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Gentoo 1.4 Final Released 398

Posted by timothy from the assimilates-your-pc's-soul dept.
markds writes "After a long wait, the Gentoo team has finally released the latest version of their distribution. Gentoo Linux 1.4 is now available. 1.4 includes automated kernel builds, CFLAGS generation, the Gentoo Reference Platform, and support for netless installation." And Beost writes "It looks like our favorite disto gentoo has released two of the new v1.4 LiveCDs. Enjoy!" Reader Luke-Jr points to the list of official mirrors and "unofficial (though created by developers) BitTorrents." (Of course, you can also buy CD sets for a variety of architectures from the Gentoo store.)
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Gentoo 1.4 Final Released More

Gentoo 1.4 Final Released

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  • Great release (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dook43 ( 660162 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:43PM (#6622595)
    I'm glad that my favorite distribution has finally gone retail. I will definitely be among the people that shell out $15 for the two pressed CDs and the printed installation manual.

    Been using Gentoo for my linux boxes since late 2001; I couldn't be happier.

    • ...$15 for the two pressed CDs...

      Don't forget SCO's $699 licensing fee... ;-)

      • I think that would actually be $1398.

        I'm sure there is a byte or two of infringing code on each CD.

        (p.s. yes, i know it's a per CPU fee.)
    • I haven't tried the X86 version, but the PPC version had outdated, buggy, packages by comparison to Sid.

      The LiveCD is great; Gentoo-like, but without X on startup. I keep a copy handy for when MacOS overwrites my bootloader.

  • I don't mean to whore....but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:43PM (#6622600) Journal
    For 80% of the responses Most people that read this article will say to themselves "Gen-what? Big deal, my *insert distro here* has already done all of that!" or "Wow, so some Linux distro does a few things that *insert Mac or Windows version* has been doing for months, or even years".

    Just keep in mind this much: Whether you are a Red Hat user, a Mandrake enthusiast, or a Slackware zealot, we have all "been there". And like it or not, distros like Gentoo and Debian keep hope alive and stay true to the Linux and open source "roots".

    No, I am not a Debian or Gentoo user. In fact I am a Red Hat and Windows 98 user. I recognize valiant efforts and righteous grass roots development movements when I see them, however, and I pay my respect and homage to them.

    So, despite how bad this post may come off as a karma whore (and you all know that I love to write karma whores [slashdot.org]), just keep in mind that it is people like the Gentoo team that have made Linux the phenomenon that it is. OK, feel free to mod me down now.

    • Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Artifex ( 18308 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:56PM (#6622674) Journal
      You're not whoring. The reasons why I went ahead and bought the CD set when it came up, even though I'd already downloaded the ISO, were a) I was lazy b) I needed to know the CDs weren't going to fail on me like a copied ISO might, and c), the biggest reason of all, I want to support Gentoo.

      My primary experience with Linux in the home has been SuSE, and I know I'm going to find Gentoo painful to start up and might even go back to SuSE at this stage in the game. But Gentoo seems to be about much more than Linux: from what I understand, they're working on platforms for other OSes out there, and that greatly increases the probability that many more people will benefit from their work on Portage and the rest.

      Oh, and just in case someone thinks I'm karma whoring, myself (like I should care?), let me say that I also broke down and ordered an OEM version of Windows XP Pro yesterday, along with a requisite piece of hardware to meet the licensing terms, etc.

      • Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by EvilStein ( 414640 ) <.ten.pbp. .ta. .maps.> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:05PM (#6622728)
        "My primary experience with Linux in the home has been SuSE, and I know I'm going to find Gentoo painful to start up and might even go back to SuSE at this stage in the game."

        Don't say that just yet. I was in the same boat but after following the directions and asking the friendly folks on the gentoo-user mailing list and forums.gentoo.org, I easily found everything I needed, and life is good. :)

        • Don't say that just yet. I was in the same boat but after following the directions and asking the friendly folks on the gentoo-user mailing list and forums.gentoo.org, I easily found everything I needed, and life is good. :)

          Well... I chose SuSE because of its very nice KDE and office-type applications integration, and YaST2(3,4, whatever they have now). In other words, it's pretty, I can be productive right away on it, and all that. Same reason why I have licensed MS-Windows versions, too, of course. I

      • Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Jimithing DMB ( 29796 ) <dfe@tg[ ].org ['wbd' in gap]> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:32PM (#6622887) Homepage
        I needed to know the CDs weren't going to fail on me like a copied ISO might.

