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Gentoo 2008.0 Released
An anonymous reader notes that the Gentoo 2008.0 final release is available. From the announcement:
"Code-named 'It's got what plants crave,' this release contains numerous new features including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD. LiveDVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree."
Gentoo 2007.0 had a graphical installer too. I tried using it (almost 20 times), and never did get Gentoo installed with it. Then I went to the command line minimal install (stage 3), and got it up and running in the first shot.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
That's updating, not upgrading. At the very least, you should select a new profile, to get the new default system packages and masks.
To go to 2008.0, this should bring you mostly there:
[make a backup] ._cfgNNNN files using your favourite tool or manually]
emerge --sync
eselect profile default/linux/x86/2008.0 # Adjust to your preferred profile
emerge --emptytree system
emerge --emptytree system
emerge --emptytree world
emerge --update --deep --newuse world
[merge any new
Ayup, you need to rebuild system twice to cover interdependencies, and then world, to get everything to link with the new system libraries.
On a desktop system, you might also want to update the boot splash theme to reflect the new "version", but there isn't any 2008.0 theme out yet, so that might have to wait.
I used sourcemage a few years back. (Left because i got tired of waiting for shit to compile, hurr hurr.) I found it really nice, and absolutely LOVED the bash-script based package management. Compared to Gentoo, it's also really good at fixing itself when things get borked.
If I had more disk space, I'd probably give it a go again. It was a really nice distro.
- mantar
what is the benefit of having thousands of geeks compiling the same code over and over, when you can download 1 binary distribution and be done? If you sum up the manhours of all this compilation, the power consumed by countless hard drives and processors churning away, whats the point?
Speed. Now a binary distro can install things quickly but not run them very quickly. If you have a nice dual-core CPU setup and 1 GB of RAM the binary distros will serve you well, but if you have an aging desktop such a a low-end Pentium 4, or a high-end Pentium III, with RAM maxed out at 512 MB, Gentoo will run faster then even Xubuntu. Now, it might take a week to get everything installed, but once it is installed you have the fastest system you can get on that hardware.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The correct procedure is:
# Update local package repository image
emerge --sync
# Select new profile (Adjust to your architecture / preferred sub-profile)
eselect profile default/linux/x86/2008.0
# Update to latest default USE flags (which is generally all that changes with profile updates)
emerge --update --deep --newuse world
# Update config files with tool of your choice
The rest is completely useless. Even if you did want to completely re-emerge the entire system, there's little point in the 2 "emerge -e system" (if you're a ricer, you may choose to do one of them - since system is included in world, the second is completely pointless)
And said dev subsequently had his Gentoo infrastructure access removed
I'd say I trust the overall distro that much more for dealing with the situation appropriately.