Gentoo Linux 2004.0 Released 489
Quique writes "Gentoo Linux is proud to announce the release of Gentoo Linux 2004.0 for the x86, AMD64, PowerPC, Sun SPARC, and SGI MIPS architectures. Additionally, the Gentoo Hardened team is announcing the inaugural release of a security-enhanced Gentoo platform for the x86 architecture.
Installation stages, LiveCDs, and GRP sets can be
found on the mirrors.
More information about the Gentoo Hardened project
can be found on its project page.
For more information, please consult the
documentation,
mailing lists,
user forums and official IRC channels.
The new Gentoo
Store has also been announced." I've put more of the release notes below - might also be worth checking out the tutorial for LPI certification done by the President/CEO of Gentoo; there's also a note about Gentoo's newest meta-release tool, Catalyst below as well. Looks like it's not out yet - stay tuned for more information.
"
In addition to many bugfixes and security updates since the 1.4 release,
Gentoo Linux 2004.0 contains a cutting-edge development toolchain and user
environment including, but not limited to, Linux kernel 2.6.3, GCC 3.3.2,
GLIBC 2.3.2, KDE 3.2, GNOME 2.4.2, and xfce4.
Gentoo Linux 2004.0 marks the debut of Catalyst, the new Gentoo release meta-tool. Using Catalyst, developers and users can create and customize every aspect of their Gentoo Linux system; from installation stages, to bootable LiveCDs, to customized binary packages for the Gentoo Reference Platform (GRP). For more information on Catalyst, please see the Catalyst project page and online documentation."
Almost there... (Score:5, Funny)
"Looks like it's not out yet " (Score:5, Interesting)
* The headline is completely wrong--the 2004.0 file everyone is downloading is the EXPERIMENTAL pre-release that's been sitting on FTPs for a while.
* As a result, everyone and their mothers are reporting now that it is out. #gentoo has been fielding people left and right over it. Thanks, Slashdot.
* Hemos mentions it in passing with a "Looks like it's not out yet - stay tuned for more information" at the very bottom of the blurb. Uh, mind changing the headline then that says it's released? A bunch of people are downloading the experimental now.
Thanks for the journalistic integrity, Slashdot--again.
From the topic of #gentoo (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, the file is in the releases directory and is dated today.
Yeah, that's the experimental 2004.0 file that's been there for at least a MONTH. It gets routinely updated.
Next time before you call someone a "troll," look into it first.
Re:Mods - Get a sense of humor! (Score:5, Funny)
Great! (Score:4, Funny)
now all you guys can enjoy the fleed
Re:Great! (Score:3, Funny)
How to upgrade (Score:5, Informative)
# emerge -uD world
Re:How to upgrade (Score:5, Funny)
yes, this new innovation called cron
-Steve
MS Windows Update Equivalent (Score:4, Informative)
#!/bin/bash
emerge sync >/dev/null
emerge -uDp world
emerge -uDf world
Cron should take care of mailing you the result.
Re:How to upgrade (Score:4, Informative)
stable 2.0.48-r1
unstable 2.0.48-r4
link [gentoo.org]
You realize you can unstable packages on a stable system, right? You also realize unstable updates like 5x as often, right? I recommend running a stable system with a few unstable packages if you need them.
Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
It goes something like this (I believe):
There will be about 4 official releases per year and the releases will be named by the year followed by which release it is.
So since this is the first release of 2004 the name is '2004.0'. The next release should be '2004.1'. The first release next year will be '2005.0' and so forth.
I hope I got this right.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Funny)
It's here: the Gentoo Zealot Translator! (Score:4, Funny)
By M, version 1.0
Gentoo Linux is an interesting new distribution with some great features. Unfortunately, it has attracted a large number of clueless wannabes and leprotards 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." .debs can be rebuilt with a handful of commands (AND Red Hat
supplies i686 kernel and glibc packages), 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."
"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
"...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..." .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)."
"I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH
"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 -O9 -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:It's here: the Gentoo Zealot Translator! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's here: the Gentoo Zealot Translator! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's here: the Gentoo Zealot Translator! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's here: the Gentoo Zealot Translator! (Score:5, Funny)
I realize that some Linux users came from the MS-DOS background, so they do not run X or screen, and they have modified their kernel to disable virtual consoles. They're from the camp that thinks that whenever you type a command, you should wait for it to finish before you use your computer for anything else. I can understand why they would find Gentoo to be frustrating, and I would not recommend Gentoo to them. I think they would be happier with FreeDOS.
