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."

Comments

emerge first

[TeknoHog]

So now that Gentoo has a nice graphical installer, can we expect all kinds of n00bs flooding the forums? I thought the idea was to have a distro you can really tinker with, given the majority of other distros taking care of the sleek user-friendly market.

Re:emerge first

[armanox]

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.

Re:emerge first

[Anonymous Coward]

... can we expect all kinds of n00bs flooding the forums?

Typical douchebaggery from a typical Gentoo user:
"I use Gentoo. Look at my penis."

Re:emerge first

[iplayfast]

My experience was the same as yours. Never had a problem with minimal install, or at least if there was a problem it was hands on enough that you could work through it.

The graphical installer in 2007 didn't do gentoo any favors.

Re:emerge first

[Markspark]

"here, you might need a lookingglass"

Re:emerge first

[TGTilde]

Hey, if I needed a larger penis, I'd emerge one. And unlike yours it would be highly optimised for my personal usage.

I guess you don't need a bigger one when it's only for personal use.

Re:emerge first

[kashani]

Gentoo has always about giving you more control and making hard things easy. If it weren't, we'd be using the giant pain in the ass called Linux From Scratch.

kashani

Re:emerge first

[MBGMorden]

Yes, but reinstalling Gentoo was just too much of a pain. I did the old tried and true no-installer method - several times. It took a LONG time to get the system up and going and into a usable form. First few times were exciting, but on my 3rd or 4th time doing it, it just felt like a chore. I don't want to spend a weekend getting a box up and going. When the installer finally came out I started using that. It was buggy to be sure, but it got me a working Gentoo system pretty quick, and from there I was able to do all the customizing and whatnot I wanted.

Re:emerge first

[ericrost]

What a great typo for the gentoo experience "turn them lose to google".

Made me chuckle.

Re:emerge first

[MBGMorden]

Frankly, if you're constantly re-installing then Gentoo is probably not for you.

It wasn't always on the same machine. Some of use do use more than 1 computer/server . . .

Anyone tried other source based distros?

[gambolt]

How do sourcemage and lunar compare, anyone know?

I've had the impression that Gentoo has been stagnating recently.

Re:Anyone tried other source based distros?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Anyone tried other source based distros?

[smittyoneeach]

>I found it really nice, and absolutely LOVED the bash-script based package management.

Hey, that sounds kinda cool. Maybe Gentoo should consider this idea instead of .ebuild files.

Re:Anyone tried other source based distros?

[debatem1]

With the caveat that I'm writing this from Xandros (gak!), I've always found the Gentoo ebuilds to be pretty sane. Is there anything in particular that needs changing about them?

Re:Anyone tried other source based distros?

[Brebs]

Portage is *Python* code. As in:

$ head -n1 $(which emerge)
#!/usr/bin/python -O

Re:Anyone tried other source based distros?

[incripshin]

I think it's a joke (hopefully). The ebuilds use bourne shell syntax.

Re:Anyone tried other source based distros?

[smittyoneeach]

Portage is also not the only game in .ebuild-ville:
http://paludis.pioto.org/
merits attention: I've used it since about version 0.14 with good justice.

Re:Anyone tried other source based distros?

[en.ABCD]

I think it's a joke (hopefully). The ebuilds use bourne shell syntax.

Well, actually, it is Bourne Again Shell syntax...

Re:Anyone tried other source based distros?

[Respect_my_Authority]

I've used sourcemage for a about year or so and I absolutely love its package manager, "sorcery". You type "sorcery" in terminal and it opens an ncurses menu where you can set compile flags and other package manager settings. You can also use the same sorcery menu for browsing/installing/upgrading/removing packages but it's really quicker to check out the man pages for "cast", "dispel", "gaze", and "cleanse", and then just use the command line for package management. When sorcery installs packages, it asks a bunch of questions about dependencies and the next time you upgrade the same package, it remembers the dependencies you chose last time.

I also tried lunar recently. Lunar seems to be rather similar to sourcemage, except they call their package manager "lunar", and they have also different names for the other package management commands. Lunar doesn't appear to support rebuilding the whole system, which I like to do after upgrading gcc, glibc, or binutils. In sourcemage I type "sorcery rebuild" and it rebuilds all the installed packages. In lunar the equivalent command "lunar rebuild" didn't seem to do much anything. I also feel that I get much better control over optional dependencies and build options for individual packages in sourcemage, so I decided to dump lunar.

Sourcemage has pretty up-to-date packages: gcc 4.3.1, glibc 2.7, and so on. Openoffice2 (2.4.1) is only available as a binary package. In sourcemage it's really easy to track the latest development versions of KDE4. There are two alternative package collections ("grimoires") that you can choose from: "test" that is updated every day, and "stable" that is updated once every month. And then there's an additional "grimoire" for games ("games") and also one for non-free and/or binary-only packages ("z-rejected"). There are over 5000 source packages available in sourcemage -- that's more than in most other distros. Sourcemage follows a similar policy as slackware: they prefer not to modify upstream packages by adding any distro-specific patches, except when packages fail to compile.

I see currently only two problems in sourcemage: they haven't released a new installer for a while, and they still officially have only xorg version 6.9 (newer versions of xorg are unofficially available, but you need to jump through extra hoops to install one). The sourcemage mailing list discussions suggest that both of these issues might be solved before the end of this summer. In the meanwhile I'm using xorg 1.3.0 that is not overly difficult to install (the instructions can be found in the sourcemage wiki's xorg-howto, under "using old repository").

