Gentoo 2008.0 Released

An anonymous reader notes that the Gentoo 2008.0 final release is available. From the announcement: "Code-named 'It's got what plants crave,' this release contains numerous new features including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD. LiveDVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree."

emerge first

So now that Gentoo has a nice graphical installer, can we expect all kinds of n00bs flooding the forums? I thought the idea was to have a distro you can really tinker with, given the majority of other distros taking care of the sleek user-friendly market.

Re:emerge first

Gentoo 2007.0 had a graphical installer too. I tried using it (almost 20 times), and never did get Gentoo installed with it. Then I went to the command line minimal install (stage 3), and got it up and running in the first shot.

Re:

Why on earth has this been modded insightful? You people obviously have no idea.

The main feature of Gentoo is that it is a bleeding edge release. Because everything is build from source you generally have the most recent version of all the software you chose to install.

Slackware have only just recently adopted the 2.6 Kernel. It has a tradition of old stable software. They are both "geeky" releases but they approach it from a very different mindset.

I am not attempting to say which is better (although I pref

Anyone tried other source based distros?

How do sourcemage and lunar compare, anyone know?

I've had the impression that Gentoo has been stagnating recently.

Re:Anyone tried other source based distros?

I used sourcemage a few years back. (Left because i got tired of waiting for shit to compile, hurr hurr.) I found it really nice, and absolutely LOVED the bash-script based package management. Compared to Gentoo, it's also really good at fixing itself when things get borked.
  If I had more disk space, I'd probably give it a go again. It was a really nice distro.

  - mantar

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>I found it really nice, and absolutely LOVED the bash-script based package management.

Hey, that sounds kinda cool. Maybe Gentoo should consider this idea instead of .ebuild files.

Awesome news...

...but I'm still compiling 2004.3.

It's got what plants crave.

I've looked all over, but I can't find the electrolytes!

Re:It's got what plants crave.

eselectrolytes?

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that's because they were destroyed in the process of mutilating your thirst.

Global Warming - why??

A bit tongue-in-cheek, but I'm also serious here - what is the benefit of having thousands of geeks compiling the same code over and over, when you can download 1 binary distribution and be done? If you sum up the manhours of all this compilation, the power consumed by countless hard drives and processors churning away, whats the point? Just so you can have a 64bit Firefox that Flash won't run on? A 686-optimized kernel, connected to the Internet via 768 kbit DSL?

None of your business

It is none of your business how I decide to spend my day or what I decide to do with my computer. If I feel like compiling my Linux distro from scratch, I'll do it. Take your environmentalist rants elsewhere.

Re:Global Warming - why??

what is the benefit of having thousands of geeks compiling the same code over and over, when you can download 1 binary distribution and be done? If you sum up the manhours of all this compilation, the power consumed by countless hard drives and processors churning away, whats the point?

Speed. Now a binary distro can install things quickly but not run them very quickly. If you have a nice dual-core CPU setup and 1 GB of RAM the binary distros will serve you well, but if you have an aging desktop such a a low-end Pentium 4, or a high-end Pentium III, with RAM maxed out at 512 MB, Gentoo will run faster then even Xubuntu. Now, it might take a week to get everything installed, but once it is installed you have the fastest system you can get on that hardware.

Re:Global Warming - why??

what is the benefit of having thousands of geeks compiling the same code over and over, when you can download 1 binary distribution and be done? If you sum up the manhours of all this compilation, the power consumed by countless hard drives and processors churning away, whats the point?

Speed. Now a binary distro can install things quickly but not run them very quickly. If you have a nice dual-core CPU setup and 1 GB of RAM the binary distros will serve you well, but if you have an aging desktop such a a low-end Pentium 4, or a high-end Pentium III, with RAM maxed out at 512 MB, Gentoo will run faster then even Xubuntu. Now, it might take a week to get everything installed, but once it is installed you have the fastest system you can get on that hardware.

It's not about speed, at least from my point of view. - It is all about configurability. - Almost no users ends up with the same system as the other one.

Since one is in full control and there are hundreds of decisions to make it is very unlikely that any user ends up with the same system as another one.

Re:Global Warming - why??

> Speed.

No, not speed, reliability and (startlingly) ease. Yes, you have to wait for the silly thing to compile, but almost without exception, once you've done that, stuff just runs.

