Gentoo 2005.0 Released

mintshows writes "According to Gentoo Planet, the first gentoo release of the year, 2005.0, is out. You can download the 2005.0 ISOs from the torrents at http://torrents.gentoo.org/ . Of course, current Gentoo users can just emerge to the latest and greatest as always."

Comments

Re:compile on!

[mstromb]

Let me say that I'm not a very experienced gentoo user. Not a very experienced linux user either. Oh, I've tried dabbling for the longest time, my interested started long, long ago when I found some RH5 CDs someplace.

Forward to now. Now, I'm building a media center-ish pc. Also acting as a fileserver. Uses wireless, with WPA encryption and all that cool stuff.

Now, I could have gone with some other distro and saved myself quite a bit of time (I'm reinstalling it for the 3rd time as I write this), but honestly, gentoo is just plain fun to set up and I've learned way too much for me to just put it down now.

There are tons of ways to get it started. I've always opted to use a minimal livecd, but bootstrapping from knoppix or another livecd works well too.

Portage is just awesome, the most package-specific setup you'll ever really need to do is edit a new config file. There's even a tool to let you easily merge old config files when new revisions come out. And while I don't know how much speed I'm getting out of compiling everything from source, I do know what's on my computer, as I compulsively check use flags just to see what I can do with my system. With portage, I've found incredibly useful software I never knew existed, and don't know how I lived without. It's all about choices, choices, choices. And the only penalty for changing your mind is a bit of your time.

My only bad experiences stem from me using insane compiler flags that mess up your system completely. I had no idea it was possible to screw up rm, but I managed to do it. My hardware is also not the best, I went for cheap and older components I had lying around. However, gentoo hasn't told me "no" yet, I've just needed to be clever about doing things, which has taught me a huge amount about how linux, and computers in general, work. I've always been the "computer guy" around here, but I just feel... closer ;)

So long story short, I think gentoo is really, really worth it if you've got some spare time and some curiosity.

And being able to use bleeding-edge everything is just cool.

Re:compile on!

[TexVex]

Are you just being silly? Think about a TiVo, which records video real-time continuously while powered on. DirecTiVo systems can and do record two video streams at times, while playing back a third. All using regular old IDE hard drives.

Compiling some software for a few hours is a drop in the bucket.

Re:compile on!

[pyite]

And from my experience, yes, the time I spend compiling stuff is worth it for all the learning and flexibility in the end.

Yea, it starts out that way, like six years ago when I was grabbing the GIMP from CVS on a regular basis just for fun. Then you discover Debian and recover your time, realizing that except for special cases, compiling yourself isn't worth it.

Re:compile on!

[ThJ]

I agree very strongly with this. Although I'm a geek, that doesn't mean things *have* to be as complicated as possible.

The whole "learning" thing

[bonch]

I used to be a Gentoo guy after rolling my own LFS install. A lot of people go on and on about how Gentoo "teaches" them about Linux due to the install process, but what exactly are you learning? At most, you learn how to partition correctly. Everything else is handled with automated scripts that you just set flags for if you want to customize. When you install packages, you just emerge it, and it does all the compilation for you. So what exactly is being taught here? Just curious.

For a real good time, Linux From Scratch will actually give you insight into what's going on. No automated scripts there (though there are some available for LFS veterans who don't want to do it all again).

Re:The whole "learning" thing

[MyDixieWrecked]

it's kinda closer to learning at your own pace.

Sure, everything's handled by automated scripts, but there's still a lot of learning that's going on. You manually set a lot of information that's not there by default (hostname, dnsdomainname, etc) and manually set your internet settings in config files. I know in some X-based distros, there's GUI wizards for all that stuff.

Also, installing gentoo gives you a feel for all the things in the kernel. You can see "holy crap, I can compile in support for this Wacom tablet?!" where as if you install RedHat or whatever, you may not be able to even get the thing working. ...not that I've ever even tried to get my wacom tablet working in linux... just that I noticed there's support for it in the kernel...

also, the thing I like most about Gentoo isn't that everything's compiled for my machine specifically, even though that is nice, but rather the fact that a base Gentoo install is barebones. There's nothing. No ftp command, no hostx. Just the essentials. If I'm putting together a machine that's just going to be an FTP/rsync server, why do I need all that other crap that comes in a standard install?

I've never used Debian. Just Mandrake, Gentoo, Yellowdog, LinuxPPC, and RedHat, and yeah, I know you can tell it to do a minimal install, but Gentoo's installation handbook is taylored to people installing a minimal base system and just gets them started.

Gentoo's learning experience is 'learning by immersion.' Much like moving to Japan to learn japanese, you learn simply by being up to yer neck in the whole thing.