Gentoo

[Patrick]

There was a discussion on the BCLUG list about Gentoo and offered my
opinion that I'd like to share with you:

I've read your posts regarding Gentoo and like to chime in. I just did a
Gentoo install on a spare harddrive to see how's it progressed since I
tried it last (about 2 years ago). My install was on a fairly new 2.4 ghz
machine with 512meg ram. I did a stage 3 install that took about 2.5
hours. That was just a barebone base install. I then installed kde (w/107
dependencies) which took 24 hours to compile. Was there a speed
difference? A little. Is the slight speed bump worth the extra effort/time
than just installing a package? For me, no. IMHO Gentoo is not a suitable
desktop distro. It's fine as a server. I can't be constantly compiling. I
need to able to use my machine when I need it. If you want a desktop
distro go with Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu, Mepis, Mandriva, Fedora, etc..
Packages make life much easier. Why reinvent the wheel?

I'm going to hopefully talk about this tonight on the show for a bit.

[Judland]

My wife would kill me if I tied up our PC for 24 hours.

[dstate]

My wife would kill me if I tied up our PC for 24 hours.

24 hours? kiddin me? you two would be too old and gray to care by the time it got done

[mrben]

I compiled KDE full on a PIII 500Mhz with 64MB RAM and it took 11 days to complete. With nothing else happening on that machine, and with all the packages pre-downloaded.

[Ryochan7]

I compiled KDE full on a PIII 500Mhz with 64MB RAM and it took 11 days to complete. With nothing else happening on that machine, and with all the packages pre-downloaded.

LOL. Why did you try compiling KDE on that type of machine? That is insane and awesome at the same time. Compiling all the dependencies for KDE is one of the longest processes in Gentoo. I hate every time that I have to compile the KDE libraries for compatability with some KDE applications on Fluxbox. I don't really have a problem taking the time to compile most other apps or libraries.

[Ashley]

I'm a Gentoo user. There, I've said it. I don't much like apt-get or RPM or anything else I've tried quite as much as I like Gentoo's Portage. I can't really describe why, it's just personal preference.

I'm using a P4 2.26 for my desktop, and compile times are really horrible. I mean _really_ horrible. Admittedly, Gnome took only a couple of hours when I compiled it (Fluxbox compiled in an instant), but waiting for an application to compile that I wanted to use on a whim gets a little frustrating. On the bright side (Being a Fedora refugee), it's time I can spend reading a book, checking my email or making a sandwich, as opposed to hunting down RPM dependancies or something. :-P

As for Gentoo on a server, I entirely disagree. I have had no experience with it, but if you need a patch and/or update urgently, the last thing you want is to have your server unavailable or unresponsive while you compile some damn thing or another. I can see where other distributions get their shine in this department.

I've really yet to delve into Slackware or Debian and have a fiddle around. Maybe it's just I like Gentoo because it's familiar to me. I'm in no hurry for my browser to compile either way. :-)

[DaveQB]

On the bright side (Being a Fedora refugee), it's time I can spend reading a book, checking my email or making a sandwich, as opposed to hunting down RPM dependancies or something.

Never thought of it that way, i like the analogy. But i think i will stick with Mandrake/Mandriva. Its treated me well.

As for Gentoo on a server, I entirely disagree. I have had no experience with it, but if you need a patch and/or update urgently, the last thing you want is to have your server unavailable or unresponsive while you compile some damn thing or another. I can see where other distributions get their shine in this department.

This is quite true. I have heard from alot of Gentoo users, its a desktop distro and thats it.

[Ashley]

Ah, a friend of mine uses Mandriva and was ecstatic when I had trouble with a certain package that he could urp up. Now there'll be no end to him telling me how much better Mandrake is. >_<

[DaveQB]

Hahaha
To each their own. I just love what Mandrakelinux is doing to make Linux more apealing to new users. The Mandrake Control Center is unrivalled on any other Distro in both look and usability for a GUI system admin tool; basic things like service control, partition management and network sharing to name a few.

PS I am making an HTML page with screenshots to show this off

[*Legion*]

I used Gentoo for a few years. Still have it on a personal file server.

A couple things...

1) For big packages like KDE, GNOME, xorg, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc, Gentoo offers precompiled binaries. Sounds like a lot of people didn't pay close enough attention. Hint: GRP

2) The appeal of Gentoo isn't compiling for speed. It's having a crapload of packages available without having to hunt down 10 different external 3rd party repositories like some distros. If you want it, it's almost certainly in Portage. I've been pleased with Ubuntu's offerings once you enable "universe" and "multiverse", but even still, it falls short of Gentoo's package offerings.[/url]

[DaveQB]

Your tempting me to give ti a try

I am using Kubuntu on my laptop. Not bad, but like you say, even after enabling Universe and mutliverse it still falls short of Mandrakes offerings aswell

[*Legion*]

There's a lot of manual configuration to do in Gentoo, but if you're an experienced user, that can be a real plus.

