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

I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[buanzo]

If you want a binary-based, Gentoo-based distribution with Desktop users in mind (but, being Gentoo based, really cool for servers), check out UTUTO-e, specially the XS (2005.0) version, downloadable from http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu+linux-distros/ututo-e/ or from their main site, at https://e.ututo.org.ar (spanish and english available).

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[black mariah]

You need to learn the difference between a troll and a fanboy.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[bagboy]

No... You don't need those requirements... Distcc helps nicely and can cut the compile time for a base system by one third... Sometimes to get the biggest gain in anything you have to be willing to do a little work (in this case - research).

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[DrYokomohoyo]

You don't have to compile anything with gentoo to get up and running if you RTFM and download the packages cd along with your install image. You can have a system up and running in a few hours. Then if you wish you can rebuild all your packages over a weekend while you are out fishing.

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.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[cortana]

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

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[temojen]

Or do a Stage 3/GRP install and cut out the compile time almost completely.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[rpdillon]

Then you didn't configure correctly. The main optimizations in Gentoo come from compiling code specifically for your setup. For example, I know that I don't really care about Gnome support, since I'm a KDE user. I can tell Gentoo this, and it will configure and compile accordingly, i.e. leaving out support for Gnome, and therefore making the final binary smaller, or at least hook into fewer libraries.

Ditto for any number of different flags: arts, dvd+rw, theora, qt, kde, cups, whatever...

The end result is that your binaries tend to be smaller (and therefore faster loading) because they aren't genercially compiled to run everywhere, and don't have hooks into all the KDE and all the Gnome libraries, for example.

This applies even more if you remove GUI support for certain programs by setting the flag "-X" - this will provide a very clean, small compile meant for the command line only. This is useful for someone like me who does most everything at the command line, except surf the web (I like pretty pictures).

As far as "wasting time", I'm constantly amazed that people complain about this. Gentoo COMES with a CD that is their reference snapshot, and is all binary. You can be up and running with VERY little compilation, and then just run emerge in the background (either using at Ctrl-Alt-F[1-6] term, or even in an xterm, although for X related stuff, it's nice to be able to quit X and know your compile is still going). So, you run pre-compiled binaries for a couple of days while you emerge, quit X, fire it back up, and you're running under your newly custom-compiled setup. I've done this on 7 computers, including a P3 700, Pentium M 1400, Athlon XP 1700+ and an Athlon64 3000+, with RAM going from 256 MB to 1GB. It's never been a problem, and in all cases, I've been up and running in a couple of hours.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[zbyte64]

I dub you Sir Troll.

To be honest, i don't recommend Gentoo for most users, just ones with special needs. For example:

At local high schools there have been major budget cuts, so we need to squeeze out as much as possible from our machines. I have a p3 (with crappy hardware) running apache, mysql, samba dhcp, netboot (for system repairs), proxy + filtering, and some other junk i can't remember. Now i used to have redhat running this server, but it was laggy, so i slapped on gentoo and performance is better - i know cuz i timed the logins, page loads, etc.

Ok story #2

I also used to run www.archspace.org and performance was a serious issue. Using optimization flags significantly increase performance - again i used benchmarks. Optimizations do go a long way on high demand servers - trust me.

With that said, I wouldn't recomend my grandma using gentoo, mainly cuz its not user friendly. Lack of a graphical installer certainly scares people away, along with source installs. SO ya its not meant for most people - but don't go and say something like optmization flags do nada. -march makes a definate impact. Now i don't go messing around with junk like -funroll-loops and other fine detailed things, cuz in those instances, i found little performance was increased. (funroll loops made the program bigger, so bleh).

The other nice thing about gentoo is the minimalistic attitude. THis is a double edged sword. Personally its great, i like to choose what gets installed, "screw xine, i want mplayer dammit!" etc.. Lastly rpms rather suck (yes debian pwnz in this area)

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[deangelo]

I don't consider my machine to be a beast, 1.4 tbird with .5gig ram (pc133) it only took me two days to get up and running. That includes Xorg with accelerated drivers, Gnome and all the trimmings from stage 1, everything from source except the closed video drivers. Most of the time I wasn't even home. I'd just ssh home from time to time to make sure it was still bussy. I think your post is a bit more trollish than the orignal. More to the point, I think this whole busness of the gentoo install procedure being difficult is a misnomer. The gentoo handbook is an extremly thurough walkthrough, I'm no *nix expert and I managed to configure my kernal. Granted I can read at almost a grade 2 level so I have that over the common masses.

codohundo

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[Rei]

The problem, however, is that you need to look at one of the most basic rules for optimization: Determine what needs to be optimized, *then* optimize. Otherwise, you waste your time.

