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Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com)
InternetNews.com inquires into the current state of Gentoo. "[Donnie] Berkholz is of the belief that if Gentoo creates a great developer community, they'll build a great distribution, which will naturally draw users. Though there is a caveat.
'I do think there is an upper limit on our user base in Gentoo's current form, because there's only so many people willing to build from source,' Berkholz noted. 'As hardware gets faster, that does increase, but it's still a matter of compiling OpenOffice.org for 3 hours versus installing a binary version of it in 5 minutes.'"
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Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 9, 2008 20:50 UTC (Wed) by drinian (guest, #51119) [Link] OpenOffice.org does seem like a poor example, given that Gentoo does provide a binary OO package for just this reason.
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 9, 2008 21:00 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] They provide binaries for a lot of things, but my usual experience is that when you go online and are being 'helped' by a Gentoo lover you get told "No to really get the true Gentoo experience, recompile everything always!" at which point you are spending hours or days watching stuff get recompiled. I think it is more about how some people help others, because they really love the OS and the idea that they can set any compiler option they want.. that they forget that other people just want something that works from get-go.
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 10, 2008 8:00 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] " at which point you are spending hours or days watching stuff get recompiled. " Not really. I ran Gentoo years ago. And I practically never "watchded stuff get compiled". Why? Because I could do something else while it compiled. If it was a large compile (say, full KDE-desktop), I would leave it compiling overnight. And in the next day it would have 8 extra hours to compile since I would be at work anyway. In short: there are times when you are not using your computer, and the computer can use that time for compiling. You do not have to sit by the computer and watch it compile.
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 10, 2008 9:56 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] On the other hand of course you could just shut down your computer when you are not using it and thereby saving yourself some power cost and our planet the useless power usage.
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 11, 2008 16:40 UTC (Fri) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] "On the other hand of course you could just shut down your computer when you are not using it and thereby saving yourself some power cost and our planet the useless power usage." But I would be using it. I would be compiling and installing software. There are lots of uses for computers that does not include sitting next to the computer and waving the mouse around. Stuff like raytracing, rendering, compiling etc. etc. Or do you think that if I'm not sitting by the computer, it automatically means that I'm not using it?
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 11, 2008 17:49 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] You said: "there are times when you are not using your computer". So I assume that when you're not using your computer, you're not using your computer. Your suggestion is to use these times for compiling software. So when you're not using your computer and you have CPU time for the compiler, I assume that you don't have any rendering, raytracing or project compiling going on. In other words: the computer is unused. And this is exactly where the reasonable thing to do is to just turn it off and save the power.
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 16, 2008 7:13 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] Sp, why would raytracing or the like be acceptable use for the computer, but compiling is not? Why am I only allowed to compile software when I'm sitting by the computer and doing something else with the computer as well? "And this is exactly where the reasonable thing to do is to just turn it off and save the power." No, it's not reasonable. And why would it suddenly become "reasonable" if I did have raytracing going on? As far as the computer is concerned, there's not much difference between the two tasks. They are both long-running tasks that do not require user-interaction. Besides, my energy is generated with windmills.
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 16, 2008 9:36 UTC (Wed) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] If you are doing raytracing or compiling, I'd guess that that's something where you get something of value. An image you need for work, as piece of art or simply as part of your learning. Same for the program. But what is the value of thousands of people compiling the same software, where doint it once for all of them could have the same value? It's just thousands of times the power usage for the same result and I just cannot see the reason for that. Of course at times there _are_ good reasons for compiling a software by one self. For testing, if a special patch or compile time option is needed and so on. But I dare say that 90% of the installed software is just used like it is and like it could have been precompiled for thousands of other users. It's not you compiling your software (especially with your own generator) that creates an environmental problem. It's thousands or even millions of people doing it without any extra value, when they could just install binaries and turn their computers off during the time, they would otherwise just be compiling.
The point of compiling for ones self Posted Jul 17, 2008 12:51 UTC (Thu) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link] One of the big things that Gentoo offers is a framework for having customised packages for what you want (as opposed to the distro). Hence it's entirely possible that people will all have different variants of various packages installed.
That requires serious mental discipline Posted Jul 10, 2008 9:57 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Usually the story goes like this "Ok, I need to draw some diagram... oh, Inkscape is not installed - let's install it". You need result here and now - and it does not matter that your computer will be free to recompile everything in sight for two days after that. You should somehow guess what programs will you need in the next 24 hours - and this is really hard...
