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Graphical Gentoo Installer In The Works
JonLatane writes "Without a doubt, Gentoo has set itself apart from every other distro out there. Because it's source-based, it's notorious for its speed. Because of emerge, it's notorious for being simple to maintain. And because of its "install system" (if it can be called that), it's notorious for scaring off potential users before they even get to try it. Well, that's all going to change, because there is a graphical Gentoo installer in the works. It can run with a dialog frontend that bears a striking similarity to Ubuntu, or for faster systems a GTK+ frontend is available."
I mod this story (Score:-1, Troll). "Because it's source-based, it's notorious for its speed." What? Because it's source-based? What's the disribution I'm using right now based off of, pixie dust?
I think most people are "scared off" because they don't have the 4 GHz computer with a gig of RAM required to compile the entire system under a couple days, and if you DO have a 4 GHz computer, a few -O3 and -funroll-loops optimizations aren't going to amount to much.
Gentoo is a really nice distro if you have the system for it, but stop with the silly arguments. A few optimizations aren't going to amount to much, and if you want to learn how to put a distro together read the LFS book.
Whatever happened to picking up your balls and doing it the RIGHT way?
Must be a slow news day if this is all they can compile.
Is that its installation speed, which is notoriously slow, or the speed at which it runs? Any system that takes a weekend to install just HAS to be faster, right?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's not the 'emerge system', its portage.
Also I would only recommend the graphical installer for people who have used gentoo before, because there's nothing like doing a stage 1 install to get you acquainted with your system and linux in general.
Its all fun and games until someone loses an eye... then its just fun.
What about my bragging rights for being able to install Gentoo using only a bash shell and minimal *nix tools? What about the learning experience from installing it this way? The docs are simple enough to follow...
Feh @ GUI
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Do you have to compile this thing first?
Will be there be a version without needing to compile forever too?
Why does everyone seem to think that gentoo is "known for its speed" because it is source-based? The whole compiling-it-yourself thing isn't worth it as far as performance gains go. However, there's also the customization aspect.
And yes, I am a gentoo user.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
It's just a matter of "follow the directions" and you get a working system. Anyone who can't install Gentoo must be afraid to RTFM.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
mirror here
Won't Gentoo lose all of it's coolness factor if anybody who can click a mouse can install it?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
great pun!
this just means that more and more lam3rs will be able to figure out how to install my favorite distro and claim they are 1337 because of it.
I LOVE gentoo, I have been using it since well before version 1.0 was released... but I am so tired of the public relations nightmare the gentoo foundation has on its hands where, lame people claim they are smart because they use gentoo, which causes good linux guys who could benefit from this great distro to look somewhere else. This isn't gonna help.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
There's already a project out there with a graphical installer for Gentoo...Vidalinux. I've not had much exposure to it, but i've heard good things. They ported the anaconda installer and stuck in it there.
I wonder how this graphical installer for Gentoo will compare.
Read the only personal Runyon page out there.
Just because you happen to be a self important RedHat user doesn't mean that Gentoo users are this way. I for one welcome the idea of an easier install method for Gentoo.
The first few posts are all trolls! People said this story is a troll! Not at all... it's exactly what slashdot should be used for - tech news.
...but on the other side, it might also get MORE people using gentoo... and that can only be a good thing.
I'm not sure where this graphical UI is going to go, it's definitely an interesting development. As the above trollposts point out, gentoo users might be worried that this will let other, "newbier" people use their distro.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
How is this news? They've had this in the works fro quite sometime now, why is it news today and not oh say two or three months ago?
This looks so nice and so winxp-installer-like that it makes me want to switch right now :) (No, I don't have Linux installed in my machine)
Isn't it called vidalinux?
... "plain vanilla system" that works for me would help without "graphics".
In rememberance of DWIM, which never made it.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Notorious for speed? My god, today must have been a slow news day, because I've never noticed Gentoo being faster than my Debian or Slackware installs, even Linux from scratch. This article is inaccurate and stupid.
So how do they tell the user that it's going to take like 3 days to do a stage 1 install?
Graphics are nice (I'm all for it) but at least the Gentoo handbook warns you and says..."Go get something to eat because this might take a while." Personally, I don't think new users are going to necessarily use Gentoo if the install time is measured in hours and days rather than minutes.
And before people start posting your install times, I'm talking about going from stage 1 to a working, X.org, KDE/GNOME/whatever desktop with possibly Open Office (which literally took 6 hours for me to emerge on my Centrino laptop the other day).
What's this 'source-based' business?
I was just going to reinstall my gentoo pertition. ::P
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
The time has come for a serious discussion on whether or
not to continue using C for serious programming projects. As I will
explain, I feel that C needs to be retired, much the same way that
Fortran, Cobol and Perl have been. Furthermore, allow me to be so bold
as to suggest a superior replacement to this outdated language.
To give you a little background on this subject, I was recently asked
to develop a client/server project on a Unix platform for a Fortune
500 company. While I've never coded in C before I have coded in VB for
fifteen years, and in Java for over ten, I was stunned to see how
poorly C fared compared to these two, more low-level languages.
C's biggest difficulty, as we all know, is the fact that it is by far
one of the slowest languages in existance, especially when compared to
more modern languages such as Java and C#. Although the reasons for
this are varied, the main reasons seems to be the way C requires a
programmer to laboriously work with chunks of memory.
Requiring a programmer to manipulate blocks of memory is a tedious way
to program. This was satisfactory back in the early days of coding,
but then again, so were punchcards. By using what are called
"pointers" a C programmer is basically requiring the computer to do
three sets of work rather than one. The first time requires the
computer to duplicate whatever is stored in the memory space "pointed
to" by the pointer. The second time requires it to perform the needed
operation on this space. Finally the computer must delete the
duplicate set and set the values of the original accordingly.
Clearly this is a horrendous use of resources and the chief reason why
C is so slow. When one looks at a more modern (and a more serious)
programming language like Java, C# or - even better - Visual Basic
that lacks such archaic coding styles, one will also note a serious
speed increase over C.
So what does this mean for the programming community? I think clearly
that C needs to be abandonded. There are two candidates that would be
a suitable replacement for it. Those are Java and Visual Basic.
Having programmed in both for many years, I believe that VB has the
edge. Not only is it slightly faster than Java its also much easier to
code in. I found C to be confusing, frightening and intimidating with
its non-GUI-based coding style. Furthermore, I like to see the source
code of the projects I work with. Java's source seems to be under the
monopolistic thumb of Sun much the way that GCC is obscured from us by
the marketing people at the FSF. Microsoft's "shared source" under
which Visual Basic is released definately seems to be the most fair
and reasonable of all the licenses in existance, with none of the
harsh restrictions of the BSD license. It also lacks the GPLs
requirement that anything coded with its tools becomes property of the
FSF.
I hope to see a switch from C to VB very soon. I've already spoken
with various luminaries in the C coding world and most are eager to
begin to transition. Having just gotten off the phone with Mr. Alan
Cox, I can say that he is quite thrilled with the speed increases that
will occur when the Linux kernel is completely rewritten in Visual
Basic. Richard Stallman plans to support this, and hopes that the
great Swede himself, Linux Torvaldis, won't object to renaming Linux
to VB/Linux. Although not a C coder himself, I'm told that Slashdot's
very own Admiral Taco will support this on his web site. Finally,
Dennis Ritchie is excited about the switch!
Thank you for your time. Happy coding.
I never saw the point in Gentoo. Okay, it's a distribution that you compile from scratch. Whee.
Optimizations? Bullshit. An optimized xterm is going to be 0.00000001% faster than a non-optimized xterm, and that's basically all I ever use. Just compile your kernel with all the optimizations since that's what really matters.
"Oh but installing gentoo lets me learn so much about linux". Bullshit. Does watching "gcc -Wall -OMGWTF -LOL -FMAKE-FASTER" fly across your screen for hours on end make you smarter somehow? Linux is an OS where the learning is in configuration.
So, I use a distro where I can install things quickly, and get on with configuring them. Debian.
Amoung nerds isn't it's noteriety due to its unearned reputation for speed? Didn't /. post a benchmark showing that its optimizations were overagressive, and that net performance suffered?
I totally agree with you. But this is slashdot. Anything regarding Linux/Unix ease-of-use development and out come the flames of elitism.
And people wonder why destros like these will NEVER make it to the public and get the support they so richly deserve.
Life is not for the lazy.
Personally, I use Gentoo Linux and I especially like portage and the emerge command! It's incredibly useful, for example, to update your *entire* system, simply use: emerge --update --deep --newuse world
I hope this new Graphical installer will increase the amount of people interested in using it!