        Odd. The only times I've ever had CDs burned from ISOs fail is when the burner failed to burn the disc properly.

        There is, of course, a simple way to check that it did burn properly. Assuming you burned it as MODE1 with one data track and no additional postgaps you can do this:

        dd if=/dev/cdrom bs=2048 | md5sum

        Then compare that with the md5sum of the ISO. If you added a postgap, then specify the number of 2048 byte blocks that make up the ISO with count=XYZ

        Another method is to use find and md5sum redirected to a text file, something like:

        cd /mnt/loopbacked_iso
        find . -type f -exec md5sum {} \; > ~/known_good_md5
        cd /mnt/cdrom
        find . -type f -exec md5sum {} \; > ~/cdrom_md5
        diff -u ~/known_good_md5 ~/cdrom_md5

        That works a bit better in cases wher you have intentionally added/deleted/modified files and want to make sure nothing else got changed. Note that you may or may not need to pass that through sort; I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader.

        • Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... (Score:5, Informative)

          by An Ominous Cow Erred ( 28892 ) * on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @02:43AM (#6623648)
          Unfortunately the parent poster here clearly doesn't understand the danger inherent in assuming a CD-R is good if it simply reads correctly.

          When you burn a MODE-1 ISO-9660 data CD-R, it's not simply writing your data out directly to the disc -- it's being encoded through no less than three sequential error detection and correction systems. Audio discs and discs that use MODE-2 without ISO-9660 error correction still go through the two sequential error correction and detection encodings inherent in the CD design.

          The actual data on the disc is always riddled with errors -- the pits/lands (or in the case of a CD-R, the stained areas of dye) are simply too tiny and numerous to not have them obscured or distorted by microscopic scratches, bits of dust, tiny bad patches of dye, cosmic rays, etc. When you read a CD your CD-ROM drive is constantly correcting errors on its base level (C1), and if there is even a tiny visible scratch on the disc it's probably having to rely on its secondary error correction system (C2) to read the disc properly.

          In normal operation your drive doesn't even TELL you about these errors -- the only way to know about them is to use special equipment or use a few special brands of drives that support reporting this information (C2 errors are reported by a number of drives, but C1 errors are only reported by a few drives (Plextor Premium, and recent Lite-On drives come to mind) and not in a standard way).

          ISO-9660 MODE 1 (and MODE 2 with correction) adds a third layer of error correction to protect your data if all else fails, that's why a somewhat scratched disc still works.

          What I'm trying to say here is that simply comparing the md5 sum of your cooked (i.e. ISO-9660 error corrected) data track is not a way to judge the quality of a burn. Your disc might read fine today but die tomorrow.

          dd doesn't know the difference between a well burned disc with only a few C1 errors and no C2 errors, versus a badly mismanufactured disc that might've been exposed to the sun at some point that is riddled with errors that only your ISO-9660 third-level error correction is managing to fix. The first disc will probably last quite a while, while the second disc is already on its last legs and will probably not be readable in a month.

          Analyzing these "hidden" errors is key to getting a good burn and making trusted archival copies.

          (Unfortunately it seems that CD-Rs are nowhere near as durable as they are supposed to be. Many cheap brands of discs burned only 6-7 years ago are becoming unreadable now! So far my Metal Azo Verbatim Datalife Plus discs are holding on like troopers though -- knock on wood -- but even on those I can see C1 error counts creeping up over time).
      • I needed to know the CDs weren't going to fail on me like a copied ISO might

        Uhm... you do know about md5sum, don't you?
    • "just keep in mind that it is people like the Gentoo team that have made Linux the phenomenon that it is"

      Err not really. Gentoo came along way way after linux became a "phenomenon". Its also very much a minority distro. If you want to thank someone, thank Slackware, Red Hat, and Debian who have been giving and giving for years now.

      Nothing against Gentoo, but let's give credit where credit it due. It's going to be a long time before Gentoo can be lumped in with the above distros.

      • Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda AT etoyoc DOT com> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:27PM (#6622855) Homepage Journal
        What's a long time in computer terms?

        Face it, we have Intel and AMD on the cusp of major architecture changes AND the migration to the 64 bit processor. Both changes require a complete recompile of your system to exploit the improvements.

