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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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!

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?!?

[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.

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.

So

[Neil Blender]

Do you have to compile this thing first?

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

[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?

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?

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: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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.