I'll definitely recommend it!
"Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write it should be hard to understand."
If they include this in the official release, than they should also include some other graphical stuff such as Porthole to manage Portage graphically. It doesn't do much good to help a newbie through the install process graphically and then expect them to use a Portage from the command line.
Still, it's a good thing. Even people who have been doing Linux-related stuff for a while can miss or screw up some steps in Gentoo installation. Anything that can simplify the process should be welcomed.
How can it be notorious for its speed when outside comparisons have shown RedHat to be faster than Gentoo? Stampede Linux on the other hand, that was 20% faster.
I've been an avid fan of Gentoo for quite a while now, so I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this article or the postings so far.
I guess I've always had a sense of pride of being able to compile the OS during the installation, but yes it's true, it's a pain in the arse to get a 'quick' installation going. Hopefully a graphical installation won't "taint" the perception that the speed and efficiency of an OS compiled for your own hardware isn't worth the time it takes.
I currently run gentoo 2005.0 on my Toshiba laptop and love it, and will be changing my primary linux fileserver/workstation to gentoo in the next little while.
Here's one of my favorite bash.org quotes about gentoo. Got a good chuckle out of it...
my geeklog
Some of the things I learned:
1. My time is better spent doing things other than compiling basic system utilities.
2. My optimized Gentoo system does not run faster enough to make up for the time lost building it from source.
3. Turns out there was nothing to learn from installing Gentoo from stage 1. I already knew what goes into a system at the most basic level, but I got this from 10+ years of Unix/Linux experience, before I ever saw Gentoo.
Going to try MEPIS now. 'Sposed to be easy and painless.
Edith Keeler Must Die
so....seriously, why on earth can't people get one of the 5037295632597325 working installers and modify it? There're *tons* of good installers. And please don't tell me "they sucked and we're doing this one well" - the others have been there, have written bugs, have fixed bugs, have ported their work and have worked hard adding features to get a decent installer.
Writing a program to achieve a functionality it already exist in other program is not a bad idea, this is OSS, but it is quite stupid when your software doesn't really provide anything special. This installer looks the same - a installer which is not even near of other installers like the one fedora uses and that will take ages to get right.
Why do they want or need a graphical installer? Gentoo is not meant for first time Linux users. I guess a decision has to be made whether Gentoo will try to become a "POP" distro that advertises and caters to all users. I hope, however, that they continue to distinguish themselves from other distros as they have so far.
Allowing binary images and pre-built installs would speed things up and possibly attract more users, but they would be in danger of people using their distro like Debian, and emerge just acting like apt-get. I'll admit I have used stage 3+GRP installs more than anything.
Apparently, if you have any anti-Semitic firewalls, Gentoo is the distro for you!
I just heard some sad news on the radio. Former geek favorite, and (formerly) residing in a trash bin behind Artie's Burgers for 15 years.. *BSD has died.
Truly an awkward OS.. *BSD will be missed for its awkwardness, shit stains and cum stains.. we'll miss ya buddy
While the others argue about the speed of a source based system or the long compile times...
I'm pretty happy that Im able to get new software easily with a nice tool such as emerge.
A graphical interface for the installations will be really nice for me, especially since Im so damn lazy and forget to look at the screen to see when things are finished emerging cross every stage of the install.
However... maybe I shouldnt tell my boss about this graphical interface.. afterall, Im paid by the hour..
It is still just as confusing for the casual user. Anything that requires the user to figure out what /dev/hda or ext2/3 or ReiserFS or Network Mounts, etc, means is still too complicated for the average user. There should be a default and advanced setting for advanced users. It requires what? Another dialogue box. That's not much to ask. The graphical interface may simplify things for advanced users but advanced users don't really need it simplified and the simplification reduces flexibility.
Aside from the fact that all the trolls seem to be the first person(s) to post here. I'll leave my thoughts about their.....short-comings that make them feel the need to state the things that they doout of this. As a former Slackware and Redhat that is now a Gentoo user, I have to say this is a great thing. The one thing about Gentoo that I dislike is the length of time for installation. Granted, it's a great thing for a newbie to do to really learn about how their system works and how it comes together. But it should be an OPTION to do it that way. Many users don't want to have to go throught all that mess. As for those of you that seem to think that Gentoo ISN'T faster. I have news for you, it is. I went from Redhat on 8 machines to Gentoo on 5 and I'm doing about 10% more work than I originally was with the SAME systems that were originally running redhat. But let's face it. Everyone has their own opinions when it comes to what linux distro is best. NOONE is really wrong in their opinion. Do you know why? BECAUSE LINUX IS ABOUT FREEDOM IN THE FIRST PLACE! You're free to choose what distro you want to use. You're free to choose to roll your own, you're even free to use any software package out there you want and not use what's supplied with the distro. So I say to ANYONE who's 'holier than thou' about their distro of choice. Bugger off. Just because you like it and it works great for you doesn't mean everyone else will think the same. I don't cram down people's throats that they should use Gentoo, but I'm a Gentoo user. Which brings to mind, do you know what has been the cause of every major civilization since the dawn of time? Internal fighting. So why are linux people fighting when we should be joining against Redmond?
Moving to Gentoo was quite the learning process - virtually everything is done by hand, though the documentation is very good at guiding you through it.
You'll definitely learn more getting a Gentoo system up than you will running through Anaconda.
It was well worth it, though. I used to consider myself pretty good with Linux; I could always get what I wanted out of it. Gentoo, though, really allows you to get down low if you want - really just a couple steps above something like Linux from Scratch.
I certainly wouldn't recommend it as an easy OS for new Linux users with no command line experience (though once it's set up, it's easy), but it's great if you're interested in learning more about how a system works.
"because it's source-based, it's notorious for its speed" - so what, no other distribution uses source to compile its distro?
...gentoo users are notorious for failing to comprehend the implications of their system philosophy.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
Stable is fine. Unstable sucks wind. That's the point, it's unstable.
I've never hosed a Gentoo system with emerge in stable. I have had some marathon sessions fixing particular fine points, but the system always recovers. Even with buggy kernel support of a chipset (Nforce), and constant panics thereof in the midst of marathon compile sessions, emerge kept trying its damnedest to keep it patched up.
Beside which, you can just erase the portage tree and pull a new one down if you hose it up too much.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Let a kind slashdotter paste a link. The author "does not feel like testing out his server's capabilities!"
That was about time. This can actually make Gentoo become the #1 distro.
It looks very functional, and I like the list of "steps", this's familiar for us who installed a lot of gentoo installations.
Still, I prefer the text installation, it gives you more control and teachs new people a lot of linux stuff.
ajf
Hmmm -- from the POV of a college-aged daugher, I'm not sure that this would be a Good Thing.
As it is, when DD tells guys that she runs Linux, they're impressed. When she tells them that she runs Gentoo, they're in awe. When she tells them that she did a Stage One install, those who aren't running away in terror fall on their faces and worship her.
As a father, I like it that way: most of them running away in terror, the rest face-down on the ground. I sleep better.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
If your computer can't handle GTK, why the hell are you installing Gentoo on it?
I was going to mod you down for acting a bit like a troll, but I'll reply instead.
The first sentence was arrogant. While it does give me a certain amount a pride to be able to do something most people can't, I don't flaunt it, simply because there are a billion other things people can do better than me (like stay in shape).
The second sentence is insightful. I've gone through several Gentoo installs; it has taken me 4 tries to get a good Gentoo install on my server (i.e., when I reboot the system doesn't fail). Fortunately, after I finished the third, I was able to get Gentoo running on my desktop, too. To say it was a learning experience is a definite understatement; it changed the whole way I think about computers. Above all, what has helped me most in installing Gentoo is having 2 PCs and a kvm switch.
The third sentence is an opinion. The docs do not work for every setup; in fact, they are a guideline, and will absolutely work for most setups.
Next you're going to tell me that Linus is infamous among hackers.
For example, where in the documentation does it mention starting /etc/init.d/famd at boot? (This will improve KDE's file monitoring responsiveness.) Does a user know to chmod his RTC? How to umask a vfat partition so that users can access it? How to setup multiple sound cards? How to set up your application sound server settings? How to enable the kernel laptop mode? How to setup power management runlevels? Which kernel modules need to be added to modules.autoload? How to make fonts appear cleanly and consistently?
A second major problem with Gentoo is the uncontrolled proliferation of USE flags. The vast majority of flags are for individual packages. A new user would be likely to completely miss the importance of configuring many of the higher level use flags.
