Gentoo 2005.0: A Live CD And [No] Graphical Installer

Sunsetbeach writes "zdnet.co.uk reports in this article that 'The next version of Gentoo, 2005.0, will also include a graphical installer that will allow users to automatically install the same set-up of Gentoo on multiple machines, according to Gianelloni.' " The article distinguishes the upcoming live disk from the (available) Gentoo Live CD; the new one will contain a fully functioning system ala Knoppix. Update: 11/30 23:09 GMT by M : Gentoo now has a clarification posted; the next Gentoo release will not have a graphical installer, although it is planned for the future.

Comments

This is exactly what Gentoo needs

[Anonymous Coward]

It really is a fantastic distro and this will allow it to be used by many many more people.

I pretty much started my Linux experience with Gentoo, which was difficult to say the least. This way though it can be setup easily by the inexperienced, while everyone else is still free to do a Stage 1/2 install

Re:This is exactly what Gentoo needs

[maekke]

I am not really sure if this is *really* good to have many more people... I mean that gentoo isn't an easy to handle distro, you have to spend time to understand it and able to use it. So I hope, that they will find a way that everybody will be happy :-)

greetz

Re:This is exactly what Gentoo needs

[Zork the Almighty]

I first switched to Gentoo because the bloody fonts "just worked". How sad is that. On a serious note, the user base is one major reason to stick with Gentoo. There is always excellent help and support in the forums, and snobby attitudes are kept in check.

Re:This is exactly what Gentoo needs

[adam.skinner]

You'll see pretty much any Linux distro use a "full gig" of RAM just running KDE if you let it sit long enough. It's how linux manages memory.

Re:This is exactly what Gentoo needs

[Jugalator]

I like Gentoo for its customisability. All the other distros are hell bent on throwing in everything which is great, but uses up so much RAM. I've seen SuSE use a full gig before just running KDE. With Gentoo I can leave all the little things I don't want out.

No.

Distros to fill in this gap has become more and more common lately. See also Knoppix, Mepis, and Ubuntu. It's almost like a new generation of Linux distros taking form, and I personally like those better than the Lindows abomination. :-S I like distros to have a goal to be only on one CD. Usually stability and user friendless come more easily from that as well, since there's less that can go wrong and less options to confuse the user.

I'm now using Mepis as a Linux amateur and it's great! :-) I can choose to run it off CD and get an excellent rescue disk that way with on-the-fly NTFS and SATA support, and also automatic network configuration. And if I like it enough, like I did, I can just install it on disk and it still has everything I can ask for from a basic OS as a normal user. It felt funny to install the OS from within the OS. :-)

And if I need more, it's an excellent Debian-based distro I can use simple apt-get commands or even simpler installer GUIs if I like it that way. Has been rock solid so far, as opposed to Mandrake 10 after around 5 days of regular use. :-P

Suddenly, multi-CD (or even multi-DVD *gasp*) distros feel so... yesterday.

Re:This is exactly what Gentoo needs

[stinky wizzleteats]

You don't actually provide a valid reason why it's not a "*really* good to have many more people" use Gentoo.

Yes, actually, he did:

I mean that gentoo isn't an easy to handle distro, you have to spend time to understand it and able to use it.

Because installing Gentoo currently is about 2 steps away from installing LFS, you simply cannot do it without learning a LOT about GNU/Linux at a very low level. If you want to install Gentoo, you MUST invest the time to learn how everything works. This frankly provides an idiot barrier to the support community. The only people who can ask questions about Gentoo are those who have made it through the installation. As of right now, you can ask a question on the Gentoo forum and get a useful answer usually within minutes. If you ask a question on the Mandrake forum, it disappears into a black hole of untold thousands of forever unanswered posts. Once the number of utterly clueless users exceeds the ability of the community to disseminate knowledge, support goes underground - with answers only trading hands among people who've made contact with the gurus by some means beyond simply showing up and asking questions.

Gentoo's current installation process makes it impossible to have a functioning system without knowing the following:

• How partition and disk structure works
• How GCC actually functions
• How the kernel is installed and configured
• At least something about runlevels and init scripts

I don't think it is unreasonable for this to be minimum knowledge to access support.