I have not been able to permanently shift away from Gentoo since I started it. I keep trying other distros, and I keep slinking back to it.

[Patrick]

1) For big packages like KDE, GNOME, xorg, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc, Gentoo offers precompiled binaries. Sounds like a lot of people didn't pay close enough attention. Hint: GRP

2) The appeal of Gentoo isn't compiling for speed. It's having a crapload of packages available without having to hunt down 10 different external 3rd party repositories like some distros. If you want it, it's almost certainly in Portage. I've been pleased with Ubuntu's offerings once you enable "universe" and "multiverse", but even still, it falls short of Gentoo's package offerings.

1) Yes, certain people are aware that pre-compiled packages available. Certain people did mention them during the discussion. Doesn't using pre-compiled packages on Gentoo negate the 'so-called' advantage of compiling on your own system? You might as well use a package based system such as Slackware, Ubuntu or Fedora, etc..?? At least the install won't take 3 days with those systems.

2) Yes, their repository is fairly complete. I still think apt-get should be the default GNU/Linux package management system.

I'm looking to put together a 64-bit system in the next few months. I'm looking to do music recording and some fairly heavy video editing. My options for the OS are Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse or Gentoo. Suse costs $100 and is supposedly a little on the bloated side. A lot of the audio people seem to favor Fedora. I might give Gentoo another shot on a dual Opteron based system with 2 gig of memory. Maybe KDE will compile quicker than the 24 hours it took on my 2.4 ghz machine?

[houze]

I've been using Gentoo for three years.
Been using macs since right after 10.1release.

I think gentoo strongest feature is NOT optimized binaries.
It's the flexibility in the USE flags.

Trivial examples:
I don't emerge k3b with encode flag, because it pulls would then depend on lame sox transcode and vcdimager.
I like the simple ide for python called IDLE. emerging python with tcltk flag builds IDLE.

Good examples:
Building gaim without evolution data server support, thereby not depending on a bunch of gnome packages.
If you have >=512MB ram, for the love of all that is holy, turn on the KDEENABLEFINAL flag to speed up compilation of KDE.

I did a stage1 install on a HP laptop with an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU and 512MB ram.

My compile times

tcltk flag causes python to pull in tcl tk packages which then pull in xorg.
Which isn't done during installation by default.
I think I didn't load modules necessary to get full speed cpu until part of the way through building system packages.

Code: Select all

USE="-tcltk" emerge -pe system  | genlop --pretend
Estimated update time: 3 hours, 33 minutes.

Xorg adds hour and half.

Code: Select all

emerge -pe xorg-x11 | genlop --pretend
Estimated update time: 4 hours, 50 minutes.

Kdebase includes everything needed to start using kde.
konqueror, kicker, control-center, etc.

Code: Select all

emerge -pev kdebase-meta | genlop --pretend
Estimated update time: 9 hours, 9 minutes.

After building xorg it's only four hours and 19 minutes before I can start KDE.
I picked and choosed other kde packages including: kicker-applets,kdirstat,ksensors,kdict,kview,kuickshow,kaboodle,ksnapshot,kmix,noatun,klaptopdaemon,kget,kghostview,ark,juk,kpdf,and kdf.

Code: Select all

grep kde /var/lib/portage/world | xargs emerge -pev | genlop --pretend
Estimated update time: 11 hours, 49 minutes.

That added another 2.5 hours of compiling, but I'm pretty sure I was using the computer at that time.

So if you don't want or need kmail, kde-games, etc. taking up HD space. It's quite possible to go to sleep and wake up to a functional K Desktop .

Rebuilding my entire world file, which would be ridiculous, is estimated at 18hours 26 minutes. Still well less than 24 hours.

[houze]

Some complie times on my destop for monolithic kde 3.3.2 ebuilds.

* x11-libs/qt
merge time: 34 minutes and 26 seconds.

* kde-base/kdelibs
merge time: 33 minutes and 57 seconds.

* kde-base/kdebase
merge time: 42 minutes and 31 seconds.

* kde-base/kdepim
merge time: 38 minutes and 2 seconds.

* kde-base/kdemultimedia
merge time: 23 minutes and 32 seconds.

* kde-base/kdeaddons
merge time: 10 minutes and 40 seconds.

* kde-base/kdeutils
merge time: 9 minutes and 31 seconds.

The GRP packages have "static" use flags dependent on what the gentoo devs built.