Unfortunately Gentoo is plagued by naive users who believe that--just because they have a Gentoo system that boots--they are somehow empowered. The largest reason they feel that way is because their system is 'optimized' for their hardware. The truth is an ignorant user's CFLAGS are more likely to hinder his system's performance.
Gentoo is an incredible distribution; however, it has a long way to go in terms of usability. While I am excited at the prospect of a graphical installer, I hope that these larger issues can also be addressed. These issues are what make Linux difficult, and fun.
So how do they tell the user that it's going to take like 3 days to do a stage 1 install?
They (and the GUI) would be better off only installing the GRP packages, then... "Power users" can upgrade as they see fit...
but I was under the impression that the ubuntu installer was pretty much the exacty same as the debian installer.
Gentoo, the ultimate geek distro and it still hasn't got its own /. icon.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I am a gentoo user. I have done several text-based installs (duh), and gentoo is currently my desktop of choice. I do this not for speed, but for control of my system, and excellent package management. I also switched to gentoo to get more hands-on with linux. I can say now, that I don't really like the text install. It taught me a lot, but after doing one or two, the novelty wears off, and it allows for many careless errors. This development also means that many new users will be much more attracted to gentoo. If they began offering a comprehensive mirror of the most common, say, 2000 packages, it would easily be one of the best distributions. (yes, sometimes building from source is annoying, but portage and USE flags still rock).
I use Gentoo. Do I do it for "speed"? No. The main reason: Variety. Since Portage is source-based, it is by far the vastest package management system for any Linux Distro. If anyone can find a larger system with frequent updates and sometimes obscure software, I'd like to know (Searching the net for RPM's doesn't count). The second reason is how tweakable it is. Although that one isn't really Gentoo-specific, as I think Debian, Slackware, and a few others are just as tweakable beyond the install.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Yeah, you're as much trolling as the story ;)
If you've ever tried comparing KDE or Gnome from Slackware/RedHat/Debian with Gentoo, you will see that the optimizations are very effective. I've used Slack,RH/FC, Deb, LFS and Gentoo. It takes me less than half the time to open Mozilla on gentoo. I like that.
People might see those pictures of XP with a skin on it and think it's Longhorn!
The project's been out there for a while. If you don't believe me, feel free to check out Gentoo's forums to get a rough idea. for example: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-316615-highli ght-.html
http://funroll-loops.org/
The consistent weak point in any Linux distro I have ever tried is the lack of accurate user information that doesn't presuppose in-depth knowledge of the OS.
I have used Linux flavors for nearly five years now with a majority of the time spent with Red Hat and Suse, and recently became familiar with Gentoo. There's more to it than just compiling the basic system utilities, as some an complained about, and its that which makes it different and in my opinion, better. My initial reaction that those of you who are bitching about it must have failed the install or something. It really is a fun thing to do if you like that stuff, and gives a deep view on the workings of Linux. Its in the spirit of Gentoo to compile for your machine, so anyone who doesn't like it should leave. I think its fantastic that they're making a GUI, so rock on Gentoo.
As long as they keep the non-graphical installation option available, I don't really give a rip about a graphical installer. I don't even know why I care about that, I just do. Maybe because it's what helps make Gentoo unique.
In any case, Gentoo is definately not for the timid user (i.e. n00b). There's just a lot more manual stuff you have to configure, which is fine with me, but not people who don't know anything about linux. I've been recommending ubuntu for the people who want to try linux but just don't have the skills.
And as far as optimizations not helping overall speed, I think that's wrong. I checked glxgears FPS for both Ubuntu and Gentoo, both with direct rendering enabled showed ~800 fps for Ubuntu and ~1700 for Gentoo (-march=pentium3 -Os). I wouldn't be suprised if I'm missing something in regards to that 'benchmark', but whatever.
I use Gentoo because it works for me. I use it on a secondary computer and before Gentoo I tried SuSe and Mandrake, with the former being a pain and a half to get working (network drivers just did not get detected correctly) and the second not installing. So I
I've stuck with it and have reinstalled a few times, each time learning something new (usually by borking it beyond my ability to repair). It's a secondary system (mostly a server now) so every so often I "emerge world" and continue with whatever else I was doing.
Will it take to compile the grahpical installer so I can then wait again for the world to compile?
I am a new user to Gentoo but thanks for all the warning about long installation times. I think I will mill corn, churn butter and hunt for game while installing Gentoo.
WhatMeWorry
(See subject.)
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I'd think that at least some people would be put off by the comprehensive Gentoo handbook... if it gets more people using it, then all the better!
Maybe if the option still exists to do it the current way then perhaps you'll be more l337 for being among the few left taking that route :p
The point of gentoo's portage system, from my point of view, is the elimination of package dependency issues, and compiler version issues.
...I tried Redhat 5.2/6.x/7.x... ...I tried various debians... ...then I settled on Slackware. Every distros fscked up weirdo patches on their kernels, their XFree, their desktop environment and installers. Even the random libraries I used, such as the then-nacient SDL and Allegro had distro-specific patches. Which meant a binary I compiled on my box wouldn't run anywhere else. Ever wonder why small sourceforge projects don't release *ix binaries? Everyone is using their own damn gcc version, their own damn libc. You can't even be sure that a program with nothing but libc dependencies will compile.
I've used linux for about 10 years, but only heavily for the last 4. Why? I enjoy using linux because I enjoy the programming environment. It was hell getting to the point I'm at now though...
Slackware was fine, for awhile. Then they decided to move further and further from each individual projects standard source packages (kde, xfree, kernel) and I was having problems with getting the early nvidia driver to work with several of their kernels.
Portage solves the problem. If a program won't build with the particular version of gcc, or xfree, or whatever library you're using, the ebuild for it will depend on a specific version of the compilation environment and each library.
Everyone who talks about optimization (there are gains, but they are small) is missing the point. The point is that I am taking largely unchanged cvs copies of each project's source when I compile. As a developer, I worry about being up to date- so I build a new version of SDL in the backround while I browse the web, or go on coding. No fuss, no muss, and no worries like Debian has with Ubuntu- incompatible binary issues.
For God's sake, lets leave the incompatible binaries issue to other operating system families. Just build the source from it's source.
Distro leaders take note. *ix users are tired of incompatible binaries.
Performing sanity checks on your own beliefs is vital in avoiding poisoned koolaid.
Moving to Gentoo was quite the learning process - virtually everything is done by hand, though the documentation is very good at guiding you through it.
This installer sort of negates your statement, don't you think? This thing is worse than Genkernel which encourages people to install without learning to configure a kernel properly.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
"Gentoo users usually have smaller, leaner and more optimized systems than others, but given that harddrive space hasn't been at a premium for at least three years now, is having smaller binaries really that important? In terms of speed, most Linux applications make no use of MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, or SSE3, which means that compiling for 386 usually creates a program that's only the tiniest ammount slower than its 686 equivalent. The few programs that do make use of these instruction extensions (such as MPlayer) are usually made available in both 686 and 386 mode, and often in Athlon build too, so that everyone has the best build for thier system.This means in terms of an overall increase in performance, Gentoo is unlikely to bring more than 15% which is hardly a new lease of life.
"However, any benifits that Gentoo may bring are dashed by the time it takes to compile software...
"...Beyond that [Portage], Gentoo is little more than a solution looking for a problem: 100% of all desktop machines sold today have CPU cycles to waste, which means that getting even an extra 20% out of your applications will make little difference."
Excerpts of a review of Gentoo in Linux Format, January 2005, page 52.
Now will all of you that think Gentoo is "notorious for its speed" please shut up?
I like portage, but I have to say that the whole masking business is quite an annoyance. I don't encounter it often enough to remember what to do when the situation arises, so what should be a simple install turns into an exercise in burning time. Also, at some point, they'll probably encounter etc-update, and the (currently) arcane method of dealing with it. Not to worry- I think there's still quite a bit of "coolness" left. The "cool" they don't get during installation will come back to haunt them later on.
I would be REALLY impressed if this sucker could do a Knoppix style detection of what hardware you have on the system, and recommend which modules this will require in the kernel.
;-)
I had waaaay too much fun early on figuring out I hadn't complied some specific drivers for controllers or some such and wondering why my harddisk and CDROM were so slow. Please, please, pretty please have it recommend what to compile into a kernel.
Of course, maybe I should just use the general purpose kernel and stop worrying about it. Hmm... naah!
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I know, it's amazing, but some people really don't like mucking about at the kernel level.
I'm one of those tinkerers that wants to know how everything works, but some people just need a working computer - and with this, Gentoo takes a step towards also being a solution for them.
You and I still have the manual option, and for people who want to really learn about linux, it can continue to be recommended.