Re:It's here: the Gentoo Zealot Translator! (Score:4, Insightful)
You can take any group of software users and poke fun for your own satisfaction, calling them wannabe's, whatever ... But mind me asking: "What's the freaking point?" This is like a flash back to my days on the playground. Grow up, please, and quit wasting bandwith with your meaningless bantering. Next time just summarize your thoughts as:
"I think some people are posers!"
The end!
Re:It's here: the Gentoo Zealot Translator! (Score:4, Interesting)
Catalyst is largely an extension of that. How many ^&*%@#$ "Live" CD's are out there? Why does everyone make such a big deal of it? Live CD's are NOT a new thing, Linus made the boot and root floppies very early on. Live CD's are not an innovation, Gentoo has finally put some fresh innovation into an old field.
No distro is the future, every distro can make it's contributions. Which is why some people say "Gentoo is the future." It has a lot to offer, which I hope other distro's can/will use.
I have an iBook, and Gentoo runs my file server. Sometime this decade I hope that I can use portage instead of Fink and Darwin ports. Now that isn't Apple switching to some sort of Gentoo fork, but it is some good things about Gentoo spreading.
I do think that they are duplicating a lot of work with the package manager. Like the UNIX forks it is hurting everyone.
Re:It's here: the Gentoo Zealot Translator! (Score:4, Informative)
Don't ask me why, but one of my servers (running Debian) creates a lot of animated gif files automatically. Using the version of ImageMagick provided by Debian, this job typically takes 2 seconds per gif file.
Just for fun I recompiled a static version of ImageMagick using gcc 3.3, with Pentium IV optimizing, on a RedHat Linux box, and tried running these binaries on my Debian box. And you know what? The same job now takes just under one second.
So for me recompiling was a significant factor for speeding up my program.
Dependency hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem I've had with RPM-based distributions isn't having to specify two RPM's in a circular dependency. It's that when I want to update one program about 3 months after installation, I have to update the 'glibc' RPM, which then means I have to updated practically every RPM.
Re:It's here: the Gentoo Zealot Translator! (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, it's a joke. Lighten up before you get an ulcer.
Sheesh. And I thought I was tense...
Easy upgrade (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy upgrade (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy upgrade (Score:5, Informative)
The point though is who wants bloatware? You can go from nada to KDE in about 900MB. Knoppix is about 1.6GB and Redhat distros are always like 4GB or whatnot...
Tom
Re:Easy upgrade (Score:3, Interesting)
I run gentoo 1.4 with 2.4.20 soething kernel, Now I want to try 2.6.3. I don't think "emerge -uD world" would do the trick in this case.
Re:Easy upgrade (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easy upgrade (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all the hardware you might want is turned on by genkernel (notably Video4Linux and tablets are off)
Re:Easy upgrade (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some topics on the forum you can take a look at (there are many more, just search!):
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=70838 [gentoo.org] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=110117&h
Re:Easy upgrade (Score:5, Informative)
If you had tried Gentoo, you would know about the etc-update script, which takes the pain out of config file updates like you are describing above.
I've been running our server at work (http://www.nusconsulting.com.au) on Gentoo for over a year now, and it's going quite nicely.
Looks like you were pointing the finger in the wrong direction with that 'misguided individuals' crack...
Experience with dual-boot? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never installed Gentoo, though, so I'd be curious about what Gentoo users would have to say about this and how it compares to, say, Mandrake or Suse
Re:Experience with dual-boot? (Score:5, Informative)
I think these days pretty much all distros are equally good dual-booters. If you have grub, and
As long as you order all the distros *not* to touch your boot config, that is. Install the boot configuration once with a distro you trust, and take advantage of the config with subsequent distros.
Re:Experience with dual-boot? (Score:5, Informative)
If that sounds daunting, don't worry because it's as easy as pie. Personally, I use grub, with a config file a bit like this:
# Gentoo
title=Gentoo Linux (linux-2.6.1-mm4 kernel)
root (hd0,1)
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/bzImage-2.6.1-mm4 root=/dev/hde5
# Windows XP
title=Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1
Dual boot couldn't be easier.
