How often does gentoo have breakage (small or large) after updates/upgrades/emerges

[Infohawk]

I'm a Debian user. I've been doing research changing distros. I know some of you will try to convince me Debian is still for me but here's my reasons: I'm tired of the update cycle of unstable / testing and stable is too old. Here's an example of what happens when I apt-get upgrade. Gnome moves to 2.6 (yes, a big move) and gnome is broken for a while. I update sysvinit and some other packages all of a sudden my acpi laptop won't turn itself off. Another time, gnucash wouldn't start because another library was updated and gnucash couldn't handle it. Sure, I can fix these things. But I'm getting tired of doing it. I actually do have work to do and I'm beyond using linux as a hobby distro.

My last thread on documentation showed a lot of support for Gentoo. So now I want to ask a followup question to you Gentoo users about breakage (large or small). I'm assuming a lot of you will say there is no breakage or very little. If you argue this, please say how this is so. I don't necessarily blame the debian breakage on debian, but on the upstream suppliers of code. It seems like Gentoo, like unstable, tends to be cutting edge and hence to be naturally prone to breakage.

Right now, I really think the roughly six-month fedora mandrake cycle is nice. Sure, when you upgrade or re-install the latest version things go wrong but you only have to do this every six months and you always have reasonable recent packages. For me it seems like a trade-off and a spectrum of stability and age. Am I wrong when it comes to gentoo?

 

[SUOrangeman]

I'm currently using Gentoo because I needed a 2.6 kernel *at install* so that I could access my hard drives to actually do the install. If it weren't for that, I'd still be using KNOPPIX (which still doesn't support my SATA controller out-of-the-box) installed to my hard drive as a bleeding-edge Debian. I think the default (err, unmasked) ebuilds for Gentoo are fairly devoid of any breakage. However, once you start adding masked ebuilds (i.e., the latest Gnome 2.6/2.7 or whatever), you will likely see some breakage.

The only problem I have with Gentoo is effective upgrading with those masked packages. I'm up to kernel 2.6.5, KDE 3.2 (if not later) and Gnome 2.6. With emerge --upgradeonly system/world, only the truly safe, unmasked packages will be updated. The more "dangerous" packages I've added aren't updated from a general command. I have to find them and update them individually. I *think* I could add them to some packages.world file or something, but I'd prefer a much more automagic way.

-SUO

 

[Sunner]

When I used Gentoo, I'd say the breakage was roughly as common as in Debian/Unstable.
I used to update pretty much every day, but didn't run ~arch.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: SUOrangeman
I'm currently using Gentoo because I needed a 2.6 kernel *at install* so that I could access my hard drives to actually do the install. If it weren't for that, I'd still be using KNOPPIX (which still doesn't support my SATA controller out-of-the-box) installed to my hard drive as a bleeding-edge Debian. I think the default (err, unmasked) ebuilds for Gentoo are fairly devoid of any breakage. However, once you start adding masked ebuilds (i.e., the latest Gnome 2.6/2.7 or whatever), you will likely see some breakage.

The only problem I have with Gentoo is effective upgrading with those masked packages. I'm up to kernel 2.6.5, KDE 3.2 (if not later) and Gnome 2.6. With emerge --upgradeonly system/world, only the truly safe, unmasked packages will be updated. The more "dangerous" packages I've added aren't updated from a general command. I have to find them and update them individually. I *think* I could add them to some packages.world file or something, but I'd prefer a much more automagic way.

-SUO

Well if you can install Gentoo using 2.6 then you can install Debian, too.

Debian has a core tarball distro that you can use to copy over to your harddrive and untar. Then you chroot and do all the Gentoo-like goodness, but modified for Debian.

Basicly you boot up in whatever CD you want. Download the base system in tarball form untar it, chroot over to it, and then go thru the steps of setting up the OS. Modifiing the /etc/fstab, setting up network, etc etc. Then you set up the /etc/apt/sources.list file to use sources from Debian unstable. Then apt-get update, apt-get upgrade and then your now ruinning. Install the newest 2.6 kernel and then your in like flint.

