Gentoo avoids releases [LWN.net]

Gentoo avoids releases

Posted Oct 3, 2008 0:04 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)
In reply to: Gentoo avoids releases by purslow
Parent article: How often do we need GNU/Linux releases? (iTWire)

unfortunantly this is only true if you don't need to do a new install

I used to run gentoo on my home server, but I upgraded my machine I after a couple of days of fighting to get the several-year-old gentoo install to work on my brand new hardware I gave up and went to a different distro.

I've been using linux since 1994 when I was downloading stacks of floppies from Finland, so it's not that I'm a newbie who can't do anything without hand-holding (and I dispise graphical installers), but the idea of having to reverse-engineer the installer to put in my own kernel to get things installed was too much.

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Gentoo avoids releases

Posted Oct 3, 2008 19:15 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

Why were you trying to install from a several-years-old Gentoo CD? They do release new CD images regularly (generally once or twice a year), and they're now moving to having the CD image get regenerated up-to-date frequently. (The general principle is that, if something is sufficiently reliable that people should use it in general, it's sufficiently reliable that the CD should use it, except that there's a bit of overhead to making new CD images so it's worth grouping some changes, but there's no reason to hold off aside from managing build load)

Gentoo avoids releases

Posted Oct 3, 2008 19:24 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

I was trying to install from their most recent release, which at that time was a year+ old, I was following the instructions from the main gentoo site on how to get started.

apologies for exaggerating, but the argument that gentoo doesn't need releases in just plain incorrect.

the release may only be a new install image that deploys the same stuff that you would have if you updated from an older image, but you still do need releases.

Gentoo avoids releases

Posted Oct 3, 2008 19:58 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

Fair enough. That said, the process kind of used to be that they would have releases of the CD, but rarely and arbitrarily, and with politics surrounding releases. Of course, they had the same problems with releases that everybody else does, plus the fact that this was a less-core part of the workflow so people put less effort into it. Now they're moving to not having releases, but just maintaining the CD images routinely, which should fit into the usual Gentoo process better.

Gentoo avoids releases

Posted Oct 7, 2008 9:42 UTC (Tue) by syrjala (subscriber, #47399) [Link]

You don't need a Gentoo CD to install Gentoo. All you need is internet access and some Linux installation with root access and a few essential tools (can be almost any live CD or just some other distro installation).

The Gentoo live CDs are nice because they're so small that you can just download and burn one when you happen to need it but they're not essential to the process in any way.

Gentoo avoids releases

Posted Oct 7, 2008 17:39 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

if a systems drive has failed, having to install one linux distro so that you can then install gentoo is not a good requirement. if you have to go to all the trouble of installing another distro and get it working, gentoo needs to be _far_FAR_ better than that distro to be worth the trouble of installing at that point.

and I don't know any distro that's so good that it's worth installing another distro first so that you can install it.

Gentoo avoids releases

Posted Oct 11, 2008 10:41 UTC (Sat) by leio (subscriber, #41189) [Link]

The sentiment that you need another distribution installed was wrong above. All you need is a running linux system where you have the ability to download and unpack the stages and chroot. This basically means any LiveCD works for that as well that boots for you - knoppix, systemrescuecd, gentoo LiveCD, or even an ubuntu cd. That is if you are into the preferred method of installing it in a terminal, rather than using the installer (that as I understand is meant for experienced users, that have installed from terminal before, as a way of speeding the progress up).