Here are links to the mailing list archives and xorg-howto, in case anyone is interested to learn more:

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/sm-discuss/

http://wiki.sourcemage.org/HOWTO-xorg

Re:Anyone tried other source based distros?

[smittyoneeach]

Fair enough. I was just being snarky. In truth, while Gentoo implements an event model in bash, the dependency resolution systems are done in python (emerge), C++ (paludis), or a C python extension (pkgcore).
That whole dependency graph resolution thing is a non-trivial problem.

Re:"LiveCds not available for X86 or AMD64"

[zappepcs]

LiveDVD is not available for x86. I stumbled on that sentence also. Seems there will be a LiveCD though; In which case I'll be burning a copy of that for a few hours fun.

From the linked site:

# Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD: To save space, the LiveCDs switched to the smaller Xfce environment. This means that a binary installation using the LiveCD will install Xfce, but you're still free to build GNOME or KDE from source.
# No LiveDVDs on x86 or amd64: In the interest of getting the release out, the release engineering team decided to postpone LiveDVDs because of problems in their generation. They may show up laterâ"if so, we'll let you know.

Apparently I'm not supposed to submit yet? (What are the limits on posting? WTF?)

I am looking forward to trying this out btw.

Re:"LiveCds not available for X86 or AMD64"

[Parag2k3]

No LiveDVDs, there are LiveCDs for both x86 and AMD64. Its that they just have xfce on them and not gnome. Implying that livedvds may have gnome on them.

No love for MIPS

[armanox]

Looks like they don't have a new MIPS install CD. That makes me sad.

Re:No love for MIPS

[Robbat2]

There are new MIPS stages however under /experimental/. Go and bug the MIPS team if you want a CD as well.

Finally.

[corychristison]

The great thing about Gentoo is that upgrading is as easy as 'emerge --sync && emerge -auvND world'.

I'm not quite sure about this installer. As mentioned above it may bring in new users... but at what cost? I suppose maybe the forum members will whip 'em into shape by telling them to RTFM.

Gentoo is about choice. Give it a try if that's what you're into. The new LiveCD should support most new hardware out of the box (important stuff, anyway -- like network and disk/chipset drivers).

I love and use it on all of my machines and the biggest hiccup I've ever had was a driver problem on my old personal machine (retired in January) -- Eventually it was resolved by a few revdep rebuilds and emerge -auvND world's...

Re:Finally.

[arth1]

The great thing about Gentoo is that upgrading is as easy as 'emerge --sync && emerge -auvND world'.

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]
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 ._cfgNNNN files using your favourite tool or manually]

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.

Re:Finally.

[smallfries]

From your comment I can assume that either:

1) Your install is headless
2) You have been using Gentoo for less than 12 months
3) You are still running XFree86 instead of Xorg
4) Your memory is very selective

The very idea that every update goes smoothly without a single dependency block is something that most Gentoo users would laugh at. Given all of the problems with the Xorg update, or the changes in libraries that borked the tree for months last year this is laughable.

Portage is a great piece of software, and I stuck with Gentoo for many years because because of its strengths. But portage is not what lets Gentoo down. The complete lack of QA on the official tree that leads to dependency blocks, updated libraries in the stable tree that break ABI compatability with previous software and the general cavalier attitude to pushing any old crap into the stable release are what kills Gentoo.

But hey, after complaining about Gentoo for years (not even including the pain that was getting a Via media box to work) I put my money where my mouth was and went out to buy a nice stable unix system that can also run a stable version of ports. I bought a mac.

Re:Finally.

[arth1]

1) Your install is headless

I've found it very difficult to install Gentoo on a truly headless system.
There are nothing provided install-wise to let you do a network boot -- you have to create your own setup for that, even initially. And trying to use cu on a terminal line against an install CD is an exercise in futility -- it assumes that you have a head.
Other distros might be just as bad, some are better, but none are worse.

Re:Finally.

[**loki969**]

Why on earth would you emerge -e world/system? It's abolutely redundent in this case.

"revdep-rebuild" takes care of sytem link consistency, which doesn't get touched anyhow when updating your profile.

Re:Finally.

[danomac]

The great thing about Gentoo is that upgrading is as easy as 'emerge --sync && emerge -auvND world'.

This is changing, pretty soon world will not contain system packages. So you'll have to update them separately.

Re:Finally.

[arth1]

Why on earth would you emerge -e world/system? It's abolutely redundent in this case.

A new profile might bring in new packages which has headers that affect the system toolchain.
Since you don't know whether this is the case, the only way to ensure that new changes are incorporated into the system is to rebuild system. If you don't, you may have world packages that use a different include file than the system, which can cause problems, like when a newly introduced package uses different values for #defines, overriding the values that autoconf would choose when the package isn't there.

If using ccache, this rebuild isn't too time consuming, but still an annoyance.

Re:Finally.

[Minozake]

I just prefer backing everything up and then reinstalling everything. Much less painstaking, and I get to start out on a clean slate of a system.

Very nice, I think. Maybe for people who need their computer and can't forget some of the components, though, this isn't much of a viable option.

*runs off to make a checklist*

Re:Finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Re:Finally.

[Eli Gottlieb]

The great thing about Gentoo is that upgrading is as easy as 'emerge --sync && emerge -auvND world'.

Except that that doesn't necessarily work unless you've been doing it roughly once per week.

I came back from college and tried to update my home Gentoo desktop system. As a result, after syncing my Portage tree I had an already-installed package blocking a prerequisite for its own update. In fact, I had roughly 5 cases of this, including Python and Portage themselves. The only solution was to reinstall the OS from scratch!