I think most people are "scared off" because they don't have the 4 GHz computer with a gig of RAM required to compile the entire system under a couple days
This is just as bad as the intro. I run Gentoo, and compiling most apps is very reasonable. There are a few packages that DO take a LONG time (KDE and OpenOffice.org are commonly the worst offenders). However, for somebody who runs a light desktop like I do (Fluxbox) it's perfectly fine. Additionally, many packages are available in precompiled binary packages to speed this process up. I know a few people that compile everything except OO.o, for example.
Just my $0.02.
Screenshots
/.ing. :)
Sorry, I've removed the screenshots to avoid a
No you haven't
Get your own free personal location tracker
But I'm sure she'll appreciate your version.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Oh thank god
I'm on a 900mhz athlon and unlike most of you, who own better systems might not really care for the difference gentoo provides, I can most definitely say that the performance I get under gentoo is extremely great in comparison to others(specifically: ubuntu, mandrake and rh).
Compiling the whole system took about a day and a half, then another couple of hours emerging important packages. The less important software I just emerged later as I needed to use them.
Those of you bitching about the compile time...it really doesn't take that long for the performance you get in return. The large packages that do take a long time, such as ximian-openoffice and mplayer, can be emerged while you're asleep.
The performance difference can be seen, I dint feel like I'm working on an old system at all - in fact I still think it kicks ass: games run perfectly(even under wine), apps start very quickly and run smoothly.
Is this a late /. April Fool's story?
I've been a gentoo user for a few years now, and have wasted^H^H^H^H^H^Hspent countless hours reading the gentoo forums. Every few weeks somebody asks why gentoo doesn't have an installer (graphical or otherwise). The question is followed by pages of "gentoo doesn't need an installer" or "the installer would get in the way of the fine tuning during install" or "if you need an installer, you shouldn't be using gentoo", etc.
I don't see how they can have all the options and customizations of a true gentoo install with a gui. But if they can manage it, then that's great.
I actually prefer booting the CD mounting my partitions, pulling down the stage 1, then going from there. The first thing I do when I boot the CD is start sshd. Then I go to another box, start a screen session and ssh into the new box. Then I can ssh into the second box from anywhere (or just sit at the keyboard) and attach to that screen and install. Since a gentoo install is: run some commands, wait a few hours, repeat, I find containing my install in a screen session convenient.
To reduce the compile time, I find it quite helpful to set up distcc as quickly as possible, and have all the PCs in my house pitch in.
Whenever I see someone's opinion backed up with "I think not," I'm forever going to picture Dash's 4th-grade teacher from The Incredibles. The same insanity in promotion usually seems to apply.
:)
"You're letting him get away? That little rat is guilty! Guilty! Guilty!"
(Of course, in the movie, he was right.
I have never noticed a significant speedup just because I was using Gentoo. The reasons I use Gentoo (this is just me, your milage may vary)
a) Debian-esq control of how the system gets put together, or maybe even a little finer control. I like this.
b) Being able to dictate at compile time what features to compile in (pdf in Grace plotting tool anyone?)
c) If my hardware lives through the install, I can be fairly certain I've got a solid system. It took memtest86 hours to find a problem with a ram stick that a gentoo build crapped out on almost immediately.
d) Knowing that my system is self consistent in the sense that everything on the system can be built by the system.
The last is a subtle point, but if the rest of the internet fell off the globe tomorrow in theory (provided I saved my tarballs) I could re-create another Gentoo machine from scratch - no binaries needed except those used to bootstrap stage 1 and a couple special cases like nvidia drivers and acroread. I can reasonably expect that if I need to tweak and recompile something my machine, all by itself on its own resources, is up to the challenge. On a more practical note, I can grab almost any source code from the net and already have all the needed libraries to compile the thing. (Debian I always wound up hunting dev packages - I'm sure there is a setting to install all of them but I never did get around to finding it. I really should have.)
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:JLQtqPZe9pYJ: dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/gli/+&hl=en
parent's link to pictures has been removed due to slashdotting. So:
s hots/vidalinu x-anaconda.png
u e=20040628#2
distrowatch screenshot:
http://distrowatch.com/images/screen
from
distrowatch article on the installer:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?iss
I still haven't heard an argument against dselect that makes any sense to me, a user who is happily using it.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Say all you want, but Gentoo is a great distro. I like the fact you are in total command... the distro leaves everything to you to set up. The update system is great, plus there are very frequent updates to packages. I just type "emerge -uD --newuse world" and bam, it updates. I like the fact that it is hard(er) than other distros to install. It's not really hard, but it's not so easy that you click a few buttons like in XP. Gentoo is very easy to configure, and it's been much less of a pain in the arse than those "easy" distros, which got really annoying. Gentoo is unique. I admit, the "optimizations" are a bit crazy, but... is it really? The optimizations aren't obcessive. And did anyone time a before and after with and without them compiling? I don't like the idea of a graphical installer for Gentoo. Hopefully they'll let us still install via the terminal.
The trick with openoffice is not to d/l it in source form. Since it's an interactive program, it's unlikely that the miniscule speed difference caused by local compile (if any) will make sufficient difference to render the huge compile time worthwhile.
Same goes for firefox, but I usually go for source on everything else.
There must have been several submissions about this news (which is great news, BTW), but the Slashdot editor picked the inflammatory one. I'm quite happy with Gentoo, but I'm not aware of any real speed advantage. The story would have received a very different reaction if the line about speed had been left out.
Gentoo is all about customization. On my server, I have lots of server-oriented software, but no X11 support. On my desktop, I have a hundreds of zany packages installed, and all of it actually works together. I've tried configuring similar systems with binary distributions, but I ended up spending hours fiddling with package management. Maybe the difference is that Gentoo acknowledges the need for fiddling and thus optimizes for fiddling.
Because of emerge, it's notorious for being simple to maintain.
Notorious
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
You and I still have the manual option, and for people who want to really learn about linux, it can continue to be recommended.
It's not about what can be done, it's about the direction the distro is heading.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Too bad they're going graphical, because "Watching all this shit go by makes me a Unix genius."
Also curious about this post is the use of "notorious." Threw me a bit; was this a positive or negative post?
notorious: Known widely and usually unfavorably; infamous: a notorious gangster; a district notorious for vice.
And people wonder why destros like these will NEVER make it to the public and get the support they so richly deserve.
Distros like this fail (everything fails eventually) but the good bits will be carried on.
Speaking as someone who tried gentoo (seriously, I ran it for over a year) I learned to appreciate the strengths:
Bang up to date code.
Compiled from source with full optimisation for the target platform
Dependencies handled cleanly
Very customisable
But the downsides (for my purposes) were too great for this distro to be useful:
I can get bang up to date code which is precompiled and arguably better tested against the rest of the distro, from almost any other linux distro.
Compiling from source, while *fun* and *cool* and *optimised* is negligably faster in most cases. The time spent compiling was *never* regained in performance improvements over the lifetime of the code (which might be measured in weeks before another update is required).
A small incremental version change in a fringe application can cause a *huge* menace in dependant software requiring recompile. OpenOffice, X and QT where the worst offenders in my experience. I mean sure, when FC3 releases a new patch against OOo I have to download another 300mb of crap to install (FC3 sucks in many ways), at least I don't have to recompile the bastard.
The fact is, the gentoo community suffers criticism poorly. I remember pouring over howtos and the forums trying to extricate myself from emerge inter-dependency wonkiness, I was hugely disappointed with the help on offer and the general attitude of hostility. I won't be going back.
In some benchmarks (such as the one povray uses), gentoo systems are often near the top. In this respect, it isn't unearned. But this doesn't mean every app on the system has been made measurably quicker & that some ricers aren't using ridiculous CFLAGS which do more harm than good.If anyone can find this article, please post a link.
While I've certainly seen poor benchmarks from some systems, the default CFLAGS are '-O2 -pipe'. This is typical of other distributions & is NOT "overagressive."
Users can certainly choose their own CFLAGS, which can lead to better or worse performance than the default CFLAGS. This kind of makes benchmarking a joke: The particular combination used in a particular article will not be representative of all gentoo installations.
My question: is Gentoo really that much (or any) faster than other linux distributions? Or is it more along the lines of "Look at me! I built this whole system from source, including the bootloader!"
It seems like unless its at least 10% faster than FreeBSD or RedHat or whatever else, why bother with the extra time investment? If you're to the point where an extra 3-5% speed will really help (eg: a business setting), why not build another machine and load balance? I'm not saying speed isn't nice, I'm just saying I dont understand the excitement.