Re:Experience with dual-boot? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Experience with dual-boot? (Score:3, Insightful)
While Gentoo hasn't necessarily made this "easier", it is certainly more clear what is going on. I'm always nervous about some GUI installer just doing stuff to the MBR without telling me what it is, whether it is the Windows installer or the Redhat one.
And, at least for x86, GRUB IS an improvement in usability over LILO. I haven't used any version of LILO in the last two or three years since I switched to GRUB, but the main advantage of GRUB is that you don't have to remember to reinstall it into the boo
Re:Experience with dual-boot? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yea! (Score:3, Funny)
Josh
Re:Yea! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yea! (Score:3, Informative)
kdebase has the window manager, a slew of the basics (kedit, kate, konsole, konqueror, etc.) in it and I've found that it satisfies most of my KDE needs.
Also, QT and kdelibs are what really take a long time to compile.
Try compiling with '-mcpu=|yourcpu| -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer' and see how much faster it compiles, -O3 is a misnomer, it's actually slower to execute a lot of -O3 code than -O2, and -O3 takes a hell of a lot longer to compile.
Re:Yea! (Score:4, Informative)
-mcpu dictates that the code should be scheduled for your cpu type, but will still be backwards compatible with 386's. Using march will let you use instructions that are only available on newer cpus. For personal use, there's seldom need for compatibility with other machines.
My Experience with Gentoo (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My Experience with Gentoo (Score:5, Informative)
If you still want to compile everything, get distcc and let your beefier hardware do the trick.
Re:My Experience with Gentoo (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My Experience with Gentoo (Score:5, Insightful)
When you make a recommendation, you have to take your target audience into account. You should not recommend Gentoo for someone who don't care about the innard of his OS and just want to use a word processor, read his email, surf the Web and play a game or three. They don't want to get past the GUI, they just want to get things done.
Power user, system administrator and programmer are a totally different story and *may* be good candidate to recommend Gentoo to.
That's so obvious, I can't believe it have to be said.
Re:My Experience with Gentoo (Score:3, Informative)
wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Um? (Score:4, Informative)
???
What gives???
Tom
Re:Um? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Um? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Um? (Score:3, Interesting)
Gentoo never ceases to amaze.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out catalyst. It allows you to build your own stage taballs for Gentoo. You can even build the binary GRP packages to your specs and it will automatically arrange for the packges to be burnable to more than one CD. Talk about flexibility. You can cook your Gentoo up how ya like.
What I really want to know is what they have planned for April Fools this year. I do not see how they will ever be able to top last year.
Re:Gentoo never ceases to amaze.. (Score:4, Funny)
It's a shame they had to put a disclaimer on it.
But.. (Score:3, Funny)
Ultra-Sparc, not SunSparc. (Score:5, Informative)
A Sparc5 is different than an Ultra5... I'm going to try it on one of the Ultra5's I have sitting around and see how it goes.
It will be nice to upgrade it from the RedHat 5.2 that it currently is running, all things considered.
Re:Ultra-Sparc, not SunSparc. (Score:5, Funny)
Considering the blazing performance of SPARC chips, it might have completed the compilation process by the time Sarge is released. So you might as well wait for sarge.
Re:Ultra-Sparc, not SunSparc. (Score:3, Insightful)
So far, no problems. I tried linux on my sparc 5 with SuSE, and it was slower than Solaris 2.6. But that was a few years ago.
I'm still running Mandrake on my home boxes, I can't have it down for a day while its compiling. Now if Gentoo just offered a full binary build also.
Gentoo has it's place (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not as easy as Redhat Mandrake et al, but then doing more complex stuff (custom kernels, odd hardware support etc) is much easier, which is really part of the Linux spirit
On the other hand I think the people running Gentoo on Zauruses [freshmeat.net] are nuts. Gentoo might be good, but man if there was ever a place for Debian that was it!
Re:Gentoo has it's place (Score:4, Informative)
I'm presently running Gentoo on my dual boot snow ibook. The fact is that I would prefer Debian; I used to run Debian exclusively on this machine's predecessor, a blueberry that couldn't handle the static electricity of the winter of 2002-2003. :) Unfortunately I spent half a year trying to get Debian X to work on this machine with no luck. I finally discovered that the version of X with the correct drivers is still considered experimental. I never could get any luck figuring out how to rehome my machine to get the right XFree86, and finally decided Gentoo would be easier, which it was.
