Gentoo Linux 2008.0

[yoshi314]

gentoo is great in that aspect that is's as close to LFS (linux from scratch) as you can get without having to do boring chores of that distribution (get patches, get tarballs, checks deps, unpack, compile, strip, install etc).

i always wanted to use from-source distro. when i heard about gentoo i tried it right away. now i'm feeling pretty uncomfortable using binary distributions.

arch linux comes out as my favorite binary distribution so far. it's pretty simple, and with little bloat. it works like a charm where gentoo is not an option - on my second pc, which is celeron 366mhz with 256mb of 133mhz sdram :]

one reason for using gentoo is that it updates its packages more often, even those more "obscure" for typical desktop user - i particulary care for fdm, elinks, mutt, ffmpeg, mplayer and perl related packages. most popular distros update them usually when new release of the distro is out.

second reason is what makes gentoo stand out - i can strip unnecessary features from packages (e.g. build a system with no gnome dependencies, and with no gnome packages as the result). binary distros cannot provide that, and i particulary hate ubuntu in that regard, because it pulls tons of useless (from my point of view) stuff along with the packages i need.

[RobbieAB]

To those complaining about compile times: Tinderbox and the GRP.

There are binary tarball repositories made from the tree by various people, many off whom are happy to make the binaries available. Indeed, these are quite commonly used when rescuing a system which some (normally new, but not always) user has managed to break by removing something critical.

The big thing about gentoo is the package manager (any of the three qualify). It makes keeping stuff working nicely easy, and is one of the most robust to rapidly changing packages installed when coupled with one of the maintenance tools. (Actually, the version of the package manager in the unstable tree doesn't even need the tool.)

For me, my use of gentoo is based on the fact that I found it ridiculously easy to break RPM, and when I started Ubuntu wasn't really on the scene, and we were still waiting for the Flying Pigs with Debian.

[yoshi314]

To those complaining about compile times: Tinderbox and the GRP.

and ccache saves the day for those situation where package fails halfway and you have to retry with different settings or where you reinstall tons of from-svn/-git/-cvs/-hg packages on a weekly basis.

[Panix]

Yeah, I heard the same as far as the community issues, I don't know much about them though. Gentoo doesn't require a fast machine, but the faster machine you have, the less pain it will be in compiling the system. Gentoo is recommended for advanced users, because in my opinion, is a project of its own, but it has its own benefits as well.

If you want to try experimenting with Gentoo with no risk you could just use something like Virtualbox or some other virtual machine software and experiment with it.

I would consider it but with only one computer (now), I would be worried about the time it would be compiling. I wouldn't have access to my computer then. Hence, my question about how long KDE would take to compile (for instance)? My friend uses Gentoo and it's his main distro. If I started earlier with Linux, I probably would have already experimented with it. But, unfortunately, I'm down to one computer and still there's lots to learn about Linux in general (for me, anyway). Perhaps, later and if I could score another computer to use when Gentoo is compiling? ;-)

[RobbieAB]

Once you are installed, you can tell portage to work with a niceness setting of 19, which leaves the system responsive even while compiling.

[borgus]

I would consider it but with only one computer (now), I would be worried about the time it would be compiling. I wouldn't have access to my computer then. Hence, my question about how long KDE would take to compile (for instance)? My friend uses Gentoo and it's his main distro. If I started earlier with Linux, I probably would have already experimented with it. But, unfortunately, I'm down to one computer and still there's lots to learn about Linux in general (for me, anyway). Perhaps, later and if I could score another computer to use when Gentoo is compiling? ;-)

If you have a large enough hard drive, there's another way to skin that cat. Install a binary distro that doesn't take up too much space (I'd go for Debian or Arch) on another partition. I would allocate 10GB for that other distro. So that takes away 10GB from Gentoo, but large hard drives are dirt cheap now. Use that distro for everything while Gentoo is compiling in a chroot (just follow the installation instructions, pretending like your Debian/Arch/whatever partition is your Gentoo CD, and using Konsole/GNOME-Termiml/XTerm instead of being in text mode the whole time).

[Vighy]

If you have a large enough hard drive, there's another way to skin that cat. Install a binary distro that doesn't take up too much space (I'd go for Debian or Arch) on another partition. I would allocate 10GB for that other distro. So that takes away 10GB from Gentoo, but large hard drives are dirt cheap now. Use that distro for everything while Gentoo is compiling in a chroot (just follow the installation instructions, pretending like your Debian/Arch/whatever partition is your Gentoo CD, and using Konsole/GNOME-Termiml/XTerm instead of being in text mode the whole time).

What I always do! Even if want to migrate to a (much) newer gcc (from 4.1 to 4.3) I did it in chroot... and when I finished, in 2 hours I had my system migrated without breakage

I love gentoo also for this


but why Michael did say a word on this discussion? as I said before he could explain in an article the real essence of gentoo

[yoshi314]

I would be worried about the time it would be compiling. I wouldn't have access to my computer then.

heck i compile stuff on a daily basis and i can normally work at the same time on my pc.

my pc is not that great - three years old amd64 3200+, 1gb ddr ram ,250gb hdd. only slowness is experienced when big (>50mb) tarballs get unpacked for compile, then i use 19 nice level.

previously i had 1.7ghz celeron with 256mb ram and it also didn't really get in my way.

after unpacking the stage i usually get elinks and mutt set up, along with mpd + ncpmc. and i can at least read mails, browse the web and listen to music, while the rest of the stuff gets built ;-)

[RobbieAB]

Well, I have gentoo running on a P3 500 which is usable with packages emerging in a terminal. This is running the minimal gnome set-up offered by gentoo.

[Vighy]

Well, I have gentoo running on a P3 500 which is usable with packages emerging in a terminal. This is running the minimal gnome set-up offered by gentoo.

My 486DX4 @ 100Mhz with 68MB of dram@33Mhz was running gentoo smoothly.... but I used to compile stuff on my AthlonXP 2600+, and then rsync changes offline.

Yours is a real Study-Case