Compiling for modern processors with good optimization flags, for example, *does* give big performance boosts. However, most applications are not CPU hogs - in fact, few are. Well, what about small binary sizes? Most disk performance issues are from latency, not speed in reading consecutive blocks (and most binaries don't get big enough for the length of the read to become a dominating factor, because they wisely use shared libraries). We can't forget the effects disk caching. And, of course, there's pesky things that optimization just won't help you with, like the fact that compiling out modules generally doesn't make much of an impact on the memory footprint, core execution speed, or hardware delays.

Overall, I'd expect performance increases in Gentoo, but on average very small ones. If you're running some computational flow dynamics program, build it from source; otherwise, I wouldn't be too concerned.

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"

[molnarcs]

And because it is notorius for its userbase. Well, some of it of course, but unfortunately they are very vocal.

I remember this guy (one of the optimization freaks) that tried to convince folks that you need to rebuild the toolchain three times to get it properly optimized - and there was no way to convince him that what he sais is nonsense.

Then I was reading freebsd-question mailing list, and there was this fellow who wanted to install freebsd the gentoo way. People were genuinly bewildered - not because they had anything against gentoo, but because they didn't know how it works, so they had him explaining it. He basically said that he wants everything built from source optimized and all from the ground up. They told him to install the OS and then rebuild everything. He said no no no, he wants to build the kernel before installing, he wants to build the toolchain before installing and so on. The idea was so ... well, how shall I put it ... strange, that poor folks at first thought that they don't understand the bloke properly. And if you come to think of it: the guy instead of wanting to have a sytem with basic functionality (xfree, a wm, a browser, networking, email, whatnot) up and running in ten minutes, and then rebuilding everything from source in the background (while posting gentoo roxorz messages on ./) he wanted to have an unusable system for hours if not half a day - for what reason?

I was always stuck by the sheer senselessness of the install procedure (even starting from stage3) - it seems to me that gentoo has it backwards: instead of installing the damn thing and have the ability to read your emails in 10 minutes while having the choice to optimize when it suits you, you are (or you were, I'm not aware of the current status) forced to fumble with the system for hours just to get it installed.

Don't tell me this helps newbies understand linux better. It doesn't. I had this friend who came from a brief mandrake background to gentoo (I recommended it, for he wanted linux, and I thought gentoo must be cool because of portage - since then I changed my opinion seeing the deficiencies of portage like skipfirst kinda hacks, worldfile instead of proper reverse dependency lookup, useflags and its interdependency hell, etc.). He spent a day installing gentoo (I know, I know, it takes you only a few hours, but for a complete noob, it was a day) than almost a week configuring it (and rebuilding kde when it turned out that nspluginviewer is missing because he forgot a useflag). At the end of it, he was no closer to understanding how linux (or generally a unix-like operating system) works. He just followed the documentation, and succeeded, b/c the doc. is good. I had to explain the most basic things (like file permissions) after he had a more or less (it must have been another useflag that prevented kpdf from opening pdf files) working system up and running!

The problem with this is that I think this senseless install procedure might give some users the (false) sense that, yes, I did it, I built a linux manually - I must be geek. These users, as they build and rebuild their system from day to day, trying out more and more compilation options will grow into those arrogant fanboys who can't resist posting a "yeah baby, I will emerge whatever today, gentoo is so cool" kinda messages in all news regardless of how related or unrelated that is to the topic at hand. Oh yeah, and they will they you to rebuild your tool chain at least 3 times to make sure its properly optimized.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[Danuvius]

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

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[DavidTC]

What are you talking, using more CPU but running faster? What the heck does that mean?

The measure of how much CPU a program uses is how much time the processor spends on it. Hence, all other things being equal, something that runs faster has to use less CPU.

Now, there are other things that affect performance, like speed in pulling it off the disk, but you said 'code execution' would be faster, which is just crazy talk.

Unless you're trying to make some point about how much of the CPU is in use at a certain time. Yes, optimizing for a certain processor does mean that branches and caches and whatnot will be optimized for that process, but there's no way you can be seeing that unless you're running programs through some sort of CPU simulator step-by-step. And I don't know what the point of talking about that would be...it's a good thing.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if I remember correctly, Linux was born in '93

You don't remember correctly. Linux was born in '91.

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:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[donscarletti]

Yes, that article will do a lot to reinforce the stereotypes about gentoo users. As a two year gentoo veteran, I had a chuckle at that headline. I have visited funroll-loops.org multiple times and and probably am more amused by many of the quotes there than those who have not used gentoo extensively, since I have seen just how silly a good amount of my fellow users are.

Despite the amusement value, I am mildly annoyed at a little hypocrisy in that site. Gentoo users are being portrayed as closed minded, elitist gits by them. The site seems to suggest that gentoo users have a strong belief that they are far superior to others because of the distribution that they use. This is sadly often true in many Gentoo users I have met, however this is not universal. Some gentoo users do not believe their distro is the silver bullet, a sign of manhood or even a badge of honour. A surprising number of Gentoo users, myself included, simply use it because we find it to be a pleasant and productive experience, yet we seem to be hit with this image of the proud and ignorant 13 year old who doesn't really know why he is using gentoo other than it is 1337 time and time again as the "gentoo user". According to netcraft, Funroll-loops runs Debian and I'm not judging them for that; in fact I run a debian based server down the hall in the lounge room and I am very satisfied with it. Despite this, I feel like I am being judged for my choice of software by that website, they are smearing me by implication and they have the gall to call my demographic the elitist one?

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[Afrosheen]

"check out UTUTO-e"

Man, who the fuck is naming distros these days? Did I miss the LSD train or what? First gentoo...which as we all know is some kind of crystal meth fueled penguin, but still sounds weird. Then there's ubuntu..which makes you feel strange even mentioning it. Worse still is kubuntu, now there's mandriva after the perfectly reasonable sounding Mandrake merged with connectiva. And try telling someone about soo-suh and having to spell it every_single_time.

People, if you want your distro taken seriously, name it something a little less retarded. Try something manly like 2x4 Linux or Nitroglycerin Linux. Even Greasemonkey sounds better than ututo-e.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[TheoMurpse]

Scroll down. "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," is already there.

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.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[molnarcs]

Well, all depends on your motivation - do you want to learn how a unix-like OS works or not? Some want just a quick replacement for windows. You did not learn linux because of gentoo, you learned it because you had the motivation and curiousity to learn it :)

There are pros and cons against both portage and apt. Portage last time I tried it had no proper reverse dependency lookup, but used something like a worldfile as a workaround. As a result, sometimes it was really hard to completely remove a package (all its files and installed libs). APT doesn't have that problem, however, dependencies are fixed. Portage handles dependencies more flexibly, that's a +. However, it does it in an unnecessarily complex way: useflags. Without configuration portage is brain dead (installing xfree as a dependency of mc?). However, to configure it properly, you have to know the interdependencies of 300+ useflags. I think a much better approach is the original ports, where you have to remember one thing: if you don't want to accept the defaults (which are more sane than with portage), you can check the makefile for additional options. Not only that, but before a port is built, you can choose additional dependencies from a menu. Your choice will be saved, and next time you upgrade, it will be remembered (ie. no user interaction is needed) See this for example.

What I don't really understand is why they didn't clone the damn thing (I mean ports) instead of inventing their hodge-podge of a ports system. They would have the best of both worlds (source based and debians apt). I mean the package management of freebsd doesn't care about the origin of the package. In fact, you can create binary packages from an installed port with one simple command: pkg_create -b pkgname. And that's not a simple binary - it has all the functionality of a .deb package: it knows of the dependencies, and if you move it to another machine, it would fetch its dependencies from either the place you specify or from the net. pkg_add -r mplayer has exactly the same functionality that apt-get install mplayer has. Same thing with deinstallation.

The linux distribution of my dreams would be slackware with ports (the original one, without modification)! I would love that!