Re:Finally.

[incripshin]

That will probably take a very long time. I use something called emwrap. The latest version is here. It will rebuild the toolchain, system, and world all safely and optimally.

Though usually when I update profiles, I just do the 'eselect profile ...', and 'emerge -DNav world'. I haven't had a problem doing that in three years (I don't think).

Re:Finally.

[Bert64]

There are netboot images, but primarily for Sparc and Mips... I have done a complete remote install on a sparc using serial console, when the physical server was several thousand miles away.

Re:Finally.

[corychristison]

I run it every 2-3 weeks. Generally 100-ish packages need updating.

Haven't had a problem in quite some time.

Re:Finally.

[corychristison]

That's basically what I said... I just left out the profile.

-a = ask (overlook packages before install)
-u = update
-v = verbose
-N = newuse
-D = deep

Thus: 'emerge -auvND world' is the same as 'emerge --update --deep --newuse world'

Re:Finally.

[corychristison]

1) it's my main system. I've got the test dev server that us headless and the same command works fine.
2) I've been using Gentoo since (late) 2004
3) Been using X.org for quite some time (running it unmasked at the moment)
4) Yes. Perhaps.

I never said that I never came across any dependency blocks. I had 2 the last I upgraded (the morning this article came out, actually) and it was a simple unmerge of two packages... then press up twice and press enter to re-build the package list and install.

I own a Mac as well. It was a terrible experience for me. I installed Gentoo on it. Works fine now.

Re:Finally.

[corychristison]

Thanks for the tip! So far you are the first to mention anything that wasn't bitching and complaining about my post.

Thank you for that.

Re:Finally.

[ThePhilips]

[merge any new ._cfgNNNN files using your favourite tool or manually]

That's actually what turned me off Gentoo - the thing with /etc/.

If you add couple of lines into config of popular and often (re)build package, you start feeling that you waste more time copy-pasting the lines into new version of config than actually compiling the system.

No 3 way merge function for you. At least it wasn't there 2 years ago.

Re:Finally.

[danomac]

There's more information about the changes in a draft upgrade guide. There's a few key changes (as someone above mentioned as well), one being that portage will preserve existing libraries until the dependencies are rebuilt against the new ones. Another is that you can create logical sets (i.e. create a media_player set with vlc & mplayer and dependencies, and update it using `emerge -av @media_player` -- this will update everything in the set. Pretty nifty.

I don't think there's any

Re:Finally.

[danomac]

What are the odds of accidentally clicking the Submit button instead of the Continue Editing button. Doh!

To finish it off: I don't think there's any official documentation on the gentoo website just yet, but there was a guide installed in /usr/share/doc/portage-2.2_rc1/html/index.html on my amd64 box.

Re:Finally.

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

emerge app-portage/cfg-update

It will solve all config file headaches.

Re:Finally.

[smallfries]

I own a Mac as well. It was a terrible experience for me. I installed Gentoo on it. Works fine now.

Now I know that you're twisted :)

Re:Finally.

[WuphonsReach]

Portage is a great piece of software, and I stuck with Gentoo for many years because because of its strengths. But portage is not what lets Gentoo down. The complete lack of QA on the official tree that leads to dependency blocks, updated libraries in the stable tree that break ABI compatability with previous software and the general cavalier attitude to pushing any old crap into the stable release are what kills Gentoo.

The lack of consistent QA is what killed off Gentoo for us on servers. It was a much better decision (though less of a "cool" factor) to switch our servers over to RedHat/CentOS. Not that we ever had issues with the Gentoo servers that we used.

As much as people may dislike Red Hat, their business model centers around servers and making sure that stuff doesn't break. Which is worth more in the long run. And if it does break, it's a lot easier to get paid support for Red Hat / CentOS from a local company.

Gentoo can't seem to decide if it's a hobby distro, a desktop distro, a LFS style distro, a server distro, or a flavor of the month distro. I'll remember it fondly for the lessons that it taught me, but at the end of the day I need a distro that works without fiddling.

Awesome news...

[repruhsent]

...but I'm still compiling 2004.3.

blockers

[Bizzeh]

are there still all the blockers when installing anything of any use? the sort of blocker that doesnt tell you when you run an emerge -pv and when you run the actual emerge to build and install a large package and all its depends and leave the room for a while (assuming that the full process may take a hour or so) and when you come back, the emerge broke on the second package.

It's got what plants crave.

[Xfacter]

I've looked all over, but I can't find the electrolytes!

Re:It's got what plants crave.

[laederkeps]

eselectrolytes?

Re:It's got what plants crave.

[steak]

that's because they were destroyed in the process of mutilating your thirst.

Re:It's got what plants crave.

[svank]

You need to compile them first.

Re:It's got what plants crave.

[Workaphobia]

Don't worry, they're safely and steadily building up in the earth. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm late for Monday Night Rehabilitation.

Or if you don't like those references, I can give you some old school Simpsons quotes...

Re:Major problems with Firefox 3 on Gentoo 2008.0.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking n00bs. Change firefox memory module to remove on the fly memory allocation and compile with -XilYaBGvf option, and link the so with the rest using secondary passive attribution.

One advice to n00bs using Gentoo - RTFM.

Re:Enhancements?

[dberkholz]

Sure, we've got all the latest versions. Why would we mention them in the release announcement, though? They aren't features of the release because they're not on the CD. Here's a quick sample of what's available on my system (running testing): openoffice 2.4.1, postgresql 8.3.1, kde 4.0.5, gnome 2.22.1.

