Gentoo Linux?

[ncage]

Anyone how has used gentoo know that they can build thier system from Stage1 and highly optimize their system. Well it looks like they have taken the Stage1/Stage2 portions of the docs out of the handbook and still offer stage1/stage2 download but neither document it nor support it. Does anyone wondering why in the world they did this? This one of the reasons i loved gentoo. Maybe its time to swithc distros.

 

[ncage]

Ok is anyone wondering why i use gentoo. Here goes:
1) Awesome packaging system like debian
2) Everything is pretty much up to date (Reason i hate debian, everything is so freakn old and its a pain to install some software because of that eventhough debian is damm stable).
3) Highly customize your system (well at least you use to be able to with Stage1).

 

[oog]

the installation notes now talk about starting with stage 3, but doing an emerge -e system to make sure that you've rebuilt all of the basic tools with the settings you want. i suspect that you end up with the same thing.

 

[Hyperblaze]

Gentoo is really not all that bad. It's my favorite linux distro. However, after all the pain I went through getting apache2/php5/mysql to work together, freebsd seems like a much friendly option. And to those of my friends who have both tried linux and freebsd, they ask me why i'm still using linux.

 

[Nothinman]

Does anyone wondering why in the world they did this?

Probably because they realized that the 'highly optimized' crap is just that, crap.

1) Awesome packaging system like debian

The package system is nothing like the one in Debian.

2) Everything is pretty much up to date (Reason i hate debian, everything is so freakn old and its a pain to install some software because of that eventhough debian is damm stable).

Debian sarge and sid are pretty much up to date, I can think of a few things lagging behind but they're minor IMO.

3) Highly customize your system (well at least you use to be able to with Stage1).

Yea and when you decide you want to use ALSA instead of OSS you now have to recompile 1/3 of your packages, yay.

 

[GeekDrew]

IIRC, they did it because there were tons of people asking for help with stage1 and stage2, so they now want those that cannot handle that by themselves to stick to stage3.

I've never bothered with stages 1 or 2, myself... I've installed gentoo a couple of times, when I felt sufficiently bored. Most recently, a few days ago. <shrug>

I prefer Ubuntu... yes, I could manually compile & reconfigure everything by using gentoo... but I really don't care that much. You can still customize Ubuntu to do whatever you want, it just gets you up and running faster. I don't really understand the argument about why I need to be concerned about the supposed 'optimization benefits' that gentoo will give me... especially when I'm running an Athlon XP 1800+ w/ 1 GB RAM. No, it's not the latest and greatest, but Ubuntu runs plenty fast for me. If this were a mission-critical server, or something that was going to be used by the public (read: someone more than myself), I might give a crap about optimization. As it is... nope!

 

[gruven]

They still have stage 1 and stage 2 documentation available, there is a link from the stage selection page on how to do it.

IMO, doing a stage 3 and then, after getting everything like you like it do an emerge -e system && emerge -e system.

That will optimize everything to your liking, and be no different than what a stage 1 will do.

The reasoning behind going with only a stage 3 for the main docs (besides all of the support questions) is that when you do a stage 1 or 2 is that your toolchain isn't complete (from what I have read, I never had any problems with it). But anyway, I did a stage 3 for my past 2 installs, and I am really liking it better. You can still optimize (not that the optimizations were that great on new hardware anyway) and you still have a very stable system.

I don't run gentoo because of the optimizations, I run gentoo because of the ease of administration, the support forums, and I don't mind waiting for things to compile.

Another question though. Why all the distro hate? (mainly between debian and gentoo) What is wrong with different people liking different things? I always thought choice was a good thing? I have tried them both, and just prefer gentoo. Nothing against debian, it is a great distro.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: gruven
They still have stage 1 and stage 2 documentation available, there is a link from the stage selection page on how to do it.

IMO, doing a stage 3 and then, after getting everything like you like it do an emerge -e system && emerge -e system.

Why do that twice?

Another question though. Why all the distro hate? (mainly between debian and gentoo) What is wrong with different people liking different things? I always thought choice was a good thing? I have tried them both, and just prefer gentoo. Nothing against debian, it is a great distro.

Nothinman's jealous of all the attention !Debian distros get.

 

[oog]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: gruven
They still have stage 1 and stage 2 documentation available, there is a link from the stage selection page on how to do it.

IMO, doing a stage 3 and then, after getting everything like you like it do an emerge -e system && emerge -e system.

Why do that twice?

My guess is so that your toolset was built with exactly the same toolset -- it's a common practice in bootstrapping.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: oog

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: gruven
They still have stage 1 and stage 2 documentation available, there is a link from the stage selection page on how to do it.

IMO, doing a stage 3 and then, after getting everything like you like it do an emerge -e system && emerge -e system.

Why do that twice?

My guess is so that your toolset was built with exactly the same toolset -- it's a common practice in bootstrapping.

I thought gcc recompiles itself with itself somewhere in the middle of the process.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: oog

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: gruven
They still have stage 1 and stage 2 documentation available, there is a link from the stage selection page on how to do it.

IMO, doing a stage 3 and then, after getting everything like you like it do an emerge -e system && emerge -e system.