        At the same time, you have a distro that for the first time brings parity between the x86, PPC, and sparc architectures. Plans are even in the works to port portage to Cygwin, BSD, and MacOSX. The GCC compiler is getting good enough at building across architectures that a new hardware platform could have a Linux port in weeks.

        Computing power and RAM are plentiful in PC's. People bicker about 19 hours to compile OpenOffice, but I can remember a time when (assuming it was possible at all) a compile like that would take weeks.

        All of these factors are pointing us to a world in the near future where binaries are an afterthought. Even if the hardware you are running on can't compile on the fly, you can plug it into a server farm that CAN.

        Gentoo may be a half-assed Linux distro. But it has the potential to completely change how we distribute software.

        • Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Ig0r ( 154739 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @12:05AM (#6623059)
          "...a distro that for the first time brings parity between the x86, PPC, and sparc architectures."

          Debian has had a synchronous stable version for Alpha, ARM, Intel x86, Motorola 680x0, PowerPC, and SPARC since mid 2000.
          Most recent stable release supports 11 architectures.
        • Don't forget mips!! Gentoo runs on mips as well. Current supported machines are SGI Indy, SGI Indigo2 (R4k), and SGI O2 (R5K). I've got an R5K Indy with gentoo mips, and it works great. Distcc and fast machines with cross-compilers make it really fast and easy too.

      • Re:I don't mean to whore....but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by arkane1234 ( 457605 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @12:14AM (#6623102) Journal
        They said "people like the Gentoo team".
        Not the Gentoo team, themselves.
        They're right, it was people who wanted to better Linux, make it more configurable and give the user more options.
      • It's people like the Gentoo team that have made Linux the phenomenon that it is.

        That is to say, it's not the Gentoo team, but people with similar attitudes and motivations. The Gentoo team are continuing on the same traditions.

    • Easy Slashdot karma formula (Score:5, Funny)

      by WalterDGeranios ( 678649 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @12:44AM (#6623277)
      OK, feel free to mod me down now.

      Step 1: Make a comment.

      Step 2: Type "I know everyone is going to mod me down" or "OK, mod me down everyone."

      Step 3: Those tricksy Slashdot readers outwit you and mod you up!.

  • Tried it, will try it again (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Akardam ( 186995 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:45PM (#6622612)
    Although I had some major problems with Gentoo not booting after install on one of my test systems at work, I was still impressed with the relative ease presented by a system still so powerfully configurable and tweakable (I was installing from a Stage 1 1.4 (RC2 I think) build). I will definitely keep it on my list next time we have a box ready to roll out. I do wonder whatever happened to that one guy who wanted to fork Gentoo... did he ever follow thru with his plans?

  • To all 1.4_rcx users (Score:5, Informative)

    by Unregistered ( 584479 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:45PM (#6622616)
    You do not need to reinstall. Gentoo version numbers only refer to the install CD. emerge -u world and you'll be in the same place you would be with a 1.4_final install.

  • Changelog! Getcha changelog! (Score:4, Informative)

    by James A. A. Joyce ( 681634 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:45PM (#6622617) Journal
    Changelog, hot off the press [gentoo.org]!

    (Now I wonder how long it will be before someone posts the "Gentoo Linux Zealot Translator"?)
    • That appears to be the daily CVS changelog which covers the portage tree, which has nothing to do with releases...

    • Ask And Ye Shall Receive. . . (Score:5, Funny)

      by Farley Mullet ( 604326 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:57PM (#6622681)
      Official Gentoo-Linux-Zealot translator-o-matic

      Gentoo Linux is an interesting new distribution with some great features. Unfortunately, it has attracted a large number of clueless wannabes who absolutely MUST advocate Gentoo at every opportunity. Let's look at the language of these zealots, and find out what it really means...

      "Gentoo makes me so much more productive."

      "Although I can't use the box at the moment because it's compiling something, as it will be for the next five days, it gives me more time to check out the latest USE flags and potentially unstable optimisation settings."

      "Gentoo is more in the spirit of open source!"

      "Apart from Hello World in Pascal at school, I've never written a single program in my life or contributed to an open source project, yet staring at endless streams of GCC output whizzing by somehow helps me contribute to international freedom."

      "I use Gentoo because it's more like the BSDs."

      "Last month I tried to install FreeBSD on a well-supported machine, but the text-based installer scared me off. I've never used a BSD, but the guys on Slashdot say that it's l33t though, so surely I must be for using Gentoo."