That requires serious mental discipline Posted Jul 10, 2008 10:28 UTC (Thu) by moltonel (guest, #45207) [Link] It really isn't that hard. Fox big packages like OOo, kde, firefox you do want to plan ahead, but it's a bit of a no-brainer that you're going to use them. Most "I need to do this now" packages compile quickly enough that it's not a problem. For your inkscape example (a medium-sized package), that's 5 min on my desktop and 7 min on my laptop. I'm sure you can use those 5 min for something else without losing productivity. And this is just for the initial install; package updates can be done while you use the old package. All in all, with a decent machine, the package install time is rarely a bother, and the advantages of Gentoo greatly make up for it. YMMV, of course.
That requires serious mental discipline Posted Jul 10, 2008 12:13 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] What did it for me was the 2 daily hours updating the system (including rsyncing the source packages and building). And AFAIK there is no "stable" distribution with only security fixes. With Debian it is rather 2 minutes -- even less with stable.
That requires serious mental discipline Posted Jul 10, 2008 14:14 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] There's no way to keep the system ignorant of newer versions of packages, but you can use "glsa-check -f new" to only actually install security updates. Updating the system does take a lot of time, but you can do all the slow stuff from cron on systems you keep up all the time (and the rsync is pretty quick on systems that can sync over the local network from a system you sync from cron). You can also get emerge to download everything you'll need to build upgrades to packages that you have installed from cron. Unfortunately, you can't always build all of the packages without installing any of them, and you sometimes really want to update configuration right after installing some things, so you can't have it build all the packages you want without having you there to check on it.
That requires serious mental discipline Posted Jul 10, 2008 18:37 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I am sure it is perfect for a lot of setups. For my home network it does not: on my main machine it would slow it down precisely when I need it. I only leave on 24x7 a low power machine (a decTOP and/or an NSLU2) which consumes very little power, but which would take forever to compile the updates.Doing unattended upgrades would be rather risky. On Debian I can do it, no problem (with the occasional manual dist-upgrade in testing).
That requires serious mental discipline Posted Jul 10, 2008 19:24 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] Emerge sync (the equivalent of apt-get update) is the first thing I run from cron, and its speed pretty much only depends on the network connection speed. I also run "emerge --deep --fetch-all-uri world" (which would be the equivalent of downloading the .debs without installing them) from cron. On my fast desktop, I do my "emerge sync" against my server locally, which is as fast as my wifi (I think; maybe limited by my server hard drive speed; anyway, faster than my internet connection). I do the actual "emerge world" (equivalent of apt-get upgrade) while I'm watching. I haven't had this actually require any immediate attention for a couple of years at this point, since a switch in the pam implementation required config files to be changed promptly to avoid being unable to get the authorization to change them. I personally wouldn't auto-upgrade Debian, because I've seen too many machines get broken that way, but that's also mostly historical superstition. For the software on the low-power machine itself, it shouldn't take too long in general to build upgrades there; sure, it's low power, but you probably don't need to build OOo, Mozilla anything, Gtk, Qt, GNOME, or KDE, if you're not running any of those there. Software that you'd want to have (or, at least, that I'd want to have) on a low-power machine is pretty quick and easy to build.
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 9, 2008 22:36 UTC (Wed) by tetromino (subscriber, #33846) [Link] Actually, OpenOffice is a good example. Gentoo's app-office/openoffice-bin (the binary package) is simply Sun's official openoffice binary - i.e. ugly and slow. In order to get all the patched ooo-build goodness that other distros provide, you have to install app-office/openoffice, which means compiling from source.
Three hours? Posted Jul 9, 2008 23:33 UTC (Wed) by massysett (guest, #52736) [Link] I used to run Gentoo; I wish OOo compiled in three hours. On my laptop it took longer than overnight. Compiling things from source in the end turned out to be pretty useless. The machine is not noticeably faster. Gentoo as a whole does run pretty fast, but I think that's mostly because there aren't unneeded services cluttering up things. My Debian box feels just as springy as Gentoo. The poor QA of Gentoo wore me out. Even using the "stable" tree, too many emerges would break. Now I use Debian stable. Everything always works. I don't care that it's old.
