I have to recommend Gentoo for anyone who doesn't mind learning internal workings. Binary OS have too many problems with application availability, and while Gentoo adds some new scary issues (such as forseeing what programs you want to install a few hours in advance), it's at least a step in the right direction.
I second the Gentoo motion. Gentoo teaches you much. For years my fascination with Linux was largely that I was attracted to the Philosophy driving it, and as I sincerely had a hard time reading man pages (call it a form of dyslexia), I could never run a linux box without help. Until I met Gentoo. Doing the simplest upgrade of Apache+PHP, I spent hours HOURS learning about the emerge system because PHP is considered experimental and recent releases are all kinds of INTENTIONALLY complicated, in order to keep newbies from breaking their system by installing PHP. Well I needed the most recent PHP because of object-oriented and PDO improvements. Anyway, long story short: A few painful days with Gentoo taught me more about Linux than years of tinkering. It was painful, painful indeed, but now I have a sense of what's happening under the hood with Linux, and that's worth its weight in gold. Now that I "get" it, Gentoo is a breeze, and if Gentoo is a breeze, what's next? Slackware? That used to be the 'hard' one. Is it still difficult? Course, all of this is because I don't like Kubuntu politics, and thus I'm still on topic. -Jared
I also am a gentoo user, exclusively. Gentoo just rocks, plain and simple. It sucks using a distro that uses lowest common denominator hardware i686 binaries and bloated packages built will all the options turned on. Then there is the problem with waiting for someone to build a new package to fix a bug, security vulnerability, or add a new feature. Gentoo package patches are available at a much faster rate, and you build it yourself so no waiting for someone to build it for you. Plus, there is nothing like compiling a system with compiler options specific to your hardware to eek out that little extra performance and USE flags to build only the features you want in each package. Gentoo is also a fluid distro, meaning you always have the latest version, just emerge and go. When they do release a new version, just link to the new portage profile and emerge -avuDN and bam, your at the new version. Granted, sometimes packages break on upgrade. However, it doesn't break your system or bring you down. Your still using the old package. Just wait a few days and resync portage and a new package is usually available to fix the problem. However, sometimes the dependency checker doesn't do as good a job as it should, and you end up having to emerge specific packages before others. However, its all out there in the forums. A little research with a search engine query is usually all that is needed. No system is perfect, but for me, Gentoo's qualities far out weight its weaknesses. Have you tried Gentoo lately?
On Friday 05 January 2007 09:39, Jeremy Fowler wrote:
I also am a gentoo user, exclusively. Gentoo just rocks, plain and simple. It sucks using a distro that uses lowest common denominator hardware i686 binaries and bloated packages built will all the options turned on.
Yet the performance and space requirements aren't significantly different given today's hardware capabilities. The main advantage is the knowledge that you've tweaked that last microsecond out out of the system.
Then there is the problem with waiting for someone to build a new package to fix a bug, security vulnerability, or add a new feature.
True whether the package is in portage or RPM. Just as easy (or hard) to fix yourself either way.
Gentoo package patches are available at a much faster rate....
I would agree, if you include the patches/fixes for bonehead packaging mistakes that I encounter regularly. Otherwise, if you know where to get them you can do as well with Mandriva, and probably with *buntu.
, and you build it yourself so no waiting for someone to build it for you.
You don't actually build it yourself, from the original source tarball. 99% of the people who run gentoo simply do "emerge <package>". That doesn't require, or generate any knowledge that "urpmi <package>" doesn't. If the package in portage is screwed up, it's no different than if an RPM has a problem - most people wait for the fix to be packaged and distributed.
Gentoo is also a fluid distro, meaning you always have the latest version,
Binary distros are getting better and better at updating and backporting, but the price you pay with Gentoo is that you have to spend significant time every few days updating everything, and you have to constantly tweak and check things, work out the bugs when they change something like the init system or devfs, or just do clean installs like you would with another distro. My last two Mandriva updates were simply a matter of pointing to the new repository and doing an update. A few issues to work out, but nothing like the weekly hair-pulling Gentoo causes. As far as Gentoo breaking your system or bringing you down with a broken package, if that package is part of the base system it sure will. I've seen more than one system knocked off-line by a failed update to part of the networking system. Once you're off-line, it's a real challenge to fix. I've only once had a problem with an RPM killing something by not handling the config files correctly. They intelligently save existing and new config files by default. Gentoo requires intervention for EACH updated config file if you're not going to risk something taking you off line.
Just wait a few days and resync portage and a new package is usually available to fix the problem.
At first glance, this seems like a real asset to a gentoo system. After a few experiences with it though, you realize that other distros don't release the broken package in the first place.
No system is perfect, but for me, Gentoo's qualities far out weight its weaknesses.
Not for me. For me, gentoo requires too much time be spent tinkering, and not enough time available to get work done with the system.
Yet the performance and space requirements aren't significantly different given today's hardware capabilities. The main advantage is the knowledge that you've tweaked that last microsecond out out of the system.