      "Heh, my system is soooo much faster after installing Gentoo."

      "I've spent hours recompiling Fetchmail, X-Chat, gEdit and thousands of other programs which spend 99% of their time waiting for user input. Even though only the kernel and glibc make a significant difference with optimisations, and RPMs and .debs can be rebuilt with a handful of commands, my box MUST be faster. It's nothing to do with the fact that I've disabled all startup services and I'm running BlackBox instead of GNOME or KDE."

      "...my Gentoo Linux workstation..."

      "...my overclocked AMD eMachines box from PC World, and apart from the third-grade made-to-break components and dodgy fan..." "You Red Hat guys must get sick of dependency hell..."

      "I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH .rpms together on the command line, and that problems hardly ever occur if one uses proper Red Hat packages instead of mixing SuSE, Mandrake and Joe's Linux packages together (which the system wasn't designed for)."

      "All the other distros are soooo out of date."

      "Constantly upgrading to the latest bleeding-edge untested software makes me more productive. Never mind the extensive testing and patching that Debian and Red Hat perform on their packages; I've just emerged the latest GNOME beta snapshot and compiled with -09 -fomit-instructions, and it only crashes once every few hours."

      "Let's face it, Gentoo is the future."

      "OK, so no serious business is going to even consider Gentoo in the near future, and even with proper support and QA in place, it'll still eat up far too much of a company's valuable time. But this guy I met on #animepr0n is now using it, so it must be growing!"

      • Re:Ask And Ye Shall Receive. . . (Score:5, Informative)

        by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:02PM (#6622717) Homepage
        That's cute and all, but if you get scared off by the FreeBSD or Debian install process, RUN LIKE HELL FROM GENTOO. I use Gentoo myself, and it's great, but it's not an install for the newbie. That said, after you've gone though the full install (I'm talking stage 1, none of that stage 3 wimp stuff) you will have learned a LOT more about how Linux works than you will from a text based installer.

        PS. Good job on reaching 1.4! Go Gentoo!

        • Depends on what you mean by difficult. Try hacking the RedHat 6.1 installer to boot on a thinkpad with 16MB of RAM, and a modern PCMCIA network card.

          And this was last year, because 7.+ refuses to even LOOK at a machine with less than 32MB. The boot from scratch and do everything by hand approach I ended up learning by my self through weeks of excruciating trial, error, and usenet clippings.

          Then of course there is the wonderful habit the RedHat installer has of mounting my RAID as /dev/sda during install

          • Bah, kids these days. I installed slackware 8.0 on a machine with a small amount of RAM (8? MB) - start first console, fdisk, mkswap, computer died from lack of RAM. Next boot, swapon, and you're away. 16MB is no challenge at all.

            The trick I've found with RedHat is to use the "text" mode install - it uses a lot less memory; you might even be able to do it with 16MB or less.

            • Nope, the 32Mb limit is built into the installer. Believe me, text mode was my first thought to. I did actually try slackware in the process of getting Linux on these thinkpads. (Not to mention Debian and a few LFS micro-distros.)

              6.1 didn't care about the memory, but it didn't understand how to talk to the PCMCIA network card I had. I finally tricked it into using an existing kernel module by mounting the compressed initrd from the netboot floppy, hacking the pcmcia subsystem, and then ALSO hacking the Re

      • I installed Gentoo at several of my customer sites. Some of the installations replaced Windows servers, others replaced Red Hat installations, and some are brand new servers.

        I can tell you, without a doubt, that real, serious businesses are using Gentoo very successfully. Granted, someone less familiar with Linux could very easily have slapped up a RedHat9.x server for them in less time, but with Gentoo I was able to give the customers exactly what they wanted. I was able to give them a very robust, secure
      • Apart from the fact I could have sworn I saw an identical post like this the other day, a quick response from a general linux newbie. Might be a little more deserving of it's mod if it were original.

        As a newbie, I didn't find Gentoo difficult to install what so ever. It comes with a step by step instructions that are only difficult to follow if you don't understand English. I'm sure I'm not alone here. The thing that makes text based installs hard is when the developers fail to explain some of the termin

  • Wooohooo! (Score:5, Funny)

    by RealityShunt ( 695515 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:48PM (#6622629)
    It's time to finally start that Gentoo install with the 2.6 kernel series that I've been putting off.