Three hours? Posted Jul 10, 2008 11:13 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link] Rarely, if ever, have I seen a problem with the stable ebuild tree. My Gentoo challenges have typically arisen from getting crazy with the keywords, repository masks, and overlays.
Gentoo on a UMPC pre-installed --- is it possible? Posted Jul 10, 2008 1:50 UTC (Thu) by lipak (guest, #43911) [Link] One of the strengths of Gentoo is that there is still a lot of software that is written as if it will be downloaded and compiled by the end-user (rather than distributed in binary form by a distribution). For example, the licensing may be unclear but the source is available for download, or the author assumes that you just get the latest version from version control so version numbering is bizarre, and so on. Some software authors actively dislike the distributions who (in their view) come between them and their user community. All such software requires the binary distribution developers to jump through hoops which Gentoo avoids. However, it is difficult to create machines with such software pre-installed for the same reason that it is difficult for distributions to distribute it. As UMPC's and the like become common, such pre-installed systems/software will have many users. What plans does Gentoo have for this segment of users/manufacturers? Kapil. (Disclaimer: Who has only once installed Gentoo!) --
Gentoo on a UMPC pre-installed --- is it possible? Posted Jul 10, 2008 6:57 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] > Some software authors actively dislike the > distributions who (in their view) come between > them and their user community. Even with a source-based distribution, the packager may still add patches (that may break on later versions), may relocate installation to fit distribution policy, and all sort of changes. Not all upstream authors like all of those. But the system won't function properly (as a complete operating system) otherwise. A user that can patch an ebuild is no ordinary user. Or even dumb sysadmin. Most of those who can can also use debcheckout/apt-get source/debuild to patch Debian and equivalent tools on "binary" distributions.
>there's only so many people willing to build from source Posted Jul 10, 2008 11:19 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link] Skill is a necessary precursor to being willing. I think that the amount of documentation and tutorials has increased and improved for all of FOSS over time. However, there is still a ridiculous amount of tribal knowledge and muscle memory involved in getting stuff up and running. Putting Gentoo on a Dell PowerEdge blade server a while back took a painful amount of tinkering to get the RAID controller kernel configuration stuff ironed out. But pain is good, and extreme pain is extremely good.
>there's only so many people willing to build from source Posted Jul 10, 2008 14:31 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] Building from source isn't really the issue there, though. Gentoo's install process is oddly awkward and annoying, and as far as I can tell, it's because the install discs include a weird set of stuff. That is, they've got a system you can use, but not a system you can install. You've got this nice LiveCD system, but then you have to download a stage 3 tarball if you want to actually, you know, install Gentoo. And then the installer is perennially kind of broken, and worse, isn't the same thing as the package manager, so somebody who's been running Gentoo for a while won't remember the quirks of the install process. The install process really ought to be "ROOT=/mnt/gentoo emerge system", maybe after partitioning and mounting the hard drive yourself. Getting the RAID controller to would wouldn't have been any easier if you'd been using a binary distro, if its kernel wasn't configured to support your controller. And it wouldn't have been painful if the kernel sources package had come preconfigured with support for your hardware.
>there's only so many people willing to build from source Posted Jul 10, 2008 15:57 UTC (Thu) by xbobx (subscriber, #51363) [Link] > You've got this nice LiveCD system, but then you have to download a stage 3 tarball if you > want to actually, you know, install Gentoo. The other day I installed Gentoo with the i686 2008.0 profile on a new system using a Gentoo x86_64 2006.0 LiveCD, without the need to burn a new CD. The LiveCD is intended just to get your system into a state that a) you're connected to a network in some way and b) you can access your hard drives. You can do this using any bootable media (or any other way of getting the same features, including popping the hard drive into another working system). I consider this a very nice feature of Gentoo, since it adds flexibility other distros' install processes don't have.
>there's only so many people willing to build from source Posted Jul 10, 2008 17:01 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] Not that I've tried it, but I think that you can actually upgrade directly from a fresh install of the 2006.0 stage 3 tarball to the 2008.0 profile (and current packages). Changing from x86_64 to i686 at the same time might be a bad idea, although that may be handled cleanly these days, too. So I think it's a nice feature of Gentoo that you can move from a very old version to the latest with minimal hassle, and the assumption that you always install from a minimal environment is a bit annoying. On the other hand, it would be funny for Gentoo to ship a Knoppix CD one year when their own CD isn't coming together in a timely fashion. "Note: the boot will look a bit different this time, but things should be effectively the same." I guess the confusing thing is that you install from an environment that isn't really a Gentoo system (to the extent of not containing the package manager), but is Gentoo-branded and contains all of the stuff that you're likely to try using on a Gentoo system, except for the Gentoo-specific stuff.
