how many packages are there in the SourceMage ports tree (whatever it is called there), and how fast are they updated when new versions are released upstream?
SourceMage calls packages "spells" and a collection of packages is called a "grimoire". http://wiki.sourcemage.org/Codex I have four grimoires installed: test, stable, games and z-rejected. "test" (which I mainly use) has new packages/spells while "stable" contains mostly the same spells that are in "test", only these have been more tested and bug-fixed and, hence, the spells in "stable" tend to be older than those in "test". Then there's the "games" grimoire that includes, you guessed it, games. And "z-rejected" has non-free stuff and binary packages. So let's see how many spells are there in these grimoires:
$ gaze grimoire stable | grep Total Total spells: 4268
$ gaze grimoire test | grep Total Total spells: 4488
$ gaze grimoire games | grep Total Total spells: 314
$ gaze grimoire z-rejected | grep Total Total spells: 141
That's more than in most smaller distros, I guess. Anyway, I find that pretty much everything I need is already there. But you also asked how fast are spells/packages updated in SourceMage. The simple answer is: quite fast.:)
The more elaborate answer is that if you want new stuff fast, then the test grimoire is the way to go ("scribe add test"). You may meet occasional bugs but reported bugs are usually fixed quite swiftly. I checked the DistroWatch page for SourceMage and most apps seem to be the latest versions. It says that OpenOffice is still version 1.1.5 in the "test" grimoire but actually there's a binary package for version 2.0.3 in z-rejected. GCC in test grimoire is version 4.0.3 and GLIBC is version 2.3.6. Also, SourceMage hasn't yet moved to the modular X.Org -- they use version 6.9.0. Most other programs should be the latest versions -- in the "test" grimoire, that is.
One word of warning, though: When I rebuild glibc from the "test" grimoire after the installation, the package manager (called "sorcery") told me that "Glibc spell doesn't know your architecture!" (my CPU is pentium3). I should probably become a responsible citizen and report this bug, but actually I'm quite lazy and I haven't yet got around to do it. Anyway, I edited/var/lib/sorcery/codex/test/libs/glibc/BUILD and commented every other architecture except my computer's (GLIBC_ARCH=i386). After that small bump on the road, my ride with SourceMage has been pretty smooth.:)
My first source based Linux installation was SourceMage, which I decided to try after the Gentoo 2006.0 installer failed to accept the keymap I told it to use. I was quite happy with SourceMage but I wanted to try Gentoo because it's more popular. So, when the Gentoo 2006.1 installer came out, I decided to give it a go. This time it accepted my keymap and I got Gentoo successfully installed. Still, I found Gentoo installation a real PITA when compared to SourceMage's straightforward installer.
Then I read Gentoo documentation and found out that I needed to consult some man page in order to set USE flags. This brought me dark memories from the time when I fought with FreeBSD's Ports system. And, sure enough, I learned that Gentoo's Portage was inspired by FreeBSD's Ports. I never had to edit any config files to set dependencies in SourceMage. SourceMage just asks which dependencies I want before installing packages and then it remembers my selections.
At this point I started to realize what a fool I had been in giving up SourceMage just because Gentoo is more popular. I had been very happy with SourceMage and now I began to see how much simpler it is to set up a SourceMage system than a Gentoo system. Why should I continue to fight with Gentoo when SourceMage wanted to make things easier for me?
With these thoughts I decided to say goodbye to Gentoo and reinstalled SourceMage. And I don't think I'll give Gentoo another try as long as SourceMage is still around. SourceMage is just more intuitive and less of a hassle than Gentoo.
These experiences make me wonder why Gentoo is so popular? Is it just because people don't know about the alternatives? Or is it because everyone knows that Gentoo is the most popular source distro and people automatically assume that the most popular must always be better than the less popular alternatives?
I have HP Omibook XE3 laptop with i830M chipset graphics card. Installed NetBSD 2.0 with meta-pkgs/XFree86, sysutils/aperture and graphics/Mesa from pkgsrc, configured X with "X -configure" and got the rest (monitor refresh rates etc.) from Knoppix. WindowMaker works beautifully with all the usual desktop apps and the system is quite snappy. No complaints at all.:-)
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No, sendmail is on by default. Try "netstat -a | LISTEN" after a fresh install. You need to put "sendmail=NO" to/etc/rc.conf if you don't need sendmail.
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Gentoo's excellent documentation has helped me a lot in configuring my SourceMage system. :)
Package management and most other aspects that are specific to SourceMage are well documented here: http://wiki.sourcemage.org/
This is how you manage init services in SourceMage:
SourceMage calls packages "spells" and a collection of packages is called a "grimoire". http://wiki.sourcemage.org/Codex I have four grimoires installed: test, stable, games and z-rejected. "test" (which I mainly use) has new packages/spells while "stable" contains mostly the same spells that are in "test", only these have been more tested and bug-fixed and, hence, the spells in "stable" tend to be older than those in "test". Then there's the "games" grimoire that includes, you guessed it, games. And "z-rejected" has non-free stuff and binary packages. So let's see how many spells are there in these grimoires:
That's more than in most smaller distros, I guess. Anyway, I find that pretty much everything I need is already there. But you also asked how fast are spells/packages updated in SourceMage. The simple answer is: quite fast. :)
The more elaborate answer is that if you want new stuff fast, then the test grimoire is the way to go ("scribe add test"). You may meet occasional bugs but reported bugs are usually fixed quite swiftly. I checked the DistroWatch page for SourceMage and most apps seem to be the latest versions. It says that OpenOffice is still version 1.1.5 in the "test" grimoire but actually there's a binary package for version 2.0.3 in z-rejected. GCC in test grimoire is version 4.0.3 and GLIBC is version 2.3.6. Also, SourceMage hasn't yet moved to the modular X.Org -- they use version 6.9.0. Most other programs should be the latest versions -- in the "test" grimoire, that is.
One word of warning, though: When I rebuild glibc from the "test" grimoire after the installation, the package manager (called "sorcery") told me that "Glibc spell doesn't know your architecture!" (my CPU is pentium3). I should probably become a responsible citizen and report this bug, but actually I'm quite lazy and I haven't yet got around to do it. Anyway, I edited /var/lib/sorcery/codex/test/libs/glibc/BUILD and commented every other architecture except my computer's (GLIBC_ARCH=i386). After that small bump on the road, my ride with SourceMage has been pretty smooth. :)
Here's another satisfied SourceMage user. :)
My first source based Linux installation was SourceMage, which I decided to try after the Gentoo 2006.0 installer failed to accept the keymap I told it to use. I was quite happy with SourceMage but I wanted to try Gentoo because it's more popular. So, when the Gentoo 2006.1 installer came out, I decided to give it a go. This time it accepted my keymap and I got Gentoo successfully installed. Still, I found Gentoo installation a real PITA when compared to SourceMage's straightforward installer.
Then I read Gentoo documentation and found out that I needed to consult some man page in order to set USE flags. This brought me dark memories from the time when I fought with FreeBSD's Ports system. And, sure enough, I learned that Gentoo's Portage was inspired by FreeBSD's Ports. I never had to edit any config files to set dependencies in SourceMage. SourceMage just asks which dependencies I want before installing packages and then it remembers my selections.
At this point I started to realize what a fool I had been in giving up SourceMage just because Gentoo is more popular. I had been very happy with SourceMage and now I began to see how much simpler it is to set up a SourceMage system than a Gentoo system. Why should I continue to fight with Gentoo when SourceMage wanted to make things easier for me?
With these thoughts I decided to say goodbye to Gentoo and reinstalled SourceMage. And I don't think I'll give Gentoo another try as long as SourceMage is still around. SourceMage is just more intuitive and less of a hassle than Gentoo.
These experiences make me wonder why Gentoo is so popular? Is it just because people don't know about the alternatives? Or is it because everyone knows that Gentoo is the most popular source distro and people automatically assume that the most popular must always be better than the less popular alternatives?
I have HP Omibook XE3 laptop with i830M chipset graphics card. Installed NetBSD 2.0 with meta-pkgs/XFree86, sysutils/aperture and graphics/Mesa from pkgsrc, configured X with "X -configure" and got the rest (monitor refresh rates etc.) from Knoppix. WindowMaker works beautifully with all the usual desktop apps and the system is quite snappy. No complaints at all. :-)
No, sendmail is on by default. Try "netstat -a | LISTEN" after a fresh install. You need to put "sendmail=NO" to /etc/rc.conf if you don't need sendmail.