Gentoo 2008.0 Released 164
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."
Re:"LiveCds not available for X86 or AMD64" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:emerge first (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Finally. (Score:4, Informative)
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] ._cfgNNNN files using your favourite tool or manually]
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
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. (Score:3, Informative)
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 I stuck with Gentoo for many years because because of its strengths. But portage is not what lets Gentoo down. The complete lack of QA on the official tree that leads to dependency blocks, updated libraries in the stable tree that break ABI compatability with previous software and the general cavalier attitude to pushing any old crap into the stable release are what kills Gentoo.
But hey, after complaining about Gentoo for years (not even including the pain that was getting a Via media box to work) I put my money where my mouth was and went out to buy a nice stable unix system that can also run a stable version of ports. I bought a mac.
Re:Anyone tried other source based distros? (Score:4, Informative)
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
Re:Global Warming - why?? (Score:4, Informative)
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:Finally. (Score:2, Informative)
This is changing, pretty soon world will not contain system packages. So you'll have to update them separately.
Re:Global Warming - why?? (Score:1, Informative)
what is the benefit of having thousands of geeks compiling the same code over and over
That's the point, it isn't always the same code. The real power of Gentoo (Portage really) is the power for the user to say "I don't want features x, y, and z in this piece of software so don't bother compiling them in".
With a binary distro you are usually stuck with the decisions that the maintainer has made about what features of the software to include/exclude.
Re:Finally. (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Re:Do not want! (Score:3, Informative)
I'd say I trust the overall distro that much more for dealing with the situation appropriately.
Re:One word: (Score:3, Informative)
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 prefer Gentoo) I am just saying they are very different.