Re:This is exactly what Gentoo needs

[Deusy]

"Gentoo's current installation process makes it impossible to have a functioning system without knowing the following:

* How partition and disk structure works
* How GCC actually functions
* How the kernel is installed and configured
* At least something about runlevels and init scripts"

That's utter rubbish.

The partitioning / disk structure is basically a 1-time following of the Gentoo manual. You can get through it without knowing anything other than the simple fact partitions reside on a single hard disk. That's hardly knowing how it all works.

How GCC functions? Don't make me laugh. "emerge foo" does not induce an in-depth understanding of GCC. Copying the basic CFLAGS from the documentation doesn't either. I'd wager the majority of Gentoo users (bearing in mind I'm a Gentoo user who has accumulated >2600 forum posts) don't really understand GCC at all other than knowing it's a tool that compiles.

As to how the kernel is installed and configured, most people somewhat bumble through that and a little thing called 'genkernel' is making said bumbling a lot easier to do.

As for runlevels and init scripts, again it's just a case of following the docs rather than knowing what they are and how they work.

Please, do not confuse "being aware they exist" and "understanding", with the term 'knowing' implying the latter. And Gentoo is a MILLION miles away from LFS. Aside from the fact (almost) everything gets compiled and they are both Linux, there really just aren't that many similarities.

I would suggest that it's more the time taken to set up Gentoo rather than the difficulty of it (which isn't that difficult for the majority whom the docs serve well) is what provides the entry barrier. Don't get me wrong, for the willing it can be an invaluable process that does introduce them to the fundamental Linux concepts. BUT the majority of users who get through the installation process are still woefully short of the knowledge needed to maintain a healthy system and you get a lot of silly posts in the forums as a consequence. I should know, I've made a few myself.

Gentoo becoming user friendly

[b0lt]

Over the years I've been using gentoo, I've noticed that it has become MUCH more userfriendly. The documentation has improved dramatically, and now there's a graphical installer. Will this increase gentoo's install base?

-b0lt

In related news,

[Anonymous Coward]

In Korea, only old people use graphical installers.

Re:In related news,

[Anonymous Coward]

Netcraft confirms it, in Soviet Russia old people are dying.

Re:Boot-up time

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worked for 20 years of AmigaOS, it's not going to suddenly stop now because you fail to see it.

Breaks Gentoo as a learning tool

[neomage86]

One of the best things about Gentoo for me (the performance difference was negligble) besides portage, was the bootstrapping process. I know it took forever, but you actually are learning more about linux. Redhat (my first *nix) hid everything, and slackware (my second love) gave me a little more access. Only gentoo allowed me to see (and attempt to understand) a true view of the install.

Re:Breaks Gentoo as a learning tool

[SavedLinuXgeeK]

Not only the install, but honestly having to compile your own kernel, just makes things work better. Everything about Gentoo is right, you know whats going in, and you know whats coming out. I don't run lsmod and see about 20 modules just floating there, like I did with mandrake, I know whats going on, I pick the modules that will be there. Its not just about access, its about actually using a pc, after years of submitting to MS's craptacular tendecies of hiding everything and sticking you with the bill, its liberating to actually know what module does what, and what program is running what service, etc. That is the true power of linux.

Of course

[gowen]

the real hardcore Gentoo users won't consider you a Linux guru until your self-starting Linux system begins its bootstrap procedure by constructing your PC and CD-ROM drive using a desktop matter fabricator.

Oh, oh, I can see it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Dozens of post making oh so funny remarks that they are still not done compiling the old version before the new one comes out.

At least as many posts telling us that gentoo is the best and only distribution real man can use and that their boxen run so much faster now.

Half a dozen links to funroll-loops posted.

Anyway, I think this is great news. Imho gentoo really is a great distribution for what it does but there have been a few things missing that now seem to fall into place.

Kickstart like functionallity was one and a really stable (not in that it does work, but as in install and then have a stable system that will not be updated but only receives bug fixes) is also on the way.