Gentoo is a decent OS; I dont see anything wrong with it. I just dont see the excitement when it comes to compiling everything optimized for an extra 2% speed, taking 10x as long to get the job done, and possibly having to worry about optimized compiler bugs in the process.
Maybe I'm just not seeing the cause of excitement.
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
Gentoo is so burned.
i'm sick of shit FUD about gentoo being super fast. it's using the exact same programs as every other distro uses.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I've done Gentoo installs on various machines from 3.2GHz P4, 500MHz AMD K6-2, down to 400MHz P3 laptop. Just in the last couple of days I've done a 2GHz Celeron and a 1.3GHz Celeron M laptop. These systems have various amounts of RAM but I can tell you unequivocally that a 256M machine will have no trouble whatsoever building Gentoo. I generally start with Stage 3.
emerge gnome xorg-x11 does take overnight (about 178 sub-packages: but note how simple the emerge invocation is?), but it's really no inconvenience to let it run and be ready to use it the next morning. You pretty much only build a Gentoo Linux system once anyway.
I never understood why people didn't just plan their day better. But maybe that's because I'm a programmer and I'm not scared of running compilers.
you had me at #!
*sigh*
Gentoo is one of the few distros out there that I think is just better off without a graphical installer. I personally think that one of the coolest things about Gentoo is the whole thing has no automation at all, that even the install teaches you a lot about how linux works. Its that 'do-it-yourself' that originally attracted me to Gentoo, and still beingsme back every once in a while. Take that away and it just won't be Gentoo...
~You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because I'm insane~
I have a 900 mhz Athlon with 512 mb ram, it's no where near as nice as a: "4 GHz computer with a gig of RAM to compile the entire system under a couple days" It takes that much time on a 5 year old Athlon. If you wanted to you can cut down the time considerably by use GRP packages, you just can't customize as much. So have you ever installed Gentoo, or is this just some random spunk you sprayed on the wall for some attention, or were you the first troll to jump on "rip on Gentoo because it scares me, with all that awful compiling" bandwagon? I'm just saying: try it you might learn someting about Linux, that Lindows just can't teach ya...
I'm actually a little creeped out that you'd set up another Gentoo box instead of going outside to see what happened to the internet. Well, the internet, and probably the world O_o.
If you really want to be a putzy linux geek ,download, or build a good baseline linux and customize like real linux users and admins do.
playing harda$$ with a 'hard-to-use on purpose'
linux, why don't you pick up openBSD and become
truly 'l33t'.
Or better yet..f*ck all that, be real and buy
Gentoo is an ego thrill for asshole canaries.
As soon as a distro becomes mainstream like Redhat did so long ago, all of the would-be nerds jump on board and the community gets swamped trying to hold the weight of their incompetencies as they ask a million questions that could be answered with 'RTFM' or about 5 minutes investigation.
The only way to save gentoo from the same fate as RH/Suse is to stop making it easier to use!
If gentoo goes this path, I might have to start using BSD on my desktop.
He removed the screenshots from the screenshot page.... luckily google has a cache.e v.gentoo.org/~agaffney/gli/+&hl=en
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:JLQtqPZe9pYJ:d
I thought I was cool becuase I installed it without an installer program... Guess not. Well maybe if I... uh. Nevermind.
Well the old way of installing it is great for newbies becuase if you follow the directions you learn a lot about unix commands and stuff.
You have been warned.
You'll find idiots wherever you look. There are idiots using gentoo as well.
I and lot of the other gentoo users, don't need that sort of thing aimed at us.
The reason I like gentoo so much is because when its installed, theres no crap running, and no unneeded services. It's ready to make do what I want - not what some wizardy one size fits all style installer thinks I want.
Why does any distro not come on a live CD these days? Anything less is arcain. With Knoppix you get to try before you buy and there is 2 gigs of clooped space available for what ever an installer needs. Geez... Linux is getting less cutting edge everyday.
That's not what Gentoo's about(at least to me). For me, it's a highly configurable Distro which leaves me in control and actually forces me to RTFM and learn something about what I am doing.
Additionaly, it's an excellent Server Distro. Before Gentoo I used Debian(which I really liked) on my tiny little webserver, but ended compiling stuff like PHP myself because I needed a feature or didn't need another. With Gentoo I am able to do this _within_ the package manager. It's also very easy to take a proactive stance at security or switching back and forth. And for all those of you complaining about the moving speed of the portage tree, which sometimes is too fast for a server sofware repository, wait till GLEP19 is implemented.meax
Entertainment for Nerds. Stuff that matters,
Kind of. It's called Genkernel, and is in the installation docs. ;)
If every nitwit from the suburbs has it, it is by definition no longer cool, and the cool people will find some other thing to do to differentiate themselves.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
once again... I've taken too long and somebody else has a project doing the same thing.
[signature]
I could handle emerge. What I couldn't handle was all the constant re-configuring of all the little /etc files.
/etc files based on silly questions that it asks me, and then puts helpful comments in the file so that should I need to change it later, I can.
That's why I use debian. Debian makes the
Config tools, please.
Other than that, I was able to get the hang of Gentoo.
Let me jump on the bewildered bandwagon right..... here
I love Gentoo, I run Gentoo, but I have zero delusions about the performance as every benchmark I've ever seen has shown at most a 1-2% improvement over the precompiled distros.
Besides, everyone knows that the real reason to run Gentoo is that having text constantly flying down your term makes people think you're up to some really cool Matrixy shit while in actuality you're recompiling Gaim to add support for the pokemon smiley set
~AS (positively gay for quickly scrolling text)
After all it only takes three steps to install Gentoo...
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
"because you told gcc to unroll some loop (-funroll loops)"
Wow... I just realized it was "Unroll Loops" and not "Fun Roll Loops"
Everyone got hung up on the stupid optimization jokes instead of "Graphical install, isn't that Knoppix? http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/2479 http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=39998
But installing Gentoo from a live CD onto an ancient SunBlade 100 with a Sparc64 architecture was one of the proudest moments of my life! Okay, more like the most painful ten hours of my life, but still.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
I have dabbled in Linux for a few years now. When I used RPM based distros like Red Hat, Fedora Core, and Mandrake I often found myself trying to install a package and it would require me to install another package due to dependancies and that package would depend on 2 more and so on. I finally got sick of the whole RPM thing and decided portage was a good alternative so I looked into Gentoo. After spending a week trying to get it working I gave up and went back to Windows XP. I will definately try it again with a GUI installer. I must admit that atempting to install Gentoo was a very educational experience. There are lots of little things that I took for granted.
Mod me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
emerge beats everything hands down. I've installed Ubuntu, and although I'm (still) completely in love with the incredibly fast installs in comparison, no matter how much I poked and prodded, it just didn't have the polished feeling, nor the completeness of archives.
/etc/portage/packages.keyword (yes, I know, it's annoying). But this keeps your system rock solid while having the latest programs!
Before you declare me a gentoo fanboy, know this: I've installed Ubuntu a whole bunchload of times. I loved apt-get and it's speed. But nothing ever worked as well as they did in gentoo. Mplayer had huge ugly fonts. I know there's a setting, but why couldn't ubuntu just configure it like gentoo? And the marillat seems to be always broken... And why can't I just configure CUPS using the good old localhost:631 method? Ubuntu hides so much things that it reminds me of Mac... without the prettiness. Which is completely pointless. After so much fiddling around, I left my system on overnight and compiled a stage 3 gnome system, and was done with it.
I don't know why everyone keeps making fun of gentoo with 4 ghz computers and all the like. I routinely compile complete gnome 2.10 systems with centrino 1.5 ghz, no more than 512 mb ram. This only takes a single overnight, even though I do a gcc-3.4 upgrade. It's also essentially intervention-less... I issue a single emerge, wake up the next morning, fiddle around with the much beloved config files, compile the kernel with my custom config file, install grub, and boot.
Another thing that peeves me about the anti-gentoo sentiment- those of you complaining that your emerge -u systems are breaking, perhaps you should remove the ~arch keyword in your make.conf! The only toolkit instability that I've come across is one where I emerged system with ~arch. Unmask programs as you need them with
Vidalinux is a gentoo-like system but the installation process is that of Fedora's with the usage of RedHat's anaconda installer. It also uses Portage as it's package manager and I've heard many impressed with it, here is a review stating that Vidalinux is Gentoo done right. Here is the review of Vidalinux and you can compare it with a review of Gentoo
- Teja
Gentoo Tranlate-O-Matic returns: /. how gentoo is not completely different from other linux/unix setups."
1. My time is better spent doing things other than compiling basic system utilities.
"The install would have been faster if I would have RTFM'ed and learned about Stage3+GRP or had http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/"
2. My optimized Gentoo system does not run faster enough to make up for the time lost building it from source.
"I really did trust the ramblings of clueless newbies of any distro."
