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Gentoo 2008.0 Released

Posted by Soulskill on from the upgrades dept.

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."

10 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Anyone tried other source based distros? by gambolt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How do sourcemage and lunar compare, anyone know?

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

    1. Re:Anyone tried other source based distros? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      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

  2. Awesome news... by repruhsent · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...but I'm still compiling 2004.3.

  3. Re:Major problems with Firefox 3 on Gentoo 2008.0. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  4. Global Warming - why?? by Gothmolly · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    --
    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
    1. Re:Global Warming - why?? by **loki969** · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  5. None of your business by Chemisor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:It's got what plants crave. by laederkeps · · Score: 5, Funny

    eselectrolytes?

  7. Do not want! by Ant+P. · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Finally. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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)