Re:Enhancements?

[apachetoolbox]

I just checked my production box...

I can install up to PostgreSQL v8.3.1. v8.0.15 is still marked as stable so if you want newer you have to know how to use the portage system. Once you know how to use portage it takes just a second to get v8.3.1 available for your system.

Global Warming - why??

[Gothmolly]

A bit tongue-in-cheek, but I'm also serious here - 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? Just so you can have a 64bit Firefox that Flash won't run on? A 686-optimized kernel, connected to the Internet via 768 kbit DSL?

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Anonymous Coward]

Xubuntu is slow because it has like 30 daemons loaded at startup. Provided you get rid of daemons you don't use, you'll find minimal speedups when something is optimized for a generic i686 compared to something optimized for core2, except maybe some video player/editor that isn't mplayer/mencoder based. Archlinux/Crux/Frugalware basically runs on this philosophy, and provides i686 generic binaries, which run on Pentium II and up.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Anonymous Coward]

While people tend to say speed (which is generally true as far as older hardware and optimizations are concerned), I just like the simplicity and the ease of configuring ALL of my system in one folder: /etc/conf.d, pretty much.

Another thing I like about gentoo is the simple fact: if it compiles, it runs. I've had debacles in the past where when you try to use some obscure program's binary it just won't run because you've got newer lib versions installed, etc, etc. Compiling stuff to work on your system means it'll run on your system, with the libs YOU have installed, and it'll work according to the specs you put in. i.e, if you want jpeg support for your image programs, but never use gif, then put the jpeg -gif use flags in make.conf, done. Your entire system will just ignore all gif dependencies. You try doing that with a binary distro and get back to me.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Hangeron]

Not much benefit, but show me a distro with packages as up to date as Gentoo, and I'll switch over. I think most choose Gentoo because it's bleeding edge and for customization. Compilation and speed are just by-products as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[**loki969**]

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.

It's not about speed, at least from my point of view. - It is all about configurability. - Almost no users ends up with the same system as the other one.

Since one is in full control and there are hundreds of decisions to make it is very unlikely that any user ends up with the same system as another one.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Anonymous Coward]

what is the benefit of having thousands of geeks compiling the same code over and over

That's the point, it isn't always the same code. The real power of Gentoo (Portage really) is the power for the user to say "I don't want features x, y, and z in this piece of software so don't bother compiling them in".

With a binary distro you are usually stuck with the decisions that the maintainer has made about what features of the software to include/exclude.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Erikderzweite]

There are many reasons - flexibility, speed of resulting binaries, less dependency problems and lase but not least - the new version is out, but I am already running all the latest software versions included in this version. You upgrade regularly and end up with new version when it is out. No need to go through massive upgrading where so much can go wrong.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Syde]

I agree, speed is important, but the flexibility of Gentoo is amazing. I tend to refer to Gentoo as a tweaker's dream. I came from the days before we had useful package management systems in Linux... back when you had to compile all of your packages and dependencies yourself. (X and a window manager sure was a lot of fun to install back then!) So I remember the time of compiling everything and getting everything properly optimized for your hardware (and other software)... so for me Gentoo is kind of the best of both worlds, package management, but still doing it from source.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[HeronBlademaster]

You'll only get minimal speedups compared to a binary *optimized* for core2, yes - but you'll likely get fairly good speedups if you're willing to let gcc use processor-specific instructions and whatnot (meaning you can't move the binary to another x86 unless it's the same as yours).

In other words, generic binaries are compiled with -mtune=generic (or -mtune=core2 or whatever) so they'll work on basically any x86. If you want every possible speedup, you'll need to use -march=cputype where cputype is your cpu - and if you're compiling gentoo from source, that's likely what you'll be using.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[HeronBlademaster]

It's only bleeding edge if you unmask everything and if you're willing to deal with all of the Gentoo team's patches which may be unstable. I'm considering switching to an unmasked vanilla-sources instead of gentoo-sources just so I'll always have the newest version of the Linux kernel and have it be exactly what Linus and friends intended to distribute.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Gothmolly]

"...it might take a week to get everything installed..."

Do you save that week in performance later?

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Deanalator]

I had been using gentoo for about 4 years, and migrated over to ubuntu about a year ago. I miss a lot of things, but I never really noticed any changes in speed.

What I miss is USE flags. Things like "smartcard" and "cjk" etc, and especially all the use flags you can tweak in apache and php etc. They let you compile in experimental patches and extra features, while letting you cut out all the bulk you don't need.

The main reason I left was lack of signed packages, and complete lack of any automatic update system. In this day age, it is simply unacceptable to force users to update packages over clear text without any package authentication. They even built signed packages into portage back in 2004, but noone signs their packages, so you can't even enable the feature.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Deanalator]

Unlike ubuntu, you can actually keep using the system while it is installing packages :-)

The blocking in apt seems a bit excessive.

My cronjobs (in gentoo) used to run when I was sleeping, so it didn't matter much.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[raydulany]

...an aging desktop such a a low-end Pentium 4, or a high-end Pentium III, with RAM maxed out at 512 MB...

Or an Ultra5 with 128 MB of RAM

Re:Global Warming - why??

[dpilot]

> Speed.

No, not speed, reliability and (startlingly) ease. Yes, you have to wait for the silly thing to compile, but almost without exception, once you've done that, stuff just runs.