I like Gentoo. I admit it seems speedy (though this is the fastest machine I've ever owned). I used to like compiling my own Linux distro through Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] and sort of like the idea that everything on this machine was compiled for source (though since I didn't do it manually myself I don't have quite the same since of satisfaction). That said, Gentoo currently doesn't offer anything that will make me stay with it after Debian catches up. Worst of all, I have some doubts that all of the software I can emerge is under licensing schemes I want; they seem to be a little bit more lax about that than RedHat and Debian.
Gentoo Notebook Support (Score:3, Informative)
Has this improved? Any Gentoo want to point me towards portable nirvana?
Jonathan
Re:Gentoo Notebook Support (Score:3, Informative)
I first built Gentoo on a ThinkPad 570e two years ago. At that time I was using SMC wireless equipment and all went swimmingly well.
Last March I upgraded to a ThinkPad R31 and installed Gentoo on it. It had internal wireless, and that worked beautifully until the hardware quit. I then plugged in my trusty SMC wireless card and built PCMCIA wireless support and all worked perfectly again.
Re:Gentoo Notebook Support (Score:5, Informative)
So let's go over Gentoo's "support" for anything...
Gentoo runs the Linux kernel, so your support is going to be the same as any other distro that runs the Linux kernel.
In Gentoo you have to either a.) configure your own kernel; b.) use genkernel and accept the gentoo config; or c.) use genkernel and tweak the default config (genkernel all --menuconfig)
I've run Gentoo on my laptop for I don't know how long.. well I'm sure I could figure it out, but it's been well over a year. I have a howto for my laptop brant (HP ZT1150) and it's actually the link in my sig.
Here's another HP ZT1000 [isomerica.net] site, and he also runs Gentoo..
So, without trying to flame you, the "distro" support is, at least, misleading. As the support for things is generally based on the kernel you build, or someone builds for you.
The real advantages of Gentoo are it's all to easy upgrade path. I used to reinstall Linux every 4-6 months just to get the latest base system. With Gentoo I just emerge system every month or so. It's almost a drawback if you're someone who likes to wipe the slate clean and start over, as there's little reason to...
Save the mirrors. (Score:4, Insightful)
Initrd tools? (Score:5, Interesting)
Catalyst sounds nice, but what about a tool for making our own initrds so I can, for example, load the module-only driver for my raid card? I think a lot of people have a need for loading third-party drivers in order to boot.
RAID card vendors have a funny definition for "linux support". My Promise SX4 card's SATA interfaces, and not the raid interface, are the only thing 2.6 supports, so you get to stare at 4 separate drives instead of your RAID-5 array; one helpful page suggests that "that's ok because software raid is better anyway"- um, okay. Promise's half-closed-source driver(which is available from 'some guy in germany') won't compile under 2.6, but does under 2.4; however, only as a module, so bringing up the system off the card is impossible without an initrd, even though LILO will work since it uses the BIOS to get the kernel and initrd.
I tried using genkernel, which does build initrds, but I haven't been able to make an initrd that'll boot a -normal- system without tons of module errors, and adding the FasTrak driver module into an already built initrd is a huge pain as well, something else I haven't gotten working. Anyone have a good link to a guide to making initrds and specifically dealing with module headache and describing how the initrd then boots the system off the real_root partition?
'course, i'd also settle for a howto on tricking the kernel into linking the module directly into the kernel, that'd do the same thing...
Re:Initrd tools? (Score:3, Informative)
Live CDs (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, the Hardened-Gentoo CD rocks. Get it, burn it, take it with you wherever you go, you won't be sorry.
Re:Live CDs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Live CDs (Score:3, Interesting)
I might be the only person in the world to be oblivious of the Gentoo LiveCD's market cornering. On the other hand you might be confusing what you like with World Domination. I love Debian, but for most people that I talk to Linux is RedHat or SuSE, so there would be little to be gained from saying that "Debian has the Linux desktop market corn
Re:Live CDs (Score:5, Funny)
time to have fun! (Score:5, Funny)
Why not? Support your local electric company I say!
A little info (Score:5, Interesting)
Gentoo has great documentation on distcc [gentoo.org]!
Have fun!