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[Afrosheen]

Just for that, you get to install Sparkle Pants Fandango Linux. Also, in case you didn't notice, my post was kinda tongue-in-cheek, but you have to agree that names are getting ridiculous these days.

Re:I Dub Thee, "Sir Troll"

[molnarcs]

That's a damn lie if there is any - FreeBSD supports both IPFW and OpenBSD's PF - if fact 50% of FreeBSD uses PF on FreeBSD. Now don't tell me PF is not up to the task of iptables - it is, and it eats it for breakfest. MANGLE, IP_POSTROUTING, string-matching. It does all that and more - does iptables have anything like CARP. See what's missing from PF here. Debian might have the largest cesspool of tools. Can I install xorg 6.8.2 and KDE 3.4 on it while still having official security updates to my OS? Because I can in FreeBSD. Do I have timely openoffice.org 2.0 binary packages for debian?

mcsaba@mcsaba$ pkg_info | grep openoff
openoffice-2.0.20050422 Integrated wordprocessor/dbase/spreadheet/drawing/chart/...

Not only that, but name one distro (perhaps gentoo) that has binaries for all localized versions as well. Can I apt get the latest hungarian openoffice2 built for debian? FreeBSD might be the second to debian that has the largest package repository/ports system there is after debian (and how many of the 16000+ packages are actually useful?). Oh, I guess you didn't like what I wrote about apt a few posts above? If that is the case, instead of spreading FUD, it would be more mature to debate whatever claims I made.

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!

Notorious for its speed?!?

[spun]

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?

Re:Notorious for its speed?!?

[Martin Blank]

Seems so. After all, my LFS CLI is wicked-fast.

Re:Notorious for its speed?!?

[minginqunt]

Also, it may be "notorious" for being easy to maintain. However, this just isn't the case.

Of late, whenever I do an "emerge -u system", I have to spend days firefighting the inevitable borkage.

That's, of course, assuming that the emerge completes at all. Invariably, ebuilds are not properly tested, and will fail halfway through leaving my machine in an even more spacked-up state than to begin with.

And then it takes eight bloody hours to install a new version of Firefox. Urgh.

I admit it, I was wrong. I was attracted to Gentoo because I thought it would make me l33t and cool. Wrong. It's just a tossing nightmare!

This weekend, I'm returning mr rig to the warm, welcoming, bosomy folds of a certain Hoary Hedgehog.

Re:Notorious for its speed?!?

[Joseph Vigneau]

Of late, whenever I do an "emerge -u system", I have to spend days firefighting the inevitable borkage.

That's, of course, assuming that the emerge completes at all. Invariably, ebuilds are not properly tested, and will fail halfway through leaving my machine in an even more spacked-up state than to begin with.


The only time this has ever happened to me on four Gentoo machines was when I did

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -u foo

which is a Bad Thing to Do.


And then it takes eight bloody hours to install a new version of Firefox. Urgh.


emerge mozilla-firefox-bin is pretty quick.


I admit it, I was wrong. I was attracted to Gentoo because I thought it would make me l33t and cool.

That's not in the documentation; you've got to work that out on your own.

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:Notorious for its speed?!?

[GreyWolf3000]

You can take any distro and compile whatever you want and turn it into something "notorious for its speed" by compiling things for your system.

No, you cannot. First of all, almost all modern distributions are pretty well optimized for the target hardware. The CMOV instruction (which separates i686 binaries from i586) doesn't give you a huge speed boost, but you can optimize your instructions for i686 whilst still keeping the binaries i386 compatible. If you really want to see a speedup, try turning off all of the services in a stock fedora or debian installation. You'll reach pretty comparable speeds that way.

That being said, "lighter" distros like crux, slack, and lfs are much easier to admin because they're kept simple. The overhead in complexity gui config tools seem to bring is ridiculous.

Re:Notorious for its speed?!?

[pilot1]

Probably because emerge -u system is the wrong way to do it.
Try emerge -uD system.

Re:Notorious for its speed?!?

[agaffney]

A weekend? With the installer, you can do a 10 minute (hardware permitting) install using a stage3 and the LiveCD's kernel/initrd/modules. And that was in vmware...

Boring correction...

[Mr. Spontaneous]

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.

Re:Boring correction...