3. Turns out there was nothing to learn from installing Gentoo from stage 1. I already knew what goes into a system at the most basic level, but I got this from 10+ years of Unix/Linux experience, before I ever saw Gentoo.
"I cheerfully ignored the good stuff, like for example an excellent initscript layout, and whine on
Going to try MEPIS now. 'Sposed to be easy and painless.
"Next week, you will hear be bitch about MEPIS."
More important than speed from optimization is the ability to use the stack smash protector and get PIE binaries in Gentoo, which with a PaX or GrSecurity kernel and a MAC policy for GrSecurity or SeLinux provides for the most part a complete security solution with great ease of maintainability. This stuff is also being shifted into Ubuntu by the hardened debian team as Hardened Ubuntu.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
No reiserfs (appearantly because " reiserfs = teh suck ")--the disturbance in the force you may have detected is the apathy that thousands of Gentoo users suddenly developed for the Gentoo Installer.
If people around the world can use reiserfs without notable injury (or, as in my case and in the case of everyone I personally know, no injury at all), then surely someone vying to provide such a choice and highly visible piece of software to a leading linux distribution could have put in a bit of extra effort and get partitioning properly working with all popularly used filesystems.
My disappointement and disdain on this account is practically tangible. The Gentoo installation process is thoroughly automatable. There are a limited set of choices during the process, all of which can be effortlessly foreseen and mapped/planned out. (Talking about installing "by the handbook", of course.) ext3 is 6 years old, reiserfs is 4--we're not talking cutting edge. Not bothering to support reiserfs just seems like lazily taking the easy way out of something certainly solvable. I hope that, in time, someone more capable will take over the Gentoo Installer project or overtake it with a better installer.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
Oh man. This is why I browse at -1. I've been using Gentoo for over a year and I think it's a great tool... but this is just funny.
I'm a gentoo user on 3 different systems. A webserver being one of them.
;)*
As far as it goes about where the instructions for this or that goes. Unlike other distro's the forums http://forums.gentoo.org/ are probably some of the best I've ever seen. When you ask a question you tend to get some kind of helpful response. Even if its the amazingly simple question of how do you pipe a output to do something else. Others will net you a n00b ranking and razing without getting the response. That is one of the main reasons I've stayed with gentoo. The community around it just makes others appear elitist. *those of you who know which one i am talking about can say it but i wont
Of course you do have those ricers who do the 80 different cflags (many of which end up being redundant when you use -O2 or -O3). You also have the currently crazy people who've been running on GCC4 for months now, and have it working properly.
The trolls come out of the wood work when a gentoo story is posted.
Unfortunately the trolling is more grounded in ignorance and bigotry than mischief. People like having a group of people they can feel superior to to hide their own insecuritys about their knowledge.
To the usual bs posts that will be modded up.
I don't want to wait around for things to compile
SHUT THE FUCK UP. I ran gentoo for three years on my athlon 700, KDE was the only thing that i had to wait for.
Of course the time that you spend searching around trying to find rpms to fix the missing and out of date libraries because you have glibc_version_21.34.3.redhat_9_special_version.rpm and need glibc_version_18.34.redhat_8.rpm to install that particular program is a far more efficient use of your time. Hmmmm, I wonder which i prefer, reading slashdot while something compiles in the background niced to 15 or digging to the underbelly of the internet looking for one kooky version of an rpm before you can install that certain program.
Gentoo users only *think* it's faster really there suffering from a mass delusion.
I ran Redhat, Mandrake then Debian for two years before trying LFS and finally Gentoo when gentoo hit 0.4 (that would be about three or four years ago).
I'm sorry if KDE being a fucking slug (to the point of driving me to XFCE) under Redhat and Mandrake and being not only usable under gentoo but zippy is just my imagination.
Of course it's not the "optimzations" which i don't really touch, it's the lack of SHIT that Redhat and the commercial distros start up at boot.
But gentoo users annoy everyone blah blah
I spend a hell of a lot of time on various mailing lists, forums and irc channels, the anti gentoo trolls make FAR FAR FAR FAR more annoying, pissy, whining noise than any gentoo user has EVER made in the history of this world.
The installation doesn't teach you anything)
No, bootstrapping a usable operating system with nothing but a boot disk doesn't teach you anything. Nor does learning about different types of filesystems, fstab, using fdisk, compiling and installing a kernel, kernel modules, chroot, proc, bash and basically learning what makes linux linux.
No that knowledge is magically imparted to you as you click "next" on the gui installer in Redhat (or if your feeling adventurous and do an "expert install") whoa there wouldn't want to turn into a ricer.
In the end it doesn't matter, every community needs its whipping boy, for the overall IT world its linux users, within the linux community it's gentoo users. Fortunately the VAST majority of gentoo users are people who are sick to death of the SHIT that some of the bigger distros create and have gradually moved across to more basic distros to run their applications on. Because thats all a distro is a platform to run applications on.
Plus it's funny to watch as Gentoo becomes more and more poplular the nay sayers scream louder and louder knowing that they have had ZERO effect on gentoo uptake.
Because it's source-based, it's famous for spending a ridiculous amount of CPU cycles compiling software for marginal speed improvements. Because of emerge, it's famous for not being able to update because often necessary software does not compile.
GIS
One of things I like best about Gentoo, is the user fourms. Lots of smart and friendly people who don't mind taking the time to help. What I don't like about it, is that I think they release packages a bit too quickly and they will break things. Gentoo is probably not enterprise ready, but great for everything else.
Watch me get modded down for the sole reason that I like Gentoo and am sticking up for it. It seems to be the current Slashdot trend to stick by Microsoft, too, so I have no idea what's going on anymore.
;) Anything runs at a pretty decent speed, actually, though I will be needing a new computer (the time keeps going off by a few hours, I think the battery is beginning to die).
;))
First off, God, I love how you Gentoo-haters go on about "oh, it's not such a performance increase". While you're probably right, I tend to think it's doing something good for my system, an AMD Athlon 500 with 128 MB of RAM. Oh, and guess what? It only took a couple days of compilation. One weekend, basically. And you're complaining of it taking longer on your 2.6 GHz processor? Are you using a Celeron?
"But... but.. the Gentoo evangelists are so elitist!" Are you seriously seeing a different community than I am? Granted, I haven't looked at the boards in a while, but I haven't seen any leetspeakers or arrogant assholes there. I am seeing quite a bit of that here, though. It also seems that a lot of the Gentoo haters use *gasp* Debian, another source-based distro (if I'm not mistaken). If they were companies in competition, I'd say Debian's got a lot to lose -- I've heard that their branches are really getting long in the tooth. I've also heard that their communities are quite elitist, but to be fair, I haven't been there myself. Debian may die. I know of few people who use it, but I know the people who do use it are kicking and screaming and denying that Debian is growing old. (By the way, I'm getting modded down for saying things about Debian, the average elitist Slashdotter's favorite distro)
All that said, the graphical installer for Gentoo is a good idea. If hardware could be autodetected and used correctly (by *ANY* distribution, not necessarily just Gentoo), it'd be even better. As it stands, there does need to be an easier way. One of the least favorite steps of the installation with me was changing the root password so I could use another terminal to read the install guide as I put in the instructions. Nowadays, I think I can do it blind, but I've never tried. That's how good portage is to me. I can type emerge -u world and know that nearly everything I've ever installed is being updated without me having to check in on it every second. My only problem with it being that sometimes it emerges stuff I *really* don't need (for example, it decided I needed gstreamer when there was no USE flag that specified it, so it was probably required by the new GNOME or something).
My speed problems are related to my computer being old. C'mon, an AMD Athlon 500? Whenever I can save up enough money, I'm going to try and get one of those yummy little Sager NP4750's (an AMD64 laptop), which I will run Linux on almost exclusively (I'll keep Windows around for the few applications that Wine can't take care of
Flame and mod-down away, men!
compile it before using it?
You'll have to compile the install system to use it ;-)
Just kidding............
Great work, guys.
OK, I've been a Windows fanboy for ages and a *NIX noob, but I tried out that *NIX thing. As a littl history, I have the cmd-line Unix stuff down, gcc, g++, make, etc. because I've primarily SSHed into NetBSD/IRIX machines. All the die-hards tell UNIX is all about simplicity, hence the 17-inch LCD monitors with three text editors open simultaneously. WOW!