Back in my old rpm days, it seemed like I would find an interesting package and find that it has an rpm available. The I'd find that I was missing a library, or had the wrong version, and I'd have to go searching for another rpm. Then another search to find the rpm that would satisfy the requirements for that lib, etc. Every now and then, I'd get to the bottom of my search and find an incompatibility, and it was time to give up, at least for the moment.

Gentoo has a wide range of ebuilds, a wide range of overlays that increase the options, and finally since a complete build environment is part of every system, building a non-ebuild tarball almost always works, too. ( ./configure --prefix=/usr/local && make , etc )

By far, most of my problems have been with stuff only available in binary form.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[True Grit]

Provided you get rid of daemons you don't use, you'll find minimal speedups when something is optimized for a generic i686 compared to something optimized for core2

What about the "daemons" that you can't get rid of as they are required by the app because that app's maintainer, or "higher-ups" in the distro's management decided that the app must include this or that feature (for whatever reason)? For many Gentoo users, its not about recompiling the exact same code over and over again, because in that case, you'd be right, there would be minimal improvement in the resulting apps, and a lot of work for almost nothing.

Others have mentioned all the other reasons why some like Gentoo: Choice, Configurability, (Slight) Performance gains, but I don't think anyone mentioned my reason, although the 'configurability' comes close. My reason? CONTROL. I'm a control freak. :)

Gentoo's use of 'USE' flags to control how software is built, and its direct support for customization of software via 'local overlays', which basically allows anyone who wants/needs to, to override the default build scripts of any of the system's software and make any changes to how that software is built is a control freak's wet dream. Even if you rarely use these features, just knowing you can if you want to is comforting for those who can't stand the idea of not being in total charge of their own computer. :)

If an app has been built to support everything under the sun, it tends to have a lot of dependencies that result in 'everything under the sun' getting installed onto *your* system. Only, what if you know you're not going to use even half of that stuff? On a binary based distro, that happens a lot because they're building stuff for the 'largest common demoninator', and there is little to nothing you can do about it. This was the second biggest reason that drove me away from Debian way back when: No control over what was getting installed on my system, and no easy way to customize anything (when I left Debian, rebuilding things from source, i.e. creating your own .debs, to make your own customizations was a genuine PITA, whereas Gentoo's overlays feature builds the customization ability right into its package management system right from the get-go). I'm not dissing Debian, I still like it, but a source-based distro gives you a level of control that no binary-based distro can offer. Period. Full-Stop. I guaranttee you there is stuff on your system, stuff that gets installed automatically on virtually every Linux distro out there, that is *not* on my system (or the systems of many Gentoo users).

PS: You can tell the control freaks from the speed freaks simply by their CFLAGS: they left it set to the default. They figured out what you were talking about a long time ago, and a four line CFLAGS, starting with '-O9' (LOL!), is not *their* idea of nirvana. But you probably shouldn't look in their local overlay directory if you value your sanity... :)

PPS: Somebody please mod up that AC below me who made the 'if it compiles, it runs' comment. He's dead-on: that is the single most important reason I left binary distros. After an install, there is NO guarantee that your system will work. In a source-based distro, if the build/link/install completes successfully its almost certain that at least you'll be able to get back into your system the next time you reboot, because in the act of compiling and successfully linking an app, your system has effectively verified that the app has no missing library dependencies.

Gentoo ain't perfect, but I'll still take it over any binary-based distro without even a first thought.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[dberkholz]

That's because the feature as it is is useless -- it doesn't sign the complete code path, just the ebuilds themselves. No eclasses, no bashrc. Robin H. Johnson has been working on an updated proposal to do it right.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Bert64]

Every system being slightly different has security advantages too...
There will be subtle differences in the addresses at which various pieces of code are loaded which can make exploit writing more difficult.
With a binary distro, you can just download the binaries yourself and discover the necessary addresses.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Bert64]

I too have had similar problems... Binary distributions become a huge pain if you don't have the most up to date bleeding edge version, which can often be highly unstable...

If you try installing the beta packages on your otherwise stable version, you will often find that they depend on new versions of core system packages (glibc, gcc etc), gentoo lets you install the latest apps if and when you want, without having to drag the rest of your system up unnecessarily.

As an example, try installing Nagios 3.x on ubuntu 8.04, there are packages for it in "intrepid" but they are a pain to install without updating the whole thing.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[rcallan]

If you're just using software (and just mainstream stuff), there's not much point. However, if you're a developer or like to poke around in the sources, you can't ask for a much nicer system right out of a box. You have the source for every package on your system, as well as pretty much every compiler known to man, and they're all configured reasonably without much fuss. If you find some random piece of software on the internet and it's not in your package manager, it can be a painful experience to compile it on some binary based distros, but you probably have much better odds of getting it to compile on gentoo, because your whole system is configured for compiling everything from scratch. Of course, there's plenty things that are quite painful with gentoo, but usually it's up front and well documented.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[ericrost]

"PPS: Somebody please mod up that AC below me who made the 'if it compiles, it runs' comment. He's dead-on: that is the single most important reason I left binary distros. After an install, there is NO guarantee that your system will work. In a source-based distro, if the build/link/install completes successfully its almost certain that at least you'll be able to get back into your system the next time you reboot, because in the act of compiling and successfully linking an app, your system has effectively verified that the app has no missing library dependencies."

That is completely bogus. What about segfaults. What about race conditions. There are an infinite number of bad things that can lock your box that compiling from source doesn't fix. This is what drove me off of Gentoo. In the unstable branch, wget broke, with the emerge world finishing. Leaving emerge unable to fetch new code to fix the conflict that broke wget (hint what does portage use to fetch source?).

