Gentoo Linux 2008.0

[Zhick]

I also feel this article is somewhat insulting towards Gentoo.
I understand though that when you're used to a distro like Ubuntu and are reading the release notes of Gentoo 2008.0 you might end up thinking "Meh, that sounds boring.", since you expect major changes on a new release. But it's not fair to write an article without digging any further into the marteria. People who've never before heard of Gentoo and who read the article might get the impression they'll only get a XFCE Desktop with X Server 1.3 and GCC 4.1.2 with Gentoo, but this couldn't be less true. One of the great things about Gentoo is you can use it to build any system you like, it can be rock-solid or bleeding edge. The only other distros I can think of that give you anything close to this freedom are Debian (my second favorite distro ) and LFS (I guess, never really tried it myself).

Or long post put short: There's nothing to fix on a already perfect distribution.

[yoshi314]

Or long post put short: There's nothing to fix on a already perfect distribution.

gentoo's default package manager still has issues ;-)

right now there are at least 3 competing projects for gentoo package manager, which will hopefully make a difference. (i'm with paludis, but pkgcore doesn't seem half bad).

but it's not that bad. installing arbitrary average package (not-openoffice ) from-source via portage still beats suse-10.2 yast in most cases on a modern pc :] (don't know about 11.0, though). i still remember when it took 10 minutes on stock 10.2 install to install vnc server, and 5 minutes to do the same on gentoo xD

[Fixxer_Linux]

I left Gentoo because I had to change my computer and didn't want to reinstall all the stuff (scanner, printer,...).
Also my current computer is a P4C, rather slow for compiling everything from scratch.

However, as soon as I get a Quad core, I think I'll go back to Gentoo, because of portage, because of the general version upgrade which allows to switch from 2007.1 to 2008.0 without reinstalling everything. I miss Gentoo very much in fact.

However, Gentoo needs huge compilation time. That's the reason why I want a Quad Core. HOWEVER, is there a benchmark somewhere comparing the Phenom to the Core Quad on compilation times ??
I could go for a Phenom if the compile time is good, even if I should lose some FPS in UT3...

[Chewi]

Let me tell you, Gentoo rocks on a Quad Core. And before you think I wasted money on one just for Gentoo, my friend was offering to sell me one. :P

[yoshi314]

However, Gentoo needs huge compilation time.

nothing that ccache cannot fix ;-) it helps a great deal when you simply rebuild a package because it has a trivial bugfix, rebuild your kernel, build -svn or -git packages on a weekly basis.

i'm using gentoo quite comfortably on single core amd64 3200+. previously i was using it with little issues on celeron 1700mhz.

[Vighy]

So Michael why don't you write another article describing the real features of this distro?
Instead of speaking about a liveCD, that in this case doesn't mean a thing.

With the election of the new council, seems that gentoo will get over all the troubles we had in the last 2 years.

Why not speaking about all the platform supported, including x86-freebsd and sparc-freebsd?
(in these days, as you can read from flameeyes' blog, gentoo freebsd is being ported to freebsd 7.0)

I know you can do a great job Michael


And finally, I run it on both an AthlonXP 2600+ and a Core2 Duo (with gcc-4.3.1) and I've never had issues with compile-time: when I used to run SuSE yast took so much to sync to the repository and download the binary that compiling on my AthlonXP is less painful!

[some-guy]

So Michael why don't you write another article describing the real features of this distro?
Instead of speaking about a liveCD, that in this case doesn't mean a thing.

With the election of the new council, seems that gentoo will get over all the troubles we had in the last 2 years.

Why not speaking about all the platform supported, including x86-freebsd and sparc-freebsd?
(in these days, as you can read from flameeyes' blog, gentoo freebsd is being ported to freebsd 7.0)

I know you can do a great job Michael


And finally, I run it on both an AthlonXP 2600+ and a Core2 Duo (with gcc-4.3.1) and I've never had issues with compile-time: when I used to run SuSE yast took so much to sync to the repository and download the binary that compiling on my AthlonXP is less painful!

*cough*worse*cough*

The problem is that Micheal doesn't have time for all distros, so the main articles here are around ubuntu and fedora, as well as solaris

[some-guy]

And finally, I run it on both an AthlonXP 2600+ and a Core2 Duo (with gcc-4.3.1) and I've never had issues with compile-time: when I used to run SuSE yast took so much to sync to the repository and download the binary that compiling on my AthlonXP is less painful!

That's fixed. Its extremely fast now

[Fixxer_Linux]

nothing that ccache cannot fix ;-) it helps a great deal when you simply rebuild a package because it has a trivial bugfix, rebuild your kernel, build -svn or -git packages on a weekly basis.

i'm using gentoo quite comfortably on single core amd64 3200+. previously i was using it with little issues on celeron 1700mhz.

I never really understood the ccache benefit. But, I have to say that I upgraded my Gentoo only from official release. Meanwhile, I only installed just one or two minor programs, but nothing huge.
Therefore, ccache was not very usefull for me.

But, I read in that forum that Gentoo can be (or must be ?) upgraded on a monthly basis. In this case, ccache can be a good option to accelerate the compile time.

And that leads me to the drawback of Gentoo : the lack of the end-user support. Of course, the forum is really great, but there is not really a documentation to tell the official recommended use of Gentoo for the non-developper (or end-user, call me as you want).
Or at least, I never found it among the official documentation and the gentoo wiki, but I read perhaps too fast.
And, for each upgrade I made, I finally ended in 'links2', requesting support in the forums because my xorg didn't want to start again.

[tulcod]

I have always seen phoronix as a quality source of linux related information. But, although a bit biased, this review has completely changed my vision of phoronix. I URGE phoronix to rewrite this. Get actual information, or don't write a review at all. For christ's sake.

PS: I signed up for this forum only to post this. That's how bad this article is.