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."

Comments

is it just me, or...

[deathazre]

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.

Yawn

[overshoot]

A couple of years ago, my (17yo, non-tech) daughter and a ( 50+ yo, non-tech) woman friend jointly installed Gentoo without my help.

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.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not true. I had problems when I first installed Gentoo. For reference, I've been using Linux since 1996 and have gone through Linux From Scratch.

The problem was that the documentation doesn't always follow reality. In my particular case, the problem was that the documentation insisted that I had to find a module for my network card. The module that was supposed to be there wasn't. I tried compiling manually from a driver CD (it wasn't part of the stock kernel in those days), but couldn't insert the module.

Eventually, I found that the kernel that had already been installed had been patched for my network card and had it built-in, rather than built as a module. According to the documentation, that simply wasn't so.

I've submitted a number of bugs to bugs.gentoo.org. When I state that I followed the documentation, invariably I get a response along the lines of "the documentation's wrong, do [this] instead".

RTFM is no help when TFM is wrong.

Re:Yawn

[child_of_mercy]

A reason why the British Army loves training young nepalese to be gurkhas is that they haven't seen too many action movies.

The average western youngster has a whole lot of ideas in their head about jumping around and firing from the hip which have to be de-programmed before they can be taught anything usefull.

I found when changing from windows to linux that my previous knowledge often held me back.

Could it be that an experienced linux user would struggle with a different system where a naif would take the docs as read and breeze through unaware of the pitfalls on either side?

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the docs were more accurate back in the day, I don't know.

I don't claim to be an expert, but I'm certainly not "non-tech". My first unix install was before linux existed (SunOS and Ultrix at the time). I'm not a sysadmin by trade (anymore), but I've done about a dozen linux installs over the years. Redhat, Fedora, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware.

I tried gentoo. Spent probably a good 10 hours on it over the course of two attempts. The docs weren't bad, but I couldn't get it to work. It was very frustrating.

Not sure what the problem was, but I found it far from easy. And yes, I read the directions. And no, I wasn't skipping steps because "oh, I don't *really* need to do that" (not the second time anyway :-) a little on the first attempt).

All trolls!

[chris09876]

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.

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. ...but on the other side, it might also get MORE people using gentoo... and that can only be a good thing.

Slow install warning

[fistfullast33l]

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).

It's notorious for its speed

[glrotate]

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?

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[Lost Found]

Actually, I about did an LFS install myself because I was very pissed off with the state of Linux package management. That's what caused me to finally stop siding with all the people that have never tried Gentoo and babble on about how it sucks because Gentoo users are ricers, etc.

I sat through a Stage 1 install for a few days with an open mind. When it came to, it was very fast. I can't at all say that it was faster than the Slackware install it replaced (though it felt so), but what really sold me on Gentoo was Portage. It took about a month after that for me to finish nuking all of my Slackware installs for a shiny new Gentoo cluster.

Makes no sense

[TelJanin]

If your computer can't handle GTK, why the hell are you installing Gentoo on it?

Re:Notorious for its speed?!?

[e133tc1pher]

If you don't want to bother, just grab Fedora/Mandrake/Ubuntu and stop knocking my distro. You weren't meant for Gentoo. Deal with it.

I've used gentoo for about 2 years and you are the exact reason why people don't like gentoo. Its an elitist atitude that seems to spread like the FUD of custom flags. I thing gentoo is the greatest distribution for real reasons. It has a fantastic knowledgable userbase (which may be a product of its difficulty factor), it makes administration relatively easy (etc-update anyone?), it forces you to choose what you want as opposed to the "well I guess I need cpufreqd on my desktop", and it is extremely easy to stay up to date (I know about apt-get and yum and frankly they all need work). So please, anyone that wants to support gentoo through FUD do it somewhere else.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[cortana]

If you haven't already, check out apt-build. :)

This is great news

[agraupe]

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).

Thats Not The Point!

[SteevR]

The point of gentoo's portage system, from my point of view, is the elimination of package dependency issues, and compiler version issues.

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... ...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.

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.

What about kernel config?

[starseeker]

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! ;-)

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[buanzo]

Well, I have like 30 gentoo-based servers on production today. Ok, I have like 12 years experience with the lnux kernel based systems, so I may be providing a bit of stability by myself :P

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[Danuvius]

Kedves honfitárs, maga érte vagy ellene próbál érvelni evvel a posttal?