In Ubuntu, the package maintainers actually care about the installed packages from repos running once they're installed. In Gentoo world, not so much.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[xgr3gx]

Agreed -- I like being able to have a stripped down system if I want. My web server doesn't need X, audio, printing, ldap and lots of other support I don't use.
I have less stuff to maintain, because I don't build the box the extras I don't need to begin with.
Ubuntu and others are nice, but when I'm done installing one, I have no idea what it did during it's install.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[BrokenHalo]

With a binary distro you are usually stuck with the decisions that the maintainer has made about what features of the software to include/exclude.

Nonsense. There's nothing stopping you from excluding (or uninstalling) binary packages and building from source. That's why I like Slackware. It gives you a very simple world to stand on while you build the things that are important to you, rather than wasting your time building everything even though you might only actually use some of those programs for a few milliseconds in a year.

But you can do the same with any other package-based distro. I remember doing the same when I was having a fling with RedHat 5.2 and 6.1 for a while...

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Sloppy]

If you sum up the manhours of all this compilation .. whats the point?

When portage works (i.e. back in the old days when the QA didn't suck and updating a system that has no unstable packages installed, didn't always result in mutally-blocking packages) there aren't any manhours. The computer does that work, and the human spends no more than a few seconds on the issue.

The point (again, when things are actually working, a situation that seems a distant memory to me) is that you get it the way you want it. That doesn't just mean compiler flag twiddling; it means detailed control over what packages are really installed and what options they're configured with, thanks to your USE flags.

That isn't always important. I admit I love how simple my Debian server is; I don't really have to think and I don't want to, because I want it to "just work." But sometimes I apt-get install something, and see it pulling in a lot of crap that I don't really need. On my Gentoo box, that doesn't happen (much).

Is it worth the expense (power usage)? Your call.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[jalefkowit]

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?

Well, you get some nifty "VTEC" stickers...

Re:Global Warming - why??

[shish]

Speed. Now a binary distro can install things quickly but not run them very quickly.

In the last benchmark I saw, gentoo occasionally managed to be something like 0.5% faster on some tasks, and was occasionally 20% slower when the user compiled with an optimisation which backfired; the package maintainer's choice of optimisations for the specific package were generally better than the user's choice for their specific CPU... That was a few years back though (when gentoo fanboyism was at its peak), not sure what's changed since~

Googling for said article, I find lots of references to it, but the site itself seems to no longer exist, and archive.org crashes when trying to access it -_-

Re:Global Warming - why??

[True Grit]

There are an infinite number of bad things that can lock your box that compiling from source doesn't fix.

I never said compiling from source fixes *everything*.

This is what drove me off of Gentoo. In the unstable branch, wget broke, with the emerge world finishing. Leaving emerge unable to fetch new code to fix the conflict that broke wget (hint what does portage use to fetch source?).

So you use your browser/ftp client and go fetch the source manually, then downgrade to the previous version. Compared to being unable boot your system, or something like glibc being completely hosed, this is trivial. And this kind of problem can happen on any distro.

In Ubuntu, the package maintainers actually care about the installed packages from repos running once they're installed.

Great, keep using Ubuntu if you like it. If I ever decided to use a binary distro again, I'd probably try them first.

In Gentoo world, not so much.

Life on the bleeding edge is not for the faint of heart. For many, its not worth the headaches, but for some, its the only way to live. With Linux thankfully, we have so many choices.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[cloudmaster]

Compared to being unable boot your system, or something like glibc being completely hosed, this is trivial. And this kind of problem can happen on any distro.

No, it won't. Because binary distributions have something that Gentoo hasn't mastered - "quality assurance" and a limited set of configurations to support. If there was a broken glibc package, for example, someone would've already seen that it was broken before they published the binary package to the download server.

For background - I used Gentoo for a few years (from 2003 to late 2006-ish), and have developed (not just "used") Linux in general for close to 15 years now. I've assembled my own distros from source since before LFS and Gentoo existed.

I thought I had more control with Gentoo when I started, but as it turns out, I just had control over which of the prescribed USE flags I enabled. Everything else, like what patches got applied to the code and what versions were called "stable", was determined by some kid whose approach to software development stopped at "it works for me". After a couple of years of beating my head against problem after problem caused by these kinds of things - including the great X.org debacle - I realized that keeping the wheels on was cutting into the time I could have spent really customizing the parts I cared about.

That's when I started using Ubuntu. The slow release cycle and irritating installer had kept me away from Debian for a while, but Ubuntu fixes that. And it's based on apt, which gives me all the control that portage gives (apt pinning and source control is pretty powerful stuff), without all the PITA that Gentoo's community brings to the distro. The Debian and Ubuntu developers actually test stuff (the recent ssl issue aside ;)), and I can update with two commands (an upgrade just takes an extra sed/perl/vi). I don't waste time fixing things that shouldn't be problems to begin with now; I can focus on the customizations I actually care about.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[cloudmaster]

Start here:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/apt-build

Then build nagios3 from the Intrepid sources on your Hardy system. Then, if you still miss Gentoo, remove some random files from the system and spend a few hours trying to figure out what broke. Maybe have your neighbor come over and call you an idiot even though he also doesn't know what's wrong, so you can feel like you're in the Gentoo forums.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[True Grit]

I used Gentoo for a few years (from 2003 to late 2006-ish)

but as it turns out, I just had control over which of the prescribed USE flags I enabled

You used Gentoo for 2 years and in all that time you never heard of an 'overlay'? Sounds to me like Gentoo wasn't the kind of distro for you anyway. No problem, stay with Ubuntu and be happy, just remember, what works for you doesn't work for everyone else.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[ericrost]

And again you completely ignore the fact that QA is important for a distro to be useful. When I emerge world, with a stock unstable system on i686 and no overlays, I shouldn't HAVE to use my browser to fix the fact that the package manager managed to break the tool it uses to get source code. This is first grade basic shit here. After those kind of fuck ups, how can I trust the maintainers to get anything basic right? Why would I want to use their kernel sources?