So, I downloaded Red Hat 8.0 back in the day, burned 3 CDs and created a dual-boot. I really appreciated the graphical install, because I will DISMISS a product right away if it has a bad installer (unless I have liked the predecessor). However, the killer for me was STARTUP TIME. I opted for KDE 3.0, which combined with Redhat bootup was quite a bit longer than Windows and boring to watch.
I'm far from experienced in IT, and can pick my way among *NIX commands, man to the wazoo, and have the GNU compiler stuff down. So, impress me with an OS that is optimized and doesn't take 4 text-based installs before it works correctly!
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
I agree. Best post in (yet another) bullshit-infested Gentoo thread.
15 years of Linux, and they're just now catching up to Red Hat and the others, GOOD JOB GENTOO
I'll just stick with my OMG NOT OPTIMIZED system that actually works. As I side note, I don't put VTEC stickers on my Chevy Malibu either.
Slashdot sucks
But using the MARCH and MCPU flags for my K6 most *certainly* make it run faster than stock Mandrake or Slackware. Only took a day to compile and works much better.
Notorious. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
What's good for the syndicate is good for the country. --Milo Minderbinder
this has been in the works for a LONG time. PPC had a X11 front end that was at best a POS. Gentoo when it works is awsome not because of anything gentoo specific but because it has a lightwait package doodad. The GRP releases are good enough for folk music. Deb is Portages bitch.
Vidalinux is Gentoo with the Anaconda installer. So there isn't much novelty to this project. In my LUG, the most dangerous users are Gentoo users.
Usually, they have been running Linux for less than six months. They barely understand unix permissions or init levels or any other basic stuff, but are entirely self-complacent because they managed to type enough commands to install Gentoo. They are also terrible open source advocates because they scare away potential users by pretending that there is no other good way to install a Linux system.
Mandrake's and Red Hat's installers are easier, more flexible, faster and produce a working system every time.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
... I could read it "I am a clueless Gentoo Ricer that thinks that because Gentoo can compile everything from source it's faster", or I could read it that Gentoo is notoriously slow if you run an install that compiles everything from source. It's not clear in the comment.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
lets throw away all our word alignment for jumps, mov's to/from memory... what else, uh misout on saving a few kilobytes here and by disabling the common subexpression elimination which works on the intermediate language and can potentially save entire function calls and consolidate redundant calculations, which allows the programmer to lay out his algorithm so it reads well and makes sense and can trust that the compiler will sort stuff out. oh yeah, what else are we ignoring, by not using -march=pentium3 or -march=athlon-xp .. basically almost every distribuation other than gentoo might use -march=specific on the kernel but probably little or nothing else... etc... you dont properly pipeline and align your code ... remember the U and V pipeline introduced in what .. the pentium pro or somethin.. or make decisions on what to inline based on cache behaviour and parameters. this stuff definately improves the coefficient in front of the a*O(f(n)). oh no i forgot you've probably never even read ... man gcc... well please do yourself and the rest of slashdot a favour. and when you've read man gcc. please post back and tell us what you've learned.. ps there are some very interesting experimental stuff. like --profile-arcs .. which lets you imbed profiling code and then recompile.. say after a week of using actually using the code...
Unfortunately when it comes to gentoo and the hype, everyone talks about the speed and optimisations. Wethere there is any truth behind that or not is for each user to determine on their own.
Gentoo does run faster than SOME other distros, but this is more due to the minimalistic installation approach. You choose what you want on your system and which services you run in the background. Unlike other distros which by default have tons of services running which the average user doesnt have much use for.
I fell the best thing about Gentoo is Portage and USE flags.
Forget the compiler optimisations. Its the useflags that really make gentoo stand above the rest.
Another advantage to gentoo being source based is, you dont have to wait and hunt down a distro specific rpm file.
You can use the author's original source package. An ebuild is nothing more than a simple script which automates the config,compile&install process. Whereby the USE flags serve to pass options to the config process before the compile.
People complain about the compile times, but I got to say, its really not that bad. 80% of all the apps that you use are small anyways, and dont take long to compile. The really huge ones, e.g. gnome,kde, openoffice, have binary alternatives. Setting up the base system doesnt have to take long either if you use a stage3 GRP install. At least to get a system up and running. You can then still compile the crap out of everything if you so desire, while the system is running.
Another thing which I love about Gentoo is how it has a seamless upgrade procedure. You dont have to wait for a new distro release, in fact once you've already installed your system its pointless to do so. Just upgrade your packages regularly and you will be up to date.
I gott say, after using gentoo for a while, it does seem kinda strange when every distro out there announces loudly when a new version is out, and which versions of gnome and kde or other packages this distro release contains.
"Now with Gnome 2.x.x!...."
"New and improved KDE!"
With gentoo you get new versions as soon as they hit portage. Doesnt matter if its a monday, the first of the month, the 6th month of the year, or one week from the apocalypse.
Another thing which people also forget to mention is gentoo's community and forums. Pretty much every issue I've had with linux, I've been able to solve with help of the community and forums.
Even though the install procedure might not be newbie friendly, the community certainly is.
In the end all of that doesnt really matter though. What really matters in the end is wether a distro works for you or not. In my case, gentoo simply works for me. Its the ONLY distro where I have managed to get everything on my laptop working. Winmodem, ACPI with Suspend to Disk, working 3D accelaration on a SIS630, irda, wireless, etc.
mod parent up.. nay sayers please pray tell what distributions other than gentoo offer the ability to choose individual options like if your console apps are compiled with optional, gpm/gtk+/fb/svga/alsa/jack/etc.. support.. the list is super extensive. want mozilla compiled without jpg support .. cause of some vuln that has been patched but somehow causes problems somewhere else.. want to do the same with some other library somewhere else, ohh it clobers all the apps that depend on that library... no problem in gentoo. want to down grade a library, cause some app doesnt compile with the new version. no problem. the USE Flag system is really incredible and imho the best feature and the central purpose for portage (the "package" management system).. checkit yo
Its still an order of magnitude faster to just install binaries that someone else compiled for you. This is the entire purpose of a linux distro. If you want to compile everything from scratch you don't need a distro. There is no reason that portage can't work just like the BSDs ports, where packages are compiled from ports, which can then easily be distributed so you only need to compile from ports if you need custom configuration options for that particular piece of software.
links in graphics mode... i usually just use svga (ducks) cause it interoperates with x and the accelerated nvidia driver whereas fbcon doesnt play nice with nvidia drivers.. it would be really useful if you could compile the fb drivers as modules and unload them so they didnt cause X to lock up when you switch back to the console.. so far as i know its a known issue that X wont use nvidia driver and allow you to use the fb.. although if you just switch into X and dont switch back to the console it might work ... i think my box only locks when you ctrl-alt-n to go back to a console.
rofl.. lolercopter.. lolerskates...
It can run with a dialog frontend that bears a striking similarity to Ubuntu
Don't you mean debian? I would understand if the d-i team were mightily upset at all the credit for their hard work being attributed to ubuntu.
Unless you add something like "and previously, a stock minimal debian install ran aplication _xyz_ 15% slower or in 20% more drive space" your comment doesn't mean anything if you don't quantify it. "I put a new exhaust on my car, and I think it is faster" would also mean nothing without a dyno test, even though it's just fine to love your distro, or exhaust, preferences don't make something objectivly better - you have to have a unit of measure...
.. as a quote :)
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I have an AMD 64 bit processor. Would Gentoo be the best distribution to run on it now?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Fuck yeah!
The thing about gentoo that I love is that the installation instructions are so straightforward and well explained. When something goes wrong (and something will) you know how to fix it, and if you don't know how to fix it you at least know how to talk about the problem you have in a way that's more constructive than, "it doesnt work."
The first time I installed Linux was Red Hat on an AMD K6-450 maybe seven years ago. Everything worked fine (even dual monitors), until the second or third boot, and then the taskbar in whatever desktop environment started crashing. Over and over and over, it made it impossible to do anything because it was crashing, coming back, crashing. I got on IRC and asked around, posted a message on a Linux help board... but I didn't really know what to ask, and I certainly couldn't understand what the answers meant.
A point and click graphical installer would be fine for somebody that already knew what they were doing. What might be a good idea is to have the documentation on screen and still make the users go through the process of typing everything they need to type while checking for typos and such, maybe going into certain functions, files, directories, etc in further detail. Now that would be a good use of a graphical installer...
sig.
gentoo should remain the distribution for hardcore linux users! I could just image the dumb posts to the user forum now when this starts. gentoo should remain the distribution for users who know what they are doing. If the users are noobies, let them run Knoppix!
That word does not mean what you think it means.
How about compiling Gentoo.... for regular Gentoo, and compiling Gentoo via DISTCC.... for the parallel compilation of Gentoo.
