 37,600 !?!
total amount of praise for writing such a tutorial..
endless
seeing Anonymouscoward shut it and walk away...
Priceless =]
you posted it. I want the link to it. seeing as how a live-cd for 2004.2 for sparc never made it, I can't see as how a 2004.3 exists. Please prove me wrong.
when you run emerge it tells you exactly what commands to run in order to update your symlink. You can copy/paste if that makes you happy.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I heared some people are a bit bored about Gentoo - those might like to look into the System Development Environment (or Distribution Build Kit - whatever you name it) "T2" over at http://www.excactcode.de/t2
PS: No flamware, please.
If anyone knows (otherwise I'll go to the gentoo forums) when you install the PPC version does it give an option to install a bootloader (like GRUB/LILO etc.) to dual boot OS X, or is this something they expect you to do afterwards?
... but then becomes a bear to maintain over time (Gentoo a year later is as maintainable and easy to sync up as it was on day one ... and as current as the latest download).
... it has been a couple of years since I installed Gentoo, so I don't recall the specificis anymore. I do recall it being quite straightforward, however ... and it does still work fine today, two years (and countless "emerge --deep -u world"s) later.
I dualboot Gentoo and Mac OS X 10.3 on a 17" powerbook with no problem whatsoever. As to your question "do they expect you to do it later," I think you may not be aware that the Gentoo installation process is manual (following a very well documented, step by step procedure, but nevertheless, manual). This is in contrast to Mandrake, for example, that gives you a nice install gui and sets stuff up for you automagically
So your question is a little orthogonal to the situation, making a "yes/no" answer unrevealing.
Summary: Following the Gentoo docs, you will have a bootable Gentoo system that supports dual booting with Mac OS X. Configuration specifics for the bootloader may need to be cross-referenced with a dualboot HOWTO
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I just downloaded the latest gentoo for sparc64 and am trying to install it on a Sunblade 150. So far all I can say is it's a piece of crap. Everything works until I attempt to create any type of filesystem. fdisk works fine, but often mke2fs locks up tight. It also frequently locks up when it attempts to mount the CDROM when booting up the install CD.
All I can say is I'm not at all happy with this. I've installed and configured many Linux systems on x86 and have spent a lot of time compiling various packages for Solaris on sparc, but so far this is not looking good.
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Those problems were even present in the stable branch? I'm always in ~x86 myself, and I didn't have to deal with that particular GCC upgrade.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
You're probably right. I have ~x86 set and have no idea if the stable branch suffered the same problems. Probably not.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
+1 True.
My God, are you dumb. FreeBSD's proportion is *growing* (at the expense of other OS's). Of course, not as fast as win & lin's proportion, but who cares. In the world, it's a fact that dumbasses are growing at a faster rate than smart people, since they make many more children on the average: this hardly means that smart people are going extinct (observing the logic of some GNU/fanboys, one could argue that the comparison is more appropriate than it seems).