Ubuntu is by no means perfect. Every now and again something small borks (usually when I don't have something config'd quite the Ubuntu way, but everything SHOULD be bulletproof in my world). However, my system has never been unbootable, every now and again it won't get into a 3d accel'd gnome, but for whatever reason, the restricted drivers manager just won't see my nvidia card, so I have to manage that myself. For more fun and games, Envy won't install the driver correctly on hardy (why oh why?)

Anyhow, a distro needs to get past BASIC mistakes before it can be taken seriously. UbuntuDupe chased Ubuntu around for 2 years because an install borked. Installing is honestly (in an automated fashion) a more difficult proposition than making updates not completely bork your system.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[Bert64]

That's exactly what i did in the end, but it's hardly an ideal situation...

I will have to support the nagios3 package myself, the distro won't update it for me.

Plus the compile process didn't seem to offer me any easy way to configure how i would like the package built, unlike gentoo which gives me the following options:
[ebuild U ] net-analyzer/nagios-core-3.0.3 [3.0.2] USE="apache2 perl web -debug -lighttpd -vim-syntax" 2,695 kB

So i can choose whether i want my nagios3 build to be configured to use apache2 of lighttpd, i can enable or disable support for perl scripting and i can compile if with extra debugging if i want to (or remove the debugging if i dont want the overhead)..

It also seemed to provide no easy/obvious way to let me set the CFLAGS, wether i would like to compile it with -Os for use on a low memory system, or if i want to set the appropriate cpu type (yes i know this would provide negligible benefit for nagios, but for things like media decoding or encryption telling gcc you have a cpu with support for things like sse2 provides a significant benefit)

Re:Global Warming - why??

[cloudmaster]

Ok, overlays would give me more control over the packages, by letting me redefine the ebuilds for everything. But I can recreate all of the packages I don't like on any system. For example, I can easily get a source rpm, edit the spec file, and recompile. Except that, if I did that with Redhat, Suse, or Debian, I'd be starting with stable, tested sources. With Gentoo, I'm not really starting with a known quantity - so it's not obvious if my changes caused subsequent problems or if the package was broken to begin with.

I like portage and the idea behind Gentoo - don't get me wrong. I just didn't like the poor Q/A, and I don't like the Gentoo community's attitude that anyone who dislikes Gentoo or has troubles must not be 'leet enough to understand how superior Gentoo is.

Re:Global Warming - why??

[cloudmaster]

Ok, it's been a week, but I'll reply anyway in case you check replies. :)

As for the cflags, gcc just checks the environment for those. It's not Gentoo-specific. So, you just do an "export CFLAGS=-march i686 -Os; export CXXFLAGS=$FLAGS" or whatever, and you're set. Do it your .profile, /etc/profile, or just type it before running the build command. With apt-build, you can also just set those in /etc/apt/apt-build.conf. The environment vars, though, also help when just running "configure; make; make install".

The USE flags capability is more difficult. Using apt-build, you get the source (apt-build source), then modify the package description before doing apt-build install. It's not as convenient as with portage/ports, but it's not bad. It's more like the Gentoo overlays, since you're effectively editing the dpkg equivalent of ebuild files. :)

For supporting / updating the updated package, it might be worth looking in to apt's pinning capability. It's a big topic, but the Internet has good information.

None of your business

[Chemisor]

It is none of your business how I decide to spend my day or what I decide to do with my computer. If I feel like compiling my Linux distro from scratch, I'll do it. Take your environmentalist rants elsewhere.

Re:None of your business

[pdusen]

I suspect he was tagged 'Troll' for calling it an "environmentalist rant". Even though he is completely right.

Re:None of your business

[Agenor]

It is none of your business how I decide to spend my day or what I decide to do with my computer. If I feel like compiling my Linux distro from scratch, I'll do it. Take your environmentalist rants elsewhere.

Here here.

Re:None of your business

[MentalMooMan]

"Hear (him), hear (him)!"

Re:None of your business

[poopdeville]

Illiteracy does much to discredit your "cause".

Re:None of your business

[edmac3]

It is none of your business how I decide to spend my day or what I decide to do with my computer.

The grandparent did say his post was tongue in cheek, so I think the tone of that sentence is overly antagonistic. Being that we that all share the same Earth and that anyone's impact on the environment has the potential to affect everyone else it is perfectly legitimate to question the actions of others when they produce unnecessary pollution and strain on the environment.

Lockout chip business model

[tepples]

Looks like they don't have a new MIPS install CD. That makes me sad.

Might that be because virtually all MIPS computers sold to residential users in North America over the past 24 months are subsidy-locked to run only software approved by the hardware maker? (Sony hasn't made a Linux-compatible PS2 since the Slimline was introduced in 4Q 2004, and the PSP has never had an official Linux. The PS3's Cell is PowerPC, not MIPS.)

Re:Lockout chip business model

[armanox]

Yes, but there are those of us with SGI systems you know....(Octane and O2)

Re:Lockout chip business model

[tepples]

Yes, but there are those of us with SGI systems you know....(Octane and O2)

SGI has been Intel for the past decade.

Re:Lockout chip business model

[Quattro Vezina]

Sounds like you've never heard of Cavium Networks' Octeon processors.

They're hugely popular in network appliances. OTOH, I haven't heard of many people running Gentoo on them; usually, people just run either Cavium's custom version of Debian or an embedded-specific distro like MontaVista Linux.

Yes, I've used Octeon. There's some geeky fun in using a 16-core MIPS processor that can run different systems on different cores.

Re:Lockout chip business model

[Quattro Vezina]

If you read the article, it says that SGI used MIPS until 2006.

Furthermore, most hobbyists who use esoteric hardware (and Gentoo is very much a hobby distro; I say this as a Gentoo user) don't have the latest hardware. They use old, weird, quirky stuff.

Hell, I still have my SGI Indy that I bought on eBay.

Re:Enhancements?

[Robbat2]

Postgres v8.3 yes:
http://packages.gentoo.org/package/postgresql

KDE v4 no (not outside the KDE overlay)
http://packages.gentoo.org/package/kde-meta

OpenOffice 2.4 yes
http://packages.gentoo.org/package/openoffice

One word:

[Noodlenose]

Slackware

Re:One word:

[Ash Vince]

Why on earth has this been modded insightful? You people obviously have no idea.

The main feature of Gentoo is that it is a bleeding edge release. Because everything is build from source you generally have the most recent version of all the software you chose to install.

Slackware have only just recently adopted the 2.6 Kernel. It has a tradition of old stable software. They are both "geeky" releases but they approach it from a very different mindset.

I am not attempting to say which is better (although I prefer Gentoo) I am just saying they are very different.

Re:Major problems with Firefox 3 on Gentoo 2008.0.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo's target audience are the people who would understand a comment like that (if it were real, of course) and are expected to know what it means.

Please don't whine and talk down about Gentoo just because you don't fall into the target audience. Some of us actually enjoy knowing what we're doing and appreciate the fact that Gentoo doesn't treat us like morons. Like you said, there's always Ubuntu for the rest of you.

Re:Enhancements?

[Erikderzweite]

kde 4.0.5 is in portage tree but is masked unstable. KDE 3.3 isn't there anymore, stable version is 3.5.9.

Same with postgresql: stable is 8.0, but you can install 8.3 if you wish.

Don't know where did you find OpenOffice 2.0 - there are 2.4.0 and 2.4.1 in the portage tree.

And so on, as you say.

Re:Major problems with Firefox 3 on Gentoo 2008.0.

[debatem1]

I love gentoo, but damn that's accurate. Makes me wonder whether you're an embittered novice or a seasoned guru.

Re:Major problems with Firefox 3 on Gentoo 2008.0.

[Minozake]

Yet I've failed at installing Ubuntu, but have had all the success with installing Gentoo. WTF?!

Re:Enhancements?

[Slashdot Parent]

Once you know how to use portage it takes just a second to get v8.3.1 available for your system.

For generous enough definitions of the word "second". ;)

I forget the name of it, but there is a plugin for APT that helps gentoo users convert to Debian. All it does is spew out a bunch of random compilation messages for a while before installing anything.

Re:Major problems with Firefox 3 on Gentoo 2008.0.

[Austerity Empowers]

I was wondering if he was an embittered guru or a seasoned novice, myself. That seems to be the way they differentiate users.

Do not want!

[Ant P.]

I've been waiting for this release, but after one of the higher-access Gentoo devs was caught using dev servers to attack a competing distro (and resorting to name-calling afterwards) I'm not sure if I can trust them any more.

Re:Do not want!

[theraptor05]

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.

Obligatory Advertising

[EEPROMS]

[Advert]
Yes folks !! download our latest and greatest version of Gentoo, hurry and you to can get it compiled and installed before our next great release in 2009.

Re:Parent = +3, Interesting???

[dpilot]

> At least Netcraft doesn't confirm it yet.

Don't forget, there is a Gentoo-BSD branch of ebuilds. Wonder what Netcraft says about that!

Re:Parent = +3, Interesting???

[dberkholz]

Sure it does. If it were stagnant, all the packages would be two years old. Instead you can install kde 4, the latest openoffice, gnome, etc.

Re:Enhancements?

[LingNoi]

Ubuntu Hardy is on gnome 2.22.2

Re:Major problems with Firefox 3 on Gentoo 2008.0.

[ericrost]

Had wget break on you lately?

Re:Major problems with Firefox 3 on Gentoo 2008.0.

[BrokenHalo]

I too have failed at installing Ubuntu, partly because it didn't seem to like playing nice with the IDE hard drives I had on that machine, and I didn't persist.

I was only curious, anyway. I just went straight back to Slackware, which has been good to me for many many years. People keep asking me why I don't use a more "up to date" distro, but everything on my machine is up to the minute (except where I don't want it to be).

Funny since I just switched to Mythbuntu

[cyberElvis]

I love Gentoo and have used it for years, but it is not easy to maintain a server with an "If it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. Unless you keep up with the bleeding edge, simple updates are painful.

I wanted to update the ivtv driver which led to kernel re-compile, which lead me down the road of gcc upgrade and modular Xorg. What I ended up with was a complete mess, so I switched to Mythbuntu.

I will still use Gentoo for a Linux desktop environment but I doubt I will use it on servers that only need infrequent and specific updates.

compile & stress

[diego.viola]

wouldn't compiling stuff all the time stress my new shiny laptop?

Its got what plants crave

[fcon]

Idiocracy reference in the code name