    I've been seriously too interested in the outside this summer. I have an actual tan, a girlfriend, and have put enough miles on the bike that I have to replace the tires. Enough! It's time for this insanity to stop!

    Time to download and emerge! Bring on those multi-hour computer sessions! Woot!

  • Gentoo... (Score:2, Funny)

    by m0rph3us0 ( 549631 )
    Yeah the best part about gentoo is... emerge openoffice 16 hours later you have a build.

    • Re:Gentoo... (Score:4, Informative)

      by billatq ( 544019 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:56PM (#6622677)
      Yeah the best part about gentoo is... emerge openoffice 16 hours later you have a build.

      Or emerge openoffice-bin and get it for the time it takes to download :-). Of course, I'm using FreeBSD right now..

    • Re:Gentoo... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hatrisc ( 555862 )
      though, using distcc with a cluster of about 16 nodes, you should be able to cut that down to an hour. of course, not many people have 2 free computers at home, let alone 16.

    • Re:Gentoo... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Our Man In Redmond ( 63094 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:22PM (#6622832)
      Or, do what I did.

      1. Set your Athlon XP 2000+ box up with Gentoo

      2. Optimize everything for the Athlon

      3. Set out a plate of milk and cookies.

      4. Start the openoffice emerge running

      5. Go to bed

      In the morning the milk and cookies will be gone and the OpenOffice elves will have left you a copy of OpenOffice, tailored to your machine.

  • good news! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dcstimm ( 556797 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:54PM (#6622668) Homepage
    I want to thank Drobbins, Seemant, and All the gentoo developers! Thanks for your hard work for makeing linux even better!

    Please support gentoo by going to gentoo.org and buying the livecds...

  • The funny part is... (Score:3, Informative)

    by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda AT etoyoc DOT com> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:08PM (#6622744) Homepage Journal
    That most of us Gentoo users are already running 1.4.

    Sigh, whatever Distro can upgrade the entire OS (in place!) with a single command: emerge -u world.

    Of course, some pressed discs would be nice for posterity.

    • Re:The funny part is... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Pros_n_Cons ( 535669 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:18PM (#6622806)
      Sigh, whatever Distro can upgrade the entire OS (in place!) with a single command: emerge -u world.

      redhat: apt-get dist-upgrade
      debian: apt-get dist-upgrade
      yum: yum update

      I upgraded from Redhat9 to the new beta this way.
      • Reminds me of the time I tried to upgrade glibc on 7.2, following that infamous "every week a new vulnerability" phase last year. I would attempt to upgrade GLIBC, only to find that the package needed a new version of RPM. I tried to update RPM, but it needed a new version of GLIBC. Upgrade them both, and I discovered exactly how many packages rely on GLIBC...

        'Twas messy.

      • Re:The funny part is... (Score:4, Funny)

        by tdrury ( 49462 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @12:30AM (#6623201) Homepage
        I've never used apt-get. Does it compile from sources like emerge?
        • Nope... apt-get is a frontend for dpkg on debian.
          Essentially, it sees the dependancies, snags them from the net, and manages everything for you.
          Of course, entirely in binary format.

          I believe you can do it in source also with certain flags, but I've never tried it.
    • Haven't you tried any other modern distributions? Debian comes to mind with apt-get. In fact, I've had more luck upgrading Debian than I have had with Gentoo lately. Specifically, be careful if you unmask a package like transcode - it makes emerge -u world have a fit...

  • Gentoo has a new USE flag (Score:4, Funny)

    by snkmoorthy ( 665423 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:09PM (#6622749) Journal
    USE="-SCO" emerge gentoo

  • AMD-XP Watch out (Score:5, Informative)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:10PM (#6622756) Journal
    Just reading the forum [gentoo.org]about 1.4 release, seems AMD-XP CD2 has problems.


    "GRP CD2 for Athlon XP is not available currently. Frankly, we've had all sorts of problems with the Athlon XP build.

    Athlon XP users can safely use the i686 set."

  • The number on reason for using Gentoo... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dante333 ( 25148 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:15PM (#6622792)
    Its a great learning exprience. I learned more about linux installing gentoo (way back in the old days when it was still using gcc 2.95) than using Red Hat for a year. It may take a while to install and update, but it does teach you whats what on a linux system. That and portage just rocks. There is even a NWN ebuild
    • Its a great learning exprience.