Without a doubt, Gentoo has set itself apart from every other distro out there.
Yeah, all the people who don't jump on bandwagons are using it.
I use Vida to run my game servers and I think it's awesome. The installation went smooth, leaving me with a working Gentoo system. Since then, I've read up on USE flags and prelinking and can tell a difference in the performance. While I can't give you benchmarks, I can tell you that I can emerge anything while ripping CD's and my game servers suffer no drop in performance. Granted, it's an AthlonXP 3200 with a GB of RAM, but it's still only one processor.
I also have an Athlon64 3000 sitting next to it running WindowsXP and Yoper. I love Yoper as well. It's very optimized and almost as fast as the Gentoo box, but not nearly as flexible and their apt-get repository is limited. Comparing these distro's to Windows is just silly. If you can look past the comparing the apples to oranges bit, you'll find they both blow Windows away.
If you want a simple but snappy system, go with Yoper.
If you like simple but like to tinker, got with Vida.
If you like to tinker and simple means nothing to you, go with Gentoo.
It's all about choice. Don't flame people because their needs and wants lead them to a different choice!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I've always read about people having a pleasant GENTOO experience, but from what I understand it's a 'Roll your own' kind of distro. WIll I need a constant hi-speed net connection to 'roll my own'?
I could bring my laptop to grab it but it's for my desktop if only I could live without the hi-speed requirement.
But *true* elitists use linux from scratch, anyway.
What's in a Sig?
If anyone is interested in getting Gentoo up and running on a box quickly using a graphical installer, maybe you are just frightened by the stock method of installing gentoo. If you are not bothered about tweaking the config files for uber optimisation they provide pre compiled/ optimised versions for different processor AMD or Intel etc.
...
The main install is made from binaries with a good selection of packages and the benefits of portage. If you so desire you can change your config files for optimisation after the installation and compile from source whatever you need afterwards. Its also great if you want to run gentoo on an older machine and dont have six months to go through the bootstrap / compile shebang. Im running with KDE 3.4 an old T22 with all the candy and trimmings i could possibly want. I cant reccommend it highly enough.
http://www.vidalinux.org/
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
"It rocks. It is fast, easy to administer and stable. The only downside is that you have to take vacation time from work to actaully get it totally installed."
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
That's exactly the "If they can't build a G4 out of a bucket of NAND chips, they've got no right even touching a computer!" attitude that's been killing this otherwise sweet distro (and indeed Linux as a whole) from the beginning.
It'll never outdo Windows until its at least as user-friendly. That's a fact.
I don't mean to gripe, but Linux was built by geeks, for geeks. That's what gives it the unmatched power, flexibility and security. What the OS needs is a Prometheus GUI mentality, to translate this amazing power into something mere mortals can handle. That's why Linux still lives in dusty geek caves, not preinstalled at Best Buy. What? You think the money hungry Toshibas and Sonys of the world like dropping an extra couple hundred bux per unit for an otherwise free OS? I think not. "If you build it [better] they will come!"
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you seem to think it means."
;-P
notorious adj.
Known widely and usually unfavorably; infamous: a notorious gangster; a district notorious for vice.
OTOH, perhaps that's exactly what you meant
"The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
There's a handy little package called cfg-update that does 90% of the updates automatically for you (e.g., if only comments have changed, it'll just update without prompting you), and makes it easier to do the other 10%. I'd go crazy without it. It really should be the default updater.
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
No, I'm saying that people, like yourself perhaps, should be open to the idea that sometimes the command line is the easiest way to do things. Try to forget the conditioning that mouse=easy and look at the problem sensibly and you'll find that sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't.
There just is no way that a GUI on Portage is going to make it easier to use. It might make it less intimidating, but that's because WIMP actually makes people scared to try other ways. The command line does not seem to have the same effect.
Either way, I'm not advocating not letting newbies use the system, I'm just saying we shouldn't have to bend over backwards to make a bad tool in order to satisfy preconceptions and thereby reinforce erronious ideas as to how difficult simple, but non-graphical, techniques are.
It'll never outdo Windows until its at least as user-friendly. That's a fact.
You mean it'll never out-sell Windows, it already outdoes Windows. That's a fact.
What the OS needs is a Prometheus GUI mentality, to translate this amazing power into something mere mortals can handle.
Sorry, I'm just not buying the idea that typing "emerge" and then the name of the program you want is something "mere mortals" can't handle. People just aren't that dumb. No, really, they're not.
There are areas where some aspects of Portage could be made GUI: selection of USE flags perhaps, but actually I think that by the time you are aiming at the audience you are talking about, they'll probably not even know or care enough to select those, so it's probably better not to bother, after all the package management paspects of Portage is probably the only benefit that they will understand.
Which doesn't mean they shouldn't be using the system.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I've installed over a dozen packages (kde, openoffice, firefox, dia, lyx, et al) on my days old Gentoo 2005.0 setup and I am yet to see a warning that anything has to be updated manually in /etc/
;)
I believe this is a something to do with 2005.0.
Will you come back now?
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
As I missed this story by a day or two I doubt anyone will read this, and as I'm not a regular Slashdot poster, I find it odd that I feel drawn to post on this 'article'. It's definitely a plus for Gentoo, or any other distro, to have a decent graphical installer. Any distrobution that makes it easier for a regular user (someone venturing over to Linux from Windows) to preform an install is IMO a good thing. That said, I think making a graphical installer for one of the more difficult distrobutions a double edged sword of sorts. Sure the install will be easier and save quite a few headaches, but is that necessarily good? The rest of the distro is rather difficult to maintain for your former Windows user. To me, it seems like shit wrapped in silk. A previous poster stated that the install documentation is easy to follow, much like paint by number, and this only makes it easier. How do you explain more of the intricate details of Linux to someone who is very good at following directions when the details aren't out there. Speed on hard drives (hdparm), adding various daemons to run by default (famd, hald, dbus, etc), which CFLAGS are good for my system (not that I believe any really make a positive difference besides -O2 -pipe), and I'm sure the list could go on and on. Enough about that, on to Ubuntu. I found Ubuntu to be one of the most intuitive and easily maintainable distrobutions I've ever used, and I've used quite a few, Gentoo included. Ubuntu being a Debian based distrobution has its share of nuances, though not nearly the amount of negative feedback regarding Debian (out of date packages, when's the release date, etc). Overall my system runs very well, and everything just works, out of the box no less. Oh wait, it's not optimized? I honestly can't tell a single bit of difference between my former CFLAG 'optimized' Gentoo box and my current Ubuntu box. My packages are just as up todate as the Gentoo system minus a few applications. In fact, I like Ubuntu so much that I felt like it was necessary to join the team, so I did. I'm now a MOTU (maintaining Universe packages for Ubuntu) so as the Gentoo people say "I'm no longer a slave to my package maintainer"... I AM the package maintainer. Do I feel like I've learned any less during my time with Ubuntu? Most of the time, no. I use synaptic to manage my packages and rarely touch the command line for updating, so maybe i'm not as "leet" as I used to be. Ubuntu offers quite a good number of fantastic GUI system administration utilities, so I find myself using the command line less and less. Whereas again this might not make me as "leet" as Gentoo users, I couldn't have installed Gentoo on my parent's computer and have them dealt with `emerge -uD world` every signle day, then again, I don't think my Mom really cares about being "leet". Plus, I'm not going to drive 30 minutes to their house to correct compilation errors, and I don't feel like having them emerge ssh and open up ssh on their router just so I can fix stuff. I'd rather have it all just work, and it does. Besides feeling "leet" I don't really see the necessity of Gentoo over Ubuntu. There are times when I've had to struggle to get the most out of a wimpy box on the server end, but a 5 line long set of CFLAGS isn't really going to benefit the server any, is it? To each their own I suppose.
For example, if an application can be compiled with or without X11 support, I can install it on my headless server without also having to install X. And all it takes is a "-x11" in the /etc/make.conf USE flags. I do this all the time, with all sorts of flags, and consider it Gentoo's greatest strength. I don't run Gentoo just because it is a little faster than other distros; I run it because I have more choice about what gets installed on my computer.
--- SER
My desktop is running arch linux, which lets me stay up to date just by running a single command too. Only it takes a fraction of the time to do so because it downloads already compiled packages. Similarly, all my BSD servers let me stay up to date without having to stop the working system.
The difference is the system isn't at 100% CPU usage compiling shit for a day with BSDs and good linux distros. You still have to reboot a gentoo machine for kernel upgrades, just like with any other system. So in fact, you are getting no magical updating benefits, just having your server be slow as hell while it compiles everything for a day.