[wolf31o2]

This is something that really pisses me off. As a Gentoo developer and user, I can't stand seeing these fanboys spouting this utter crap.

Watching GCC output scroll by will not teach you a damn thing about Linux. Doing a stage1 installation teaches you exactly two things:

/usr/portage/scripts/bootstrap.sh
emerge -e system

Nothing else.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is completely full of crap. Also, there is no difference in a system compiled from stage1, and a system built using a stage3 tarball and GRP, then customized and recompiled. The only difference is that I can get a system up and running in an hour or so (only because of the kernel compile) and then I can use my system while I recompile with my specified USE flags, while the "stage1 is so 1337" asshats are still staring at a console of scrolling text.

While I definitely think that the Gentoo community is one of its greatest assets, I also firmly believe that these vocal minority of fanboys are one of its greatest liabilities.

Re:Boring correction...

[mrchaotica]

Not true!

Installing Gentoo can teach you about partitions, some system services, and bootloaders, among other things. People say "but you're just copying commands verbatim!", but the text actually does give you useful information. For example:

Next is the cron daemon. Although it is optional and not required for your system, it is wise to install one. But what is a cron daemon? A cron daemon executes scheduled commands. It is very handy if you need to execute some command regularly (for instance daily, weekly or monthly).

Watching GCC output scroll by won't teach you a damn thing, but reading the installation guide will.

But what about the 1337 Gentoo users?

[jZnat]

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

Re:But what about the 1337 Gentoo users?

[Joseph Vigneau]

It doesn't look like this new installer will prevent you from doing that. Because we all know "bragging rights" is what it's all about.

Re:But what about the 1337 Gentoo users?

[poofyhairguy82]

What about my bragging rights for being able to install Gentoo using only a bash shell and minimal *nix tools?

Don't you see...that the best part. Gentoo users will no longer think they are special because they can follow directions and stand a large amount of pain to put together an OS. Now Gentoo can stand on its real merits.

Re:But what about the 1337 Gentoo users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can women block pops up for you?

Yes, they can. Believe me. It depends on "uglyness", and I do not mean it only from the physiological point of view .

CC.

So

[Neil Blender]

Do you have to compile this thing first?

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

[caluml]

(17yo, non-tech) daughter

So how's she doing now anyway? I haven't seen her since we were at school together. Michelle, her name is right?

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

[Darling Daughter]

I prefer to do my own pimping, dad just helps with the networking.

Re:Yawn

[SlongNY]

Maybe they can come over my place to install gentoo for me.

mirror and a comment

[winkydink]

mirror here

Won't Gentoo lose all of it's coolness factor if anybody who can click a mouse can install it?

Vidalinux 1.1

[OxygenPenguin]

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.

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:It's notorious for its speed

[zr-rifle]

>its optimizations

You probably mean whos optimizations. Gentoo doesn't offer , or better suggest, any specific cflags out of the box for stage 1 installs. It's up to the user.Stage 2 and stage 3 installs come with very safe cflags for gcc, such as "-O2 -pipe", but with a "-march=foo_processor" that's hardly over aggressive.

So what you're referring to is probably the age old debate on whether, say, precompiled binaries offered by the other distros are slower than ad-hoc binaries compiled by the portage user. I'll pass it on to someone who is more tech-savvy, but that's not a real concern for me. I use gentoo for it's up to date repository, awesome customization features, great concern for security and the clear and concise documentation. All these features are time-savers in their own.

A step in the right direction, but...

[DeathPenguin]

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.

I learned very important things from Gentoo

[kindbud]

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.

Re:I learned very important things from Gentoo

[bcd]

1. My time is better spent doing things other than compiling basic system utilities.

Gentoo does not force users to sit in front of their computers during upgrades, or force you into single-tasking mode. Plus you don't have to upgrade anything until you want to.

2. My optimized Gentoo system does not run faster enough to make up for the time lost building it from source.

It seems most people, myself included, seem to love Gentoo more for the package management than raw CPU speed. I've never been obsessed with speed enough to measure it, so I couldn't say if it's faster or not.

3. Turns out there was nothing to learn from installing Gentoo from stage 1...

So you learned that there was nothing to learn. That's deep :)

But I agree with you. As I see it, Gentoo forces newbies to confront all the dirty details of the shell, the compiler, etc. from the get-go, which is a Good Thing, because you're probably going to need them eventually anyway.