And portage will finally get reverse-dependency checking when uninstalling, at least some gentoo devs are working on it.

Go gentoo!

this will totally crush BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo is just like BSD, but a million times better:

1. With Gentoo you can choose what version of software to install (tested or not very)

2. USB actually works

3. Ext3 is much better tested than UFS2 (and all Ext2 tools work with it too)

4. Portage works much more reliably than BSD ports system (because Portage installs in /var first and then moves stuff to /usr, wheres BSD ports aren't smart enough to do this)

The only thing that was keeping Gentoo behind BSD was the rather tedious installation (you have to follow some steps from the How-to). Now, with this automated, there will be absolutely no reason for anyone to use BSD

Re:this will totally crush BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it won't.

If you really want a rock stable system FreeBSD is still the way to go, as great as gentoo is, it can't compete in this area.

You'll also still have to compile all the software for your system, something you don't have to do, but can do using FreeBSD.

And of course there are many people that think that the BSDs have some security functionality gentoo or linux in general still lacks, e.g.: jails.

Finally, it is simply beyond me why you think that anything killing FreeBSD is a good thing. If gentoo fits your needs better than FreeBSD, use it, but what do you think gentoo or anyone else would gain from destroying FreeBSD?

Re:this will totally crush BSD

[carnivore302]

I still have no idea why this would totally crush BSD. Gentoo is a linux flavour, so unless gentoo adds something not standard to linux, nothing has been gained. If Linux didn't already crush BSD before, I don't think it will do so because of gentoo. It is the quality of linux that moves people away from [insert your OS here], not the distro (which in the end are all the same plus some extras that set them apart from eachother)although I must admit gentoo is a very nice distro. I use it myself and am very happy with it, but wouldn't want to give it to linux newbies.

gentoo already has a graphical installer

[DAC1138]

ummm, vida linux is gentoo with a graphical installer. i fail so see how the next 2005 release will be any different from vida.

http://gentoo.vidalinux.com/

Just some clarification...

[sbennett]

What's planned for 2005.0 is an experimental test release of the new graphical installer. It'll be there for people who want to test it, but don't go relying on the thing.

Re:Star Wars Characters

[Zork the Almighty]

Gentoo is the name of a very fast type of penguin. George Lucas has no claim (he's too busy making turkeys).

offtopic rant

[Zork the Almighty]

Don't you just love it how first posts are always modded redundant. I mean, all you did was make a comment. You expressed your opinion. I wonder, what is it that the moderator expected ?

I've noticed a lot of redundant mods lately, and negative mods in general. I think Slashdot should attach statistics to each story showing the percentage of positive versus negative mods. I would also like to see these statistics for editors, who have unlimited mod points. We should get to see how they were meta-modded as well. On one final note, Slashdot needs a forum to discuss issues like this, so that people don't have to resort to offtopic posts.

Gentoo Install Flexibility

[Brian Blessed]

It's very common for people on /. (who are, perhaps familiar with other distros) to denounce Gentoo for its lack of a graphical installer, but I've always seen this as a good thing. The person installing Gentoo has clear and precise instructions outlining what actions need to be performed, so they can very easily adapt those to a wide range of different situations. E.g. I don't like to have to burn CDs unnecessarily, so I make my kernel first and then network boot into the stage1 filesystem.

I believe that, in general, it's a better design decision not to have an overly intrusive installer for any software because that can tie too much of the software's configuration to the installation process, rather than having a comprehensive way to configure the software post-install.

- Brian

There is only one problem...

[wolf31o2]

Ingrid took the things I said completely out of context and ran with them.

At no point did I ever tell her that we would have a graphical installer on 2005.0's release media. I also did not tell her that the 2005.0 release would be a Knoppix-style LiveCD, as it will, in fact, be exactly like the 2004.3 release with the Minimal, Universal, and Packages CD images.

What I did tell her is that we will have an experimental LiveCD with our first limited functionality beta of the installer, which will most likely be curses-based only and not have any enterprise-ready features available for use.

This is exactly why you demand to have interviews done via email and not the phone, especially when speaking with someone from another country, and be sure to ask to proof read the article for accuracy before it prints.