Of course this isn't the "official way" this is the Drag: "I am feed up with downloading cdrom images and now I don't care no more" way. It's how I installed my current debian setup.

The only real sucky part was that the /etc/inittab was setup in "first boot" mode and since I upgraded to sid before I actually booted it up and it was broken. I don't remember what I had to edit to get that to work, that was irritating. And then I had to do a dpkg-reconfigure passwd to set up shadow passwords.

The official way to install debian from another Linux/unix system is to use the debian boot strap file.

You can find directions on how to do that here

This is probably a much better way. Never used it though.


As for updating, for Gentoo and Debian I do it the same way. I do it once or twice every week. Do it too often you run into lots of little issues that get fixed quickly by the package mantainers all the time, and you waste bandwidth. Do it too little and you run into problems because the transition is to much to get easily thru.

BTW Debian unstable is using Gnome 2.6 now, but is still using XFree86 stuff. X doesn't change very often with Debian.

 

[Nothinman]

If Debian unstable breakage is too much for you install apt-listbugs and review the open bugs before upgrading, that's how I avoid problems.

 

[groovin]

my vote was in regards to how my home workstation has been... i upgrade about once a month (that is do a full system update).

at work, I run a couple gentoo workstations and a handful of gentoo servers. I am much more conservative on how I handle the servers and have never had a breakage on any of them (but, as I mentioned, I am much more conservative and research things much more thoroughly).

all of the breakages on my workstation were minor and easily fixed because of some great posts on forums.gentoo.org. many of these breakages wont happen again because i will be more careful about them in the future.

gentoo can be very stable if you want it to be.

 

[xcript]

Originally posted by: groovin
gentoo can be very stable if you want it to be.

Yup.

I update fairly regularly (ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86") and I rarely have breakage occur.

Just don't auto merge configuration updates and all will be well.

 

[groovin]

Originally posted by: xcript

Just don't auto merge configuration updates and all will be well.

exactly! i also always do emerge -U system so i dont backwards update anything...

 

[SUOrangeman]

Well if you can install Gentoo using 2.6 then you can install Debian, too.

drag -

I used to run Debian before I found KNOPPIX. **IF** I had to full support needed for my hardware built into the shipping kernels, I would probably still be running a Debian flavor today.

However, I've only found that Gentoo and later versions of RedHat/Fedora/Mandrake are the only distros that recognize my Promise SATA 150TX4 controller. All fo my hard drives are connected to this controller. I've been around Linux for a few years now, starting with RedHat (say, version 5 or so), migrating to Mandrake when they really started to distance themselves from RH, discovering Debian ... fighting my way through that first install. Came across KNOPPIX a year or so ago and thought I had the last distro I'd ever need. And then I upgraded to SATA. (BTW, I run several RH8 machines in a secure environment at work, so not all of my Linux exposure is based on a hobby.)

To date, Promise has only released source code for 2.4.x drivers and the support for the controller **MUST** be built into the kernel in order for me to access my drives. So, if I cannot even see my hard drives, I can't complete the first step of your post:

"Debian has a core tarball distro that you can use to copy over to your harddrive and untar."

Needless to say, I am grateful for Gentoo which allowed me to go straight to 2.6 without ever having to look back.

-SUO

 

[drag]

Whatever floats your boat. Gentoo is a great OS, too.

 

[MovingTarget]

Gentoo is a great OS, but I recently had such a breakage. I had tried to emerge the latest version of Openoffice (I had been using for quite some time by then) and somehow the data stream became corrupted. (yeah, my connection sucks) It took a couple of tries to finally get it to a point where it would compile, but I got an error during that process as well. This locked up the machine. After trying it again, I got another error only to find out I had no room left on my home partition /hda3. I had over a gig left of storage on that drive partition (I was using JFS if that matters) and now its up to 100% usage. I know for a fact Openoffice shouldn't leave me without any space on my drive (as I had checked to confirm this before I emerged the first time). Problem is, I can't find where all the files went during the compile so I can delete them. This is the only kind of thing I've run into. If I could just find that location or directory, I could delete it and be on my merry way. Otherwise I have high marks for Gentoo. This is most likely Pebkac.