The #1 thing I've learned from using Gentoo is how to use the lynx web browser to browse the forums when X is b0rked.

Re:I learned very important things from Gentoo

[10Ghz]

1. My time is better spent doing things other than compiling basic system utilities.

Then do those other things. Typing in the commands to compile those "basic system utilities" takes few minutes at most. After that, it starts compiling and you can do whatever you want to do. You are in no shape or form required to sit on front of the computer while it compiles.

Usually when I have done Gentoo-installations, I have done it so that I start first major compile (bootstrap) in the evening. That way it can compile overnight. In the morning, I proceed to next major compile (xorg, KDE etc.) and go to work. That way, when I get back home from work, it has finished compiling, and it's more or less ready to be used. And I haven't lost any time waiting for it to compile (since I'm either sleeping or at work).

gentoo - a bit overhyped?

[sloth jr]

"because it's source-based, it's notorious for its speed" - so what, no other distribution uses source to compile its distro?

Because of a lack of understanding

[karmaflux]

...gentoo users are notorious for failing to comprehend the implications of their system philosophy.

Is that a *good* thing?

[overshoot]

Don't you see...that the best part. Gentoo users will no longer think they are special because they can follow directions and stand a large amount of pain to put together an OS. Now Gentoo can stand on its real merits.

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.

Re:Is that a *good* thing?

[Saxton]

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.

Are you sure that has anything to do with Gentoo?

:-)

-Aaron

Makes no sense

[TelJanin]

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

Re:Makes no sense

[Anthony Liguori]

I put Gentoo on a VIA based system with 32M of ram. It was the perfect distro b/c I was able to put the very minimal amount of software on it with Cyrix specific optimizations--something no other distro could offer.

Took a while to build, but what do I care.

"Elite" Gentoo users!?

[Laebshade]

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.

Configuration--not Compilation--is the problem.

[MarkWPiper]

Compiling is always the joke, but there are much more significant barriers to adoption. First let me say that I believe Gentoo is the most powerful distribution available. However, a graphical installer still does not address what I believe are the most difficult aspects of configuring Gentoo.

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.

Re:Configuration--not Compilation--is the problem.

[thirty2bit]

If you want to build a house, you don't ask for a magic hammer to do the work for you. The missing items you've stated don't prevent anyone from installing and using Gentoo. Tuning and optimization of the external infrastruction is optional. For that you have to know what you're doing, know what to tweak.

USE flags and CFLAGS, again, are tuning and optimization. If you don't screw them up, you won't have an unusable system.

Since you have constructive concerns, why not join the Gentoo project and make a difference instead of bitchin?

Re:Configuration--not Compilation--is the problem.

[sgtrock]

Gentoo has by far the best installation documentation set that I have ever seen for a Linux distribution. I can't say the same for much of the Linux distro documentation that I've used in the past.

Gentoo's forums are some of the most useful that I've ever seen for solving Linux related problems, regardless of distribution. They make a fantastic resource for troubleshooting. I've taken to checking them first for issues that come up for my Debian laptop. The answers that I find in the Gentoo forums are always knowledgable, clear, and to the point.

Don't knock the forums until you try them.

Talking of things graphical

[leathered]

Gentoo, the ultimate geek distro and it still hasn't got its own /. icon.

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).

Why I use it

[ShyGuy91284]

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.

Re:So it's graphical, big deal...

[agaffney]

I purposely designed the GTK frontend to not be dumbed down. The purpose of the installer is not to make Gentoo easier to install but faster. Please direct all complaints to /dev/null.

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! ;-)

Pot, meet kettle

[ccharles]

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.

Re:I Dub Thee too, "Sir Troll"

[diegocgteleline.es]

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.

I'm sorry to say this to you, but real performance doesn't come from microoptimizations, but from the algorithms and data structures. I don't understand what on earth people smokes these days to think that a compiler switch is going to make gnome, kde, mozilla and openoffice suddenly less bloated and faster, and convert O(N^N) algorithms in O(1) or something.