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 10, 2008 17:23 UTC (Thu) by SEJeff (subscriber, #51588) [Link] There are different distributions for different people. Diversity is one of the strengths of Linux. Short of rpath/foresight, nothing compares to Gentoo for an up to the minute bleeding edge workstation. That being said, gentoo take a bit of work to get running, even if you don't compile anything. It wasn't really meant for a user new to Linux. Even as a systems admin, I prefer Ubuntu or Fedora. If it is faster to setup I get more work done. While sites like: http://funroll-loops.info/ are mostly trolling, there is something to be said. With a new breath of fresh air and some hardworking developers, Gentoo is poised to gain a fair amount of mindshare. The question really is, "Can they do it without Daniel?".
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 17, 2008 11:47 UTC (Thu) by csawtell (guest, #986) [Link] The question really is, "Can they do it without Daniel?".I have used Gentoo for about 5 years, from the 1.2 release anyway. At the time it was head and shoulders above all others, and being a source distribution delivered us all from the mire of the RPM hell. All credit to Daniel. Since then it's had its ups and downs, but has, by and large, been a pretty good work horse none the less. Other distributions have since caught up, particularly the Ubuntu collection. Now that machine speeds are more than an order of magnitude faster, the "tuned especially for you" advantage offered by Gentoo is nowhere near a important as it used to be, and the aptitude package management system seems to be just as good as, if not better than, Portage It's been recognised that the distributions that do the best are those which have a charismatic leader aided by a cadre of competent helpers. Currently Gentoo seems to be devoid of such. If Daniel was allowed to return he could and would doubtless provide the leadership needed, but whether the other folks in development teams could work with him for the common good of Gentoo is an open question. Personally, I would like to see a meld - an amalgamation - of Gentoo and Sabayon. Whether this is politically possible I don't know, but the two distributions would complement each other nicely. Sabayon seems to be led by a good team with sensible ideas. It might be necessary to cast some of the more disruptive, yet technically very competent, people adrift from the joint exercise so they can do their own thing without harming the resulting distro. So the answer to the question posed is that they can do without Daniel, but not without a replacement leader of similar stature.
Is Gentoo Ready for Latest Linux Release? (InternetNews.com) Posted Jul 17, 2008 14:01 UTC (Thu) by simlo (subscriber, #10866) [Link] I am runnig Gentoo at my home computer. It was great before I got a child: Back then the computer was on most of the time. It therefore had plenty of time to compile the latest updates. And if there were problems getting stuff compiler I had time to fix it :-) But since we got a child, my computer usage has completely changed: I never get time to use the computer at home. It is only turned on for brief periods when we need to check something after which we turn it off again. Therefore it never really gets time to recompile the latest updates. And if on top of that there is problems getting stuff to compile, I have no time to fix it :-( All in all: Gentoo is a fine "geeks OS" where you use the computer all the time. But when you only use the computer occasionally it just isn't working.
A comparison of Gentoo and Debian Posted Aug 4, 2008 15:52 UTC (Mon) by anton (subscriber, #25547) [Link] I used to use Gentoo on my home machine (in the 2004-2006 time frame), and I think that the fact that it's source-based was (and probably is) its strongest point. Not because of additional speed, but because it reduces library dependencies a lot. I never found compile times to be a problem (on an Athlon 64 3200+).What eventually drove me away from Gentoo was that on any I switched to Debian Etch (now stable). The advantage there is that the big effort of checking/adjusting config files happens only when I switch tracks (i.e., to Lenny), and I can schedule when I have time for that. The disadvantage is that, when I need a newer version of a package
than available in stable, I usually cannot install it from
testing/unstable/experimental because it would want to upgrade most of
the system to the newer track due to library dependencies; or if it
can install the newer version from the, say, testing track,
there's hassle with There are workarounds for these issues (e.g., Debian Backports), but Gentoo was a lot nicer in that respect.
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