Back in my old rpm days, it seemed like I would find an interesting package and find that it has an rpm available. The I'd find that I was missing a library, or had the wrong version, and I'd have to go searching for another rpm. Then another search to find the rpm that would satisfy the requirements for that lib, etc. Every now and then, I'd get to the bottom of my search and find an incompatibility, and it was time to give up, at least for the moment.

Gentoo has a wide range of ebuilds, a wide range of overlays that increase the options, and finally since a complete build environment is part of every system, building a non-ebuild tarball almost always works, too. ( ./configure --prefix=/usr/local && make , etc )

By far, most of my problems have been with stuff only available in binary form.

Re:

While people tend to say speed (which is generally true as far as older hardware and optimizations are concerned), I just like the simplicity and the ease of configuring ALL of my system in one folder: /etc/conf.d, pretty much.

Another thing I like about gentoo is the simple fact: if it compiles, it runs. I've had debacles in the past where when you try to use some obscure program's binary it just won't run because you've got newer lib versions installed, etc, etc. Compiling stuff to work on your system mea

Do not want!

I've been waiting for this release, but after one of the higher-access Gentoo devs was caught using dev servers to attack a competing distro [wordpress.com] (and resorting to name-calling afterwards) I'm not sure if I can trust them any more.

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And said dev subsequently had his Gentoo infrastructure access removed [wordpress.com]
I'd say I trust the overall distro that much more for dealing with the situation appropriately.

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LiveDVD is not available for x86. I stumbled on that sentence also. Seems there will be a LiveCD though; In which case I'll be burning a copy of that for a few hours fun.

From the linked site:

# Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD: To save space, the LiveCDs switched to the smaller Xfce environment. This means that a binary installation using the LiveCD will install Xfce, but you're still free to build GNOME or KDE from source.
# No LiveDVDs on x86 or amd64: In the interest of getting the release out, the release engineering team decided to postpone LiveDVDs because of problems in their generation. They may show up laterâ"if so, we'll let you know.

Apparently I'm not supposed to submit yet? (What are the limits on posting? WTF?)

I am looking forward to trying this out btw.

Re:Finally.

The great thing about Gentoo is that upgrading is as easy as 'emerge --sync && emerge -auvND world'.

That's updating, not upgrading. At the very least, you should select a new profile, to get the new default system packages and masks.

To go to 2008.0, this should bring you mostly there:

[make a backup]
emerge --sync
eselect profile default/linux/x86/2008.0 # Adjust to your preferred profile
emerge --emptytree system
emerge --emptytree system
emerge --emptytree world
emerge --update --deep --newuse world
[merge any new ._cfgNNNN files using your favourite tool or manually]

Ayup, you need to rebuild system twice to cover interdependencies, and then world, to get everything to link with the new system libraries.

On a desktop system, you might also want to update the boot splash theme to reflect the new "version", but there isn't any 2008.0 theme out yet, so that might have to wait.

Re:Finally.

The correct procedure is:
# Update local package repository image
emerge --sync
# Select new profile (Adjust to your architecture / preferred sub-profile)
eselect profile default/linux/x86/2008.0
# Update to latest default USE flags (which is generally all that changes with profile updates)
emerge --update --deep --newuse world
# Update config files with tool of your choice

The rest is completely useless. Even if you did want to completely re-emerge the entire system, there's little point in the 2 "emerge -e system" (if you're a ricer, you may choose to do one of them - since system is included in world, the second is completely pointless)

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From your comment I can assume that either:

1) Your install is headless
2) You have been using Gentoo for less than 12 months
3) You are still running XFree86 instead of Xorg
4) Your memory is very selective

The very idea that every update goes smoothly without a single dependency block is something that most Gentoo users would laugh at. Given all of the problems with the Xorg update, or the changes in libraries that borked the tree for months last year this is laughable.

Portage is a great piece of software, and

Re:Major problems with Firefox 3 on Gentoo 2008.0.

Fucking n00bs. Change firefox memory module to remove on the fly memory allocation and compile with -XilYaBGvf option, and link the so with the rest using secondary passive attribution.

One advice to n00bs using Gentoo - RTFM.

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I love gentoo, but damn that's accurate. Makes me wonder whether you're an embittered novice or a seasoned guru.

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I was wondering if he was an embittered guru or a seasoned novice, myself. That seems to be the way they differentiate users.