Mozilla is slow in gentoo, and is slow in other distros because it is the same damned code. If it's really faster (and give me numbers, not sensations, it's very easy to make people think something is faster by just telling him its faster. Quoting Linus: "If we can't measure it, it doesn't exist") I will be pleased to analyze for you what it's making it faster - prelink, who knows.

Usually, only asm paths hand-coded by programmers in the code really benefit from microoptimizations. Forget about most of the rest.

Please mod parent down, as it is inaccurate.

[Noksagt]

Amoung nerds isn't it's noteriety due to its unearned reputation for speed?

No--it may be notorious for the ricers who think that they have a faster system by compiling it themselves.

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.

Didn't /. post a benchmark showing that its optimizations were overagressive, and that net performance suffered?

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.

Already there

[EvilStein]

Kind of. It's called Genkernel, and is in the installation docs. ;)

My thoughts, having installed Gentoo

[Elpacoloco]

I could handle emerge. What I couldn't handle was all the constant re-configuring of all the little /etc files.

That's why I use debian. Debian makes the /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.

Config tools, please.

Other than that, I was able to get the hang of Gentoo.

Re:I Dub Thee too, "Sir Troll"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry to say this to you, but real performance doesn't come from microoptimizations, but from the algorithms and data structures. I don't understand what on earth people smokes these days to think that a compiler switch is going to make gnome, kde, mozilla and openoffice suddenly less bloated and faster, and convert O(N^N) algorithms in O(1) or something.

Blantently false. Complexity analysis specifically carries an unspecified constant multiple. It is this constant multiple that optimizations tweak. You can get code that runs two, three, or four times faster with optimizations on the same algorithm. What you won't get are speedups related to a function of the data size.

In the case of gcc version 4, expect a significant constant time speedup for C++ code like, for instance, KDE and Gnome. I bet gentoo users will have gcc 4 before most other distros.

[OFF FREAKING TOPIC] holy crap

[SirTalon42]

"because you told gcc to unroll some loop (-funroll loops)"

Wow... I just realized it was "Unroll Loops" and not "Fun Roll Loops"

gentoo-like system:

[Teja]

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

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.

Idiots

[FxChiP]

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.

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? ;) 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).

"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!

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:Idiots

[archen]

I use Win2k with Gentoo, and it works fine. Any problems you'll have will be with grub. That aside, keep in mind that if you have to do a re-install of Win2k, it'll wack your boot sector and you'll have to install grub again.

SuSE is what (finally really) got me onto linux, but I was rather annoyed with it. Deliberatly crippling kaffiene so that it couldn't play DVD's was a big annoyance, and the other major issue was that every update of KDE I tried majorly messed stuff up. The main advice I'd give you is to keep a copy of your xorg.conf somewhere. xorgcfg makes it much easier than it used to be, but it'll eliminate many of your fustrations when setting up X by having the old one handy.

I don't know about anybody else

[ashpool7]

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.

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 too, "Sir Troll"

[thoromyr]

How is what he said blatantly false, Oh modded insightful troll? I have mod points but would rather post a counter to your absurd comment.

That constant you refer to does exist, but has nothing to do with compiler optimization. Were you asleep in CS101 or do you enjoy misrepresentation? DING DING DING, WAKE UP.

Two O(n^2) algorithms are only the same speed for sufficiently large data sets such that the (presumed different) constant has negligible effect. For sufficiently small data sets an O(n^n) algorithm may be faster than an O(1), it just depends on the value of the constant. Again, this has nothing to do with compiler optimization -- it doesn't have the option to "use small data sets" or to select an algorithm that is most efficient for a particular data set.

Secondly, where did you get the idea that compiler optimizations give speed increases of "two, three, or four times faster". Compilers *do* have some tricks (e.g., loop unrolling), but outside of forced examples you are not going to get speedups like you imply for large code sets like KDE and Gnome.

Thirdly, do you really think no other distro enables optimization? It may not be "optimized" for "your hardware" but, get over it, "your hardware" isn't somehow magically different than all the other hardware for your platform (x86, PPC, whatever).

So stating unrelated truisms (not getting "speedups related to a function of the data size") is all it takes to get modded insightful? Bah!

cfg-update

[Thurn und Taxis]

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.

Missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

What I like about Gentoo, and what is never mentioned, is that building the system from source allows me, not the people who built the packages, to choose the dependencies.

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