Just a clarification... (Score:5, Informative)
sudo emerge sync
sudo emerge -uD world
in the past few weeks, there's nothing new out there for you. All you'll get is the new packages (like always) and bragging rights to run a "new version." There's not even a new minor 2.4 kernel version - I've been running 2.4.25 since it was released.
So, you do NOT need to sync up now. Especially not while half the slashdot userbase is doing so. You're pounding the living **** out of the servers, and for no good reason. If you must get new everything, whether to brag about running "version 2004" or what have you, su to root and set an at job to do so late tonight. Thank you for making Gentoo usable for people who actually NEED to update.
chroot installs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Very well. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Very well. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it may not be "fast" if it's a hard bug but it's noticeably faster than with a binary-package distro where you'd have to go get a tgz, figure out the configure options you want, and go into bugfix mode - fucking up your distro's package database by the way.
Re:Hello. (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you merge your fixes into apt-get update && apt-get upgrade ?
gentoo helpful to a new user (Score:5, Interesting)
Above all, I found documentation items from gentoo specially helpful, because they were written by someone with the skill of remembering and including _all_ of the needed steps -- and this isn't true of all documentation in linux-land. (OT -- another very very good documentation IMO is the GRUB manual.)
So let's hear it for user-helpful gentoo folk and their well-documented distro.
-wb-
Re:gentoo helpful to a new user (Score:5, Interesting)
And...I find the people there are VERY patient...you rarely if ever see RTFM as an answer...
Re:Very well. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that I use Gentoo; my desktop is a Slackware system, for which I build everything by hand (and install using a script I wrote to create a package, and incidentally I wrote myself a package manager that I use. Yes I know it seems silly!)
I use FreeBSD for servers and its ports system is veeeery cool (once you
Re:Very well. (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, the performance gains I've gotten from compiling locally aren't particularly noticable; and the compile times are a pain in the ass. I use Gentoo for two reasons, first and foremost I wanted to learn more about Linux. So I got a distro that forces you to learn without being quite as death-defyingly l33t as Linux From Scratch. And it has excelled in that purpose, I've learned more in the 4 months I've used Gentoo than I did in the 8 months I used other distros. Bloody well had to, which is why I got it.
The second reason I got Gentoo was as a way out of dependancy hell. I find the gentoo ebuilds to be a bit more up to date than the Debian packages usually are. I don't like the compile times, but the days of conflicting RPM's are gone. As are the days of being told to get RPM foo, then being told by foo that I also need bar, then being told by bar that I need quux. I'm quite willing to sacrifice the time needed to compile to get the convenience of not messing with the whole RPM dependancy scene.
Re:2.6.3 kernel only from unstable ~x86 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:2.6.3 kernel only from unstable ~x86 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:2.6.3 kernel only from unstable ~x86 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh no, (Score:5, Informative)
Otherwise, you could just use the binary packages, and it'd be quite a bit like any other distro.
Re:Oh no, (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh no, (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares if you don't like Gentoo or BSD or whatever? Just because someone else likes to run them doesn't make them an idiot. Pretty much any current Linux distro or BSD distro or any similar OS is going to get the same things done for you. They may do things in different ways, but ultimately they have fairly similar results. I'm not trying to devalue any viewpoints or systems here, but honestly there is no point in bitter, angry fighting over superior open source OS's because they are pretty much all way better than Windows.
I happen to like Gentoo, and I run it on some of my machines. But I also run RedHat and Mandrake and Mac OS X and I even have one Windows XP box. I don't particularly care about the alleged optimization in Gentoo, because there is no noticeable difference in speed between any recent distro I have run. What I do care about is the fact that it is highly customizable, fairly easy to use, and frankly pretty cool. The Portage system is a unique adaptation of BSD Ports and the similar Linux counterparts.
I fail to see how Debian is better than Gentoo. They are somewhat similar, and I wouldn't say that either is necessarily better. Of course, with Linux, it ultimately comes down to what is best for you. Either way, there is no way anyone can definitively say one is better. One could go on all day about the goodness of Debian, and I could throw that all out in my mind because I happen to not like how Debian feels and acts. Or I could just go by the simple fact that although initial installation of Gentoo can be more complex than that of Debian, Gentoo worked infinitely better with my hardware from the start. But all that demonstrates is that I like Gentoo better than Debian. It might be the case that I'm the only person that feels that way, and you know what, I would be fine with that.