Why do that twice?

My guess is so that your toolset was built with exactly the same toolset -- it's a common practice in bootstrapping.

I thought gcc recompiles itself with itself somewhere in the middle of the process.

That would happen in the very beginning of a 'stage 1' install. You would have a small chroot enviroment that would compile and install GCC and related GNU userland tools.

Basicly you download the generic Gentoo Gcc compiler, compiled your own 'optimized' one, then used that to build uber-optimized programs. Or something like that.

I don't know if it's changed any. I haven't used gentoo in a long time.

 

[Nothinman]

Nothinman's jealous of all the attention !Debian distros get.

Not really, Ubuntu's been getting all of the attention recently and what's good for Ubuntu is good for Debian. So far anyway.

 

[DasFox]

You can also go with the "Installer" I have installed Gentoo twice reading through all the DOCs to install. This might be great for those newer to Linux trying to learn and understand this approach and what Linux Administration is all about, but when you've been running Linux for years I see no point to it, other then getting it installed as painlessly as possible.

So next time I consider slapping in Gentoo I'll give this installer a try. ncage you might want to try it too.

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/installer/

 

[gruven]

Yeah, you do an emerge -e system twice because the first time it builds the compiler and the toolchain, and the next time it rebuilds everything with the optimized compiler and toolchain. Basically, it is for stability within the toolchain and to make sure everything is built with a correct toolchain (that is the way I understood it).

It only took me about 6 hours to do an emerge -e system && emerge -e system from within a desktop environment. You can also do an emerge -e world to recompile your world files, but they will get recompiled with updates so that isn't exactly necessary.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: gruven
Yeah, you do an emerge -e system twice because the first time it builds the compiler and the toolchain, and the next time it rebuilds everything with the optimized compiler and toolchain. Basically, it is for stability within the toolchain and to make sure everything is built with a correct toolchain (that is the way I understood it).

It only took me about 6 hours to do an emerge -e system && emerge -e system from within a desktop environment. You can also do an emerge -e world to recompile your world files, but they will get recompiled with updates so that isn't exactly necessary.

I was just confused because gcc is supposed to do that anyways. Maybe the rest of the parts of the system don't.

 

[DasFox]

gruven so running a Stage3 install then afterwards running 'emerge -e system' would be just the samething as doing a Stage1 install? If thats true then I'll do that then, I just want to make sure the entire system is compiled.

THANKS

 

[DasFox]

Originally posted by: DasFox
gruven so running a Stage3 install then afterwards running 'emerge -e system' would be just the samething as doing a Stage1 install? If thats true then I'll do that then, I just want to make sure the entire system is compiled.

THANKS

Well?

 

[Nothinman]

I just want to make sure the entire system is compiled.

Any particular reason why you want to waste all of those CPU cycles?

 

[oog]

I don't believe that EVERYTHING will be recompiled with the emerge -e system. Just the toolchain. You could try an emerge --newuse world to see if anything in your world file needs to be recompiled after your USE flags were changed. I'm not sure what is a better way of finding out what else may not have been recompiled.

 

[DasFox]

Hmm I had some people on the Freenode IRC server for #gentoo tell me this would. Oh well, I might be tempted to slap Gentoo in again later, but I tell ya all these auto, ports, emerge, apt gets this, that, auto systems, drives me wacky trying to figure them out, that's why I've always been coming back to Slackware.

Slackware package management

3 Commands: installpkg, removepkg, upgradepkg

Now if that isn't simplicity I don't know what is, LOL

 

[Nothinman]

Slackware package management

3 Commands: installpkg, removepkg, upgradepkg

Now if that isn't simplicity I don't know what is, LOL

If that's all you're worried about doing that equates to 2 commands on Debian. 'apt-get install' and 'apt-get remove' since install will upgrade a package if it's already installed.

 

[DasFox]

I've run Debian, there is alot more to it then just that for the package management. Now granted if we are going to get into just the commands here, yes Debian has a few, but in Debian there are other things that make up the management. Understanding what is there for the apt system and how this works, dealing with mirrors getting source and installing, etc.. not to mention among other things, with different Ncurses tools to configure X and services, etc...

I guess I should of mentioned in my post: "Slackware management simplicity, there is none simpler"

That's what I was meaning, sorry not just the commands

 

[Nothinman]

You're blowing it way out of proportion. You don't have to worry about mirrors because the default sources.list will work fine, you don't have to deal with any sources unless you want/need to compile something not packaged by Debian. And the tools to configure X are run automatically when you install an X server and if you want you don't have to use them at all, you can do it manually like you would have to do in Slack if you want.

 

[Sunner]

Slackware package management is a major PITA compared to Debian.
Yeah yeah, UNIX "simplicity" and all that, I like that for some things, but for mundane tasks such as installing a new version of package xyz I can do just fine with something more "fancy", such as APT, and spend the time saved doing something more worthwhile.

 

[DasFox]

I'm don't really lean towards any distro they all have their pros and cons, I say just use what works for you, most them are pretty decent.

Nothinman, I used Debian for quite some time, I'm very familar with it. I've run all the big name distros and then some.