      BZZZT. Wrong!

      If your mission is to learn about linux, you can't go wrong with Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org]. It explains how to compile everything yourself, with easy step-by-step instructions. None of this silly hand-holding that you get with portage/emerge.

      LFS for learning, Gentoo for portage.

  • I'm confused... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Feztaa ( 633745 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:27PM (#6622861) Homepage
    The torrents have been slashdotted, but my download is going slow. What gives?

  • Anyone tried -Os? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Nucleon500 ( 628631 ) <tcfelker@example.com> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:32PM (#6622884) Homepage
    I was just about to do a second Gentoo install when I read this, and now it's cemented. Now, to choose CFLAGS. I have a 2.4 GHz system, but only a 7200 RPM HD, so I'm thinking of using -Os. I'm hoping this will improve load times for big apps, and I've heard it also allows better cache usage. So, has anyone done a -Os system, and would they recommend it?

    I was going to benchmark this by loading OpenOffice before and after compiling it with -Os. On a cold boot, the -O2 load time was 12 seconds, and 3 when it was in cache. So I re-emerged, and I ran out of space! OpenOffice takes over 1.6 GB to compile! Perhaps lack of -Os isn't the problem.

  • gentoo topic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by quannump ( 310933 ) <quannump AT netscape DOT net> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:37PM (#6622918)
    is it too much to ask for gentoo to get its on topic category? its got a pretty cool logo. jeez even turbolinux has one.

  • Reverse dependencies (Score:4, Insightful)

    by normalperson ( 552607 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @01:12AM (#6623380) Homepage
    Is unmerging a package safe yet?


    Do packages that depend on the package I'm unmerging also get unmerged automatically or do they stay installed (and broken?)


    Of course, I tend to like to try out new software on a whim a lot and frequently install something to use for a few hours before I decide whether or not it's worth keeping on my system (usually not).

  • I remember when 1.2 was out and everyone was getting 1.3 together (development). Everyone wanted to know what was going on, etc. After a while, 1.3 was going on forever, extending into new realms, etc...
    Man, it feels like 1.4 lasted nearly forever in the development cycle.. 1.4rc1, 1.4rc2, 1.4rc3,4,5,6,7,8.... lol I know it wasn't that many, but man.
    I'm sitting here thinking, "wow... it's out... it's finally out" and all of this time I've been essentially running it :P (emerge -u world)

    So. to put this
  • Its the only Linux distro that I could get to work.. every time..
    It is teaching me HEAPS by being very easy to use, and extremly configurable at the same time..
    I can "emerge" a feature or application.. play around with it.. screw it up ... and when I can't fix it, unemerge it and re-emerge it without hurting my system one iota!

    I love the forum and IRC chat guys.. they are soooo friendly and helpfull totally unlike my experiances with the mandrake, redhat etc crowds..

    It's also a freaking EXCELLENT gaming p

  • WineX (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dakryx ( 646923 )
    Anyone else hear about how Transgaming forced gentoo to stop having ebuilds of their source? Transgaming said gentoo was making it trivial to install from gentoo. All in the pursuit of profit eh?

    • Re:WineX (Score:4, Informative)

      by nagora ( 177841 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @04:35AM (#6623941)
      Anyone else hear about how Transgaming forced gentoo to stop having ebuilds of their source?

      To be fair, the ebuild was installing from the CVS tree which was provided for the use of developers, not for massive numbers of downloads.

      TWW

  • Converting from Redhat to Gentoo (Score:3, Interesting)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdot@spamgoe ... minus herbivore> on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @03:29AM (#6623769) Homepage
    Could I convert an existing Redhat server to Gentoo - without rebuilding from scratch? Can I not download "emerge" and start emerging system? Has anyone done it? How did it work? How to get rid of the "cruft"?

    I don't have a backup of that server, so I can't go for the wipe and rebuild - also, it is running a 24/7 e-commerce site.

    (Of course I have a backup.)

  • WAIT FOR IT.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by oliverthered ( 187439 ) <oliverthered@nOSPAm.hotmail.com> on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @11:20AM (#6625823) Journal
    the latest kde packages (3.1.3) are still marked unstable in portage, so unless you want to compile KDE twice in a week wait until the kde packages [gentoo.org] move to stable.

    Can't think of anything else to wait on though.

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