What I am trying to say here is that we just need to try to be more tolerant here on Slashdot, and ultimately in all areas. Sure, we shouldn't tolerate an OS that is blatantly or hopelessly flawed, but I just don't see that describing Gentoo or any other OS that I have used recently. Go ahead and debate, go ahead and criticize, but realize that you can't really fault someone for their opinions.
I answer your question of why I run Gentoo: because I like it. I respect that you don't like it, if that is the case. I can see how many, if not most people would not like it at all. But I do like it and I am no "zealot." I wouldn't take a bullet for Gentoo, but I'll stick up for it if it is unfairly slammed. I am willing to see the flaws in my chosen distro. Are you?
Re:Oh no, (Score:4, Insightful)
I love the way Gentoo works, and I understand that there are many people who feel the same way I do. But keep it to yourself unless someone is specifically asking for advice on a distro to try. People are sick of hearing us push Gentoo at every freaking opportunity.
Re:Oh no, (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, for me it's easy to see. Debian has proper package management such as keeping track of dependecies. That's very important to me. For example, from the Gentoo portage docs [gentoo.org]:
So wi
Re:Oh no, (Score:4, Informative)
In general you have very few problems with this. Obviously removing glibc, pam, etc would break things and Gentoo doesn't protect you from that, yet. But how often do people start removing libs from a *nix box? I'd put people that do in the same category as those who like to "clean up all those little files in my C drive that are just sitting there."
The more likely scenario is upgrading something fairly important. The big one was the upgrade mysql from 3.x to 4.x which broke postfix, proftpd, php, and half a dozen other things if you have mysql support compiled in. portage doesn't re-emerge all the packages automatically though it does provide tools to help you fix it after you've broken it. Once they finish the reverse dependency which has been in the works for awhile this problem goes away.
kashani
Re:Oh no, (Score:4, Interesting)
So maybe if you just want a desktop and don't feel like compiling everything for over a week you can use a different distribution. But I've found Gentoo works well for servers.
In particular for busy servers that are co-located behind > 100MBps of bandwidth for database-backed sites: Every clock cycle helps!
Re:hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
The only reason I don't run Gentoo on my PPC is that the default install CD didn't recognize my Adaptec 2940 (? I think that's the card...?) that runs the only hard drive in my Power Tower (no snickering!). The PPC maintainer lamented having kernel panics related to SCSI drivers, so he decided to leave that out of the previous 1.4 release (though it's present in the 1.2 release...).
Go figure.
Re:Tanooki Mario? (Score:4, Funny)
I just thought it would be funny to make a Linux distro that turns into a solid rock statue when you look at it the wrong way.
Re:what about XFree86 and licensing issues? (Score:4, Informative)
They have their own release of 4.3 listed as current:
mediaman root # emerge xfree -p
These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
Calculating dependencies
[ebuild U ] x11-base/xfree-4.3.0-r5 [4.3.0-r3]
mediaman root #
Re:what about XFree86 and licensing issues? (Score:3, Informative)
On the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter [gentoo.org] they say:
Re:upgrade from 1.4... (Score:3, Informative)
So you are correct in thinking that the only thing you have to do in order to "upgrade" to 2004.0 is "emerge sync && emerge -pDu world".
As far as devfs goes, it gets the job done while udev is still VERY much in development. udev is fun to play with if nothing else, though.
Re:2004.0? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Funny)
$ genlop -t -s ".*" | grep total
merged totally 2191 ebuilds in 9 days, 14 hours, 52 minutes, and 40 seconds.
$ head -n 1
1059351074: Started emerge on: Jul 28, 2003 00:11:14
10 days in 7 months - that's 5% of available machine time spent compiling.
Assume the power used is 250W when compiling, 50W idling: 5% of (250W-50W) is 10W: that's a maximum of 20% extra power for a Gentoo machine over a Slackware box.
Some power will be saved by optimisations, but I doubt it'll be much.
counter.li.org estimates 18m Linux users. Say 1m Gentoo users have run Gentoo an average of 2 years. As is well known, one year is \pi*10^7seconds.
1 machine/user * 1*10^6 users * 2 years * 3.14*10^7 seconds/year * 10W/machine / 3.6*10^6kWh/W/s
equals 2*10^7 kWh, or 20,000MWh
In comparison, Sizewell (a medium-sized nuclear power station near London) produces 1188 MW, or 30,000 MWh/day.