Security

[bluefoxlucid]

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.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[strider44]

You know you don't actually have to make the exact same joke three times.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[Curtman]

You might think so, but I used to have the exact opposite setup where /home was NFS mounted, and root was local. I don't tend to move from one box to the other though very much, and when I do I want a different set of application settings. For example, on my media box, I don't run X at all, everything is on the framebuffer. So my ~/.mplayer/config uses "vo=directfb:vidix", instead of "vo=xv" like it is on my main desktop. I also really don't want multiple instances of applications trying to read & write settings that may be in use on another box. It's a pain in the ass to have to ssh to another box and close down Firefox to be able to open it elsewhere, and even more of a pain in the ass to try and get it to use two different profiles. Two config's with bookmarks.html symlinked to a common location on the NFS server works pretty nicely though.

Re:Idiots

[Vector Boy]

I actually agree with FxChiP. I use SuSE right now, and it's annoying me. I've not heard a single good thing about Debian, and will stay far away from it. Pretty soon, I'm gonna install Gentoo instead of SuSE. Sounds like an awesome system. I do have a question for any Gentoo users here, though. I probably know the answer, but to be sure, does having a dual boot system with Win2K pose any problems in the Gentoo installation? Thanks for the help.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[fishbot]

No... You don't need those requirements... Distcc helps nicely and can cut the compile time for a base system

You don't need a 4GHz computer, you just need 3 or 4 relatively high spec ones. I'm afraid that still lands Gentoo in the same camp as the 'single fast machine' lot. People who have more computing power than sense ;)

I ran Gentoo for a reasonable length of time at home and at work. A network of 40 Gentoo boxes and distcc made the whole thing move along nicely, but for my home machine I had to switch so that I could spend less time compiling and more time actually, you know, getting some work done.

ubuntu-esque curses install?

[jdowland]

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.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[molnarcs]

Well, that was one of the most surprising posts I have ever seen on slashdot ... thanks :) Open mindedness was not something I expected from the average slashdotter, and you proved me wrong :)

If you want to give FreeBSD a spin, wait a few days for 5.4-RELEASE. As to pf, I have written this a few months ago - a quicky about how to set up pf. If you don't need anything complex (like applying different queue algorythms for traffic shaping from different hosts behind the firewall) you just kldload pf, enable it in rc.conf and write a simple rule file like the one a described there :) Also, you don't need natd to do nat like with ipfw/ipfw2, it is as simple as:

# macros, lists
ext_if="vr0" # replace with actual external interface name i.e., dc0
int_if="ed0"
internal_net="192.168.0.1/16"
external_addr="172.17.141.160"

# options
set block-policy drop
set loginterface ed0

# Scrub[1] options [2]
scrub on ed0 all reassemble tcp

#nat
nat on $ext_if from $internal_net to any -> ($ext_if)

pass quick on lo0 all

#default policy
block all

# allow outgoing and return traffic
pass out quick on $ext_if proto tcp all modulate state
pass out quick on $ext_if proto { udp, icmp } all keep state

# filter rule to allow traffic through nat
pass in quick on $int_if from $internal_net to any keep state
pass out quick on $int_if from any to $internal_net keep state

#example for a service - samba (the most complex, a webserver is just a one-liner
pass in on $ext_if proto udp to port { 137, 138 } keep state
pass out on $ext_if proto udp to port { 137, 138 } keep state
pass in on $ext_if proto tcp to port 139 modulate state

[1]"Scrubbing" is the normalization of packets so there are no ambiguities in interpretation by the ultimate destination of the packet. The scrub directive also reassembles fragmented packets, protecting some operating systems from some forms of attack, and drops TCP packets that have invalid flag combinations.
[2]reassemble tcp
Statefully normalizes TCP connections. When using scrub reassemble tcp, a direction (in/out) may not be specified. The following normalizations are performed:

• Neither side of the connection is allowed to reduce their IP TTL. This is done to protect against an attacker sending a packet such that it reaches the firewall, affects the held state information for the connection, and expires before reaching the destination host. The TTL of all packets is raised to the highest value seen for the connection.
• Modulate RFC1323 timestamps in TCP packet headers with a random number. This can prevent an observer from deducing the uptime of the host or from guessing how many hosts are behind a NAT gateway. (from pf's faq I linked to on openbsd.org)

Good Luck!