Some advantages of an installer

[tmk]

I want to outline some advantages of an installer:

• You can configure the system first and the installer does the rest. No need to wait for the completion of step 1, step 2, step 3. You give just all information needed and the installer makes the rest. You can work something else until the installer is finished.
• The learning effect is low when you have to type a long line of parameters from the manual. This does not mean, you have understood anything. With an installer you can give the lectures right on the right place. 'Learning by doing' instead of 'learning by typing'.
• There is no real need to make the central configuration files by yourself. The normal user has only one set of devices, he will not change the /etc/fstab every week or once a year. Other distributions show that you don't need to know exactly the syntax of an file to know how the system works.

something else.

[morgajel]

the real advantage is being able to "turn off" certain sections of the code with USE flags. Did you know bitchx can be compiled to use gnome? when the debian maintainers compile bitchx for you, they decide whether or not to include it. you don't have the choice.

with gentoo, you can use the USE flags
USE="-gnome" emerge bitchx
USE="gnome" emerge bitchx

This allows me to say if I want gnome installed or not if it's just an optional feature on bitchx. Since I mostly use kde, I can do without installing all the gnome dependencies.

to see a list of flags for any given package (and their default status)
emerge -vp bitchx
[ebuild N ] net-irc/bitchx-1.1-r1 -cdrom -cjk -debug +esd -gnome +gtk -ipv6 +ncurses +ssl +xmms 2,473 kB

Then you can choose to enable them or not.

There are a lot of common flags, USE flags which you can set in the /etc/make.conf file. my flags on my workstation are the following:

USE="3dnow amd alsa bzlib cddb cdparanoia curl dnd dvd -dvdr ethereal flash gd glut -gnome gstreamer icq image magemagick imap java javascript kerberos krb4 ldap lm_sensors maildir md5sum mime ming mmx -mozilla mplayer msn jack ooo-kde openssh pdf rtc samba sasl threads type1 tiff usb xvid"

and this isn't even close to all of them.
If you'd like to learn more, let me know. I try not to be a zealot:)

gentoo can't have it both ways

[mgkimsal2]

The gentoo fanboy community can't have it both ways.

1. Requiring intimate kernel-level knowledge of a system to install it.

2. Shouting 'use gentoo!' to every passerby who expresses any sort of question about another distro (like, how do I install an RPM? or something similar).

It's like people saying Macs are the bestest most awesomest systems ever, but that they're also cheaper than x86 alternatives. It doesn't work both ways.

Be content with having a difficult-to-install system that forces people to learn more than most people would want. That's fine. But don't shout that as the answer to every single problem as well - most people don't have the time or motivation to do that.

Re:What about post-install management?

[SPQRDecker]

Not necessarily. The great thing about Portage is the ability to interactively update config. files using the utility 'etc-update'. This tool will list all updated config. files, automatically merge inconsequential changes like whitespace, allow the useer to compare the differences side by side, pick one version over the other, manually edit the final result, and, most importantly, undo the changes when things go horribly wrong (provided you don't delete the temporary files).

Read the response to the article by the Gentoo Dev

[labradort]

Apparently the article is misleading, according to a follow up response to it by the Gentoo Developer interviewed by the IT reporter.

See: this follow up posting under the original article

Name: Chris Gianelloni
Location: USA
Occupation: Gentoo Linux Developer
Comment: Well, what can I say except that quite a bit of the "meat" of this "interview" was ignored. I did make mention that the full-environment LiveCD would be an "experimental" CD available for x86 and amd64 and that it will have a "limited functionality, beta version" of the installer on the CD. At no point did I represent that there would be a 100% completed installer available by February, but now it appears that everyone under the sun thinks that there will be one.

There will not.

Trust me on this one. The Gentoo Installer project is working very hard, but they are not anywhere near completion and definitely will not be so quickly after the winter holidays.

Also in 2005.0

[bozarthj]

The 2.6 kernel will become the default kernel, not just for the liveCD, (which as been that since 2004.3) but for the distro. Instead of emerge gentoo-dev-sources for 2.6, it will be emerge gentoo-sources.