Well, the performance could be quite significant when using gcc options that utilize a processor's latest and greatest instruction sets. Utilizing SSE, SSE2, SSE3, MMX, 3D-Now, etc.. can greatly increase a application's performance. When SSE4 processors come down the pipe, you can bet as soon as gcc is patched to make use of the instructions, Gentoo will be there with a new gcc ebuild. It will be masked until its thoroughly tested, but it will be there for all to try out. Then there is compiling all your packages to utilize the latest 64-bit processors. How many Distros out there are fully AMDx64? How much longer do you have to wait for an x64 package update to be available?
You don't actually build it yourself, from the original source tarball. 99% of the people who run Gentoo simply do "emerge <package>". That doesn't require, or generate any knowledge that "urpmi <package>" doesn't. If the package in portage is screwed up, it's no different than if an RPM has a problem - most people wait for the fix to be packaged and distributed.
Actually you do. Downloading the source tarball, patching, configuring, building and installing is exactly what emerge <package> does. It builds from source using your system specific option specified in make.conf and /etc/portage. Learning what those options can do and experimenting with your system is a very educational experience and a lot of fun.
Binary distros are getting better and better at updating and backporting, but the price you pay with Gentoo is that you have to spend significant time every few days updating everything, and you have to constantly tweak and check things, work out the bugs when they change something like the init system or devfs, or just do clean installs like you would with another distro.
...and you don't have to update packages every few days on any other distro? There are bug fixes and security patches released for hundreds of applications every week. If you just let your system go stale and not do any updating, you are just asking for trouble. Those problems you mention are not just specific to Gentoo. Anytime you change something on any system you run the risk of breaking something else. That is just a law of life.
As far as Gentoo breaking your system or bringing you down with a broken package, if that package is part of the base system it sure will. I've seen more than one system knocked off-line by a failed update to part of the networking system. Once you're off-line, it's a real challenge to fix.
How is that possible? Portage will only install a package after its been built completely and without errors. If the new package is acting up, just remove it (emerge -C <package>) and reinstall the old one (emerge =<package>.<version>).
I've only once had a problem with an RPM killing something by not handling the config files correctly. They intelligently save existing and new config files by default. Gentoo requires intervention for EACH updated config file if you're not going to risk something taking you off line.
Gentoo never writes over any protected config files. The new config file is saved and left for you to decide what to do with it. That is exactly what the etc-update tool is for. It scans for new config files, compares them to the old ones, auto merges the simple little changes and give you a list of config files it can't automerge. You then use etc-update to display the differences, and either delete the new config, replace the old one with the new, or merge the two together. That utility is a huge time saver when having to merge in changes to config files.
On Friday 05 January 2007 09:12, Jared wrote:
Until I met Gentoo. Doing the simplest upgrade of Apache+PHP, I spent hours HOURS learning about the emerge system because PHP is considered experimental and recent releases are all kinds of INTENTIONALLY complicated, in order to keep newbies from breaking their system by installing PHP.
The nice thing about Mandriva (and Fedora for that matter) is that installing PHP doesn't break anything. Even if you're a newbie. It just works.
On Friday 05 January 2007 11:28, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
On Friday 05 January 2007 09:12, Jared wrote:
Until I met Gentoo. Doing the simplest upgrade of Apache+PHP, I spent hours HOURS learning about the emerge system because PHP is considered experimental and recent releases are all kinds of INTENTIONALLY complicated, in order to keep newbies from breaking their system by installing PHP.
The nice thing about Mandriva (and Fedora for that matter) is that installing PHP doesn't break anything. Even if you're a newbie. It just works.
He said an experimental PHP version. You probably *can't* get that for Mandriva/Fedora without manually compiling source.
On Friday 05 January 2007 11:40, Luke -Jr wrote:
He said an experimental PHP version. You probably *can't* get that for Mandriva/Fedora without manually compiling source.
So what's the difference between manually compiling it on Gentoo and manually building the RPM on Mandriva? (Other than all the advantages of having it in the RPM database.)
On Friday 05 January 2007 11:52, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
On Friday 05 January 2007 11:40, Luke -Jr wrote:
He said an experimental PHP version. You probably *can't* get that for Mandriva/Fedora without manually compiling source.
So what's the difference between manually compiling it on Gentoo and manually building the RPM on Mandriva? (Other than all the advantages of having it in the RPM database.)
You probably don't have to manually compile it on Gentoo. Chances are it's already there and just masked.
On Friday 05 January 2007 11:56, Luke -Jr wrote:
So what's the difference between manually compiling it on Gentoo and manually building the RPM on Mandriva?
You probably don't have to manually compile it on Gentoo. Chances are it's already there and just masked.
Binary distros usually have developmental repositories for things like that as well. Mandriva's Cooker repositories are a good example. I don't agree that more is available for Gentoo than for binary distros. If packages are available sooner, it's due to the tendency of RPM packagers to actually install them and see if they run before releasing the package. An additional point of binary packages, in particular RPM's, is that projects like PHP will often make the binaries of their current release available directly on their site. Haven't seen any independent portage packages yet.
A quick update on my upgrade delimna. I burned to CDs yesterday - one for kubuntu 6.1 and one for ubuntu 6.1. I tested the kubuntu CD at work by installing it on one of my spare workstations. Worked flawlessