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Gentoo: Excellent if you want a source distroGentoo: Excellent if you want a source distroPosted Sep 20, 2006 14:52 UTC (Wed) by emk (subscriber, #1128)Parent article: My Gentoo odyssey (Linux.com)
I still run one Gentoo machine, which I may sometime convert to Ubuntu.
I've been very impressed by Gentoo's documentation, clean design, and large package repository. And at least a few years ago, the cutting edge hardware support was much better than most distros.
But I've discovered that I don't like source distros very much. They're slow to upgrade (overnight or longer), and few of them offer a quick rollback of broken packages (with the admirable exception of MacOS X DarwinPorts, which can revert to earlier binaries in seconds).
Debian usually does a fairly good job of splitting up packages to minimize dependencies (e.g. emacs and emacs-nox), and I'm not particularly interested in heavy optimization. What I want, more than anything, is a large repository of packages that can be installed quickly and without headaches.
On the other hand, if you need to do lots of custom builds, or if you want to explore the inner guts of your operating system, then Gentoo is an excellent choice.
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Gentoo: Excellent if you want a source distro Posted Sep 20, 2006 15:16 UTC (Wed) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link] They're slow to upgrade (overnight or longer), and few of them offer a quick rollback of broken packagesIf you manage to predict a breakage up front, you can always quickpkg your current package for quick rollback. As for slow upgrades, you can use GRP or a third-party binhost to skip the compile step. I can't say how well mixing binary and source packages works, though, as I've rarely used them myself.
Gentoo: Excellent if you want a source distro Posted Sep 20, 2006 16:48 UTC (Wed) by jbeard (guest, #40626) [Link] I read now and then, complaints about how much time it takes to update a gentoo install, but those complaints are somewhat misleading to those not familiar with gentoo.
Yes, updates CAN take considerable time to build. This is NOT, however, time taken away from the user, and his "real work".
Consider a worst-case scenario for build time: someone updates a base library for the KDE desktop apps, which in turn affects a large number of apps that you have installed on your box.
In this instance, you may have hundreds of packages change, and your machine may take all day to perform the builds. Does this mean you need to stop doing "real work" in the mean time? No. The total time I personally spend attending a build in this event is about 10 seconds. Just long enough to kick off the build process, and once in a while check back to see how things are progressing.
Even the availability of the apps you are updating is not typically affected by rebuild. As each app is successfully rebuilt, it is added to the system, after which, the older version is removed. All the while you can be using the old versions, until the new ones are installed.
I still wish for a better installer (just to set up new machines with less fuss than is necessary right now), but maintaining an existing gentoo box is not difficult or time consuming at all.
The usual scenario... Posted Sep 20, 2006 17:11 UTC (Wed) by emk (subscriber, #1128) [Link] The usual scenario is something like, "I need to troubleshoot this network problem ASAP." Of course, to do that, it turns out I'll need Ethereal, which in turn requires GTK, parts of X, and so on. If I'm lucky, some of the packages can be pulled from a binhost.
Like I said, it can be a very good system, depending on what you need. But if you need instant gratification, it has some real drawbacks.
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