Gentoo Linux 2008.0

[Chewi]

I'd just like to echo that. While it was good of you to report on the release, if you haven't had time to properly try it out for yourself, leave out your opinions, stick to the facts or just don't report on it at all. I also thought Phoronix was better than this.

[aniruddha]

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.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml

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.

This is only possible with ~x86. I've done countless of updates on dozens of rigs and I never encountered such a problem.

[Fixxer_Linux]

I never used ~x86 (except for nvidia blobs and two other packages that I don't remember, but no more than 5 packages).
I also know the link you gave for the documentation listing page.
And I promise I had :

1. compilation breaks during each update I've made
2. the introduction of udev was a nightmare for example, a gcc upgrade made from emerge --update --deep world broke my gcc
3. there is always blocking dependencies that could lead to caveats more or less easy to solve

In fact, I've never seen an straight update, I always experimented breakage during compilation process when updating world.

I'm dreaming of a documentation that would give changes from one release to another.
But, all in all, I always managed to compile my upgrades and Gentoo gave me satisfaction during many years. However, today with Suse, I was amazed to see that only plugging any USB device was enough to configure it with Yast.
The Suse problem is this incredibly long repository synchronising (what the hell is he doing during all that time???) and that you cant upgrade from 10.x to 11 for example.
I'll get back to Gentoo as soon as I get my Quad Core, but Gentoo still lacks a real end-user support IMO.

And is there still noone to tell what processor is the faster to compile between a Phenom and a C2Q ????

[tulcod]

I never used ~x86 (except for nvidia blobs and two other packages that I don't remember, but no more than 5 packages).
I also know the link you gave for the documentation listing page.
And I promise I had :

1. compilation breaks during each update I've made
2. the introduction of udev was a nightmare for example, a gcc upgrade made from emerge --update --deep world broke my gcc
3. there is always blocking dependencies that could lead to caveats more or less easy to solve

In fact, I've never seen an straight update, I always experimented breakage during compilation process when updating world.

I'm dreaming of a documentation that would give changes from one release to another.
But, all in all, I always managed to compile my upgrades and Gentoo gave me satisfaction during many years. However, today with Suse, I was amazed to see that only plugging any USB device was enough to configure it with Yast.
The Suse problem is this incredibly long repository synchronising (what the hell is he doing during all that time???) and that you cant upgrade from 10.x to 11 for example.
I'll get back to Gentoo as soon as I get my Quad Core, but Gentoo still lacks a real end-user support IMO.

And is there still noone to tell what processor is the faster to compile between a Phenom and a C2Q ????

well, i'm running ~amd64, and the world updates get the longer the smoother
a phenom has a way bigger memory speed (theoretically resulting in better performance), but a core 2 quad actually has a reasonable TPD (which the high-end phenoms do not).
I've got myself a phenom 9850 and it runs great, but next time i'll prolly get an intel cpu (depending on its price, the phenom's price is better in terms of speed)

[zappa86]

Gentoo is very different then most distros (as was said above). Ubuntu, Fedora, Windows, OSX, all have versions, and when a major release is out you upgrade do it, which is a hastle and stuff breaks. With gentoo, once it is installed its versionless, you can get the latest packages, you can also choose not install the latest packages, you can configure what gets built into them, etc. It is such a great distro.

When I was a Linux n00b, I used Ubuntu to learn the ropes. Once I knew more, I used Gentoo, it feels much more clean and dependable than any other OS I've used.

P.S. Off the topic of Gentoo, but, KDE4 seems to be getting bad reviews too. KDE4 is great, if you need PIM and other features use 3.5 for now. It was great of the Devs to give us 4.0 to check it out before the mainstream 4.1 and 4.2 releases are done. I hope everyone's crying won't make them call Kde 5.0 alpha or beta until 5.2 is out.

[deanjo]

The Suse problem is this incredibly long repository synchronising (what the hell is he doing during all that time???) and that you cant upgrade from 10.x to 11 for example.

First of all zypper is extremely fast in 11.0

Second, not being to upgrade from 10.3 to 11.0 is pure BS. They do recommend doing a fresh install but all that is needed in reality is to update 10.3's zypper and rpm with one of the readily available backports of the new zypper to hande the LZMA in the new RPMS.

[Zhick]

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.

Huh? Maybe I don't understand you correctly, or maybe you really read to fast, but there's a whole lot of documentation on http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml . And pretty much everything you don't find there you'll find on http://gentoo-wiki.com/ .

[Vighy]

Huh? Maybe I don't understand you correctly, or maybe you really read to fast, but there's a whole lot of documentation on http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml . And pretty much everything you don't find there you'll find on http://gentoo-wiki.com/ .

Yep! I never signed to the form nor used it, but the listing and wiki are the best documentation I've ever seen for a distro.

Maybe that "lack of end-user support" means it's not like in ubuntu that it does everything for you, even what you don't want!

[aniruddha]

First of all zypper is extremely fast in 11.0

Second, not being to upgrade from 10.3 to 11.0 is pure BS. They do recommend doing a fresh install but all that is needed in reality is to update 10.3's zypper and rpm with one of the readily available backports of the new zypper to hande the LZMA in the new RPMS.

They do recommend that for a reason, openSUSE tend to break when upgrading to a new release. You can upgrade to a new release from the DVD but even that is discouraged by the devs.

[aniruddha]

I never used ~x86 (except for nvidia blobs and two other packages that I don't remember, but no more than 5 packages).
I also know the link you gave for the documentation listing page.
And I promise I had :

1. compilation breaks during each update I've made
2. the introduction of udev was a nightmare for example, a gcc upgrade made from emerge --update --deep world broke my gcc
3. there is always blocking dependencies that could lead to caveats more or less easy to solve

In fact, I've never seen an straight update, I always experimented breakage during compilation process when updating world.

Well this is something different then your Xorg breaking each time. Most of the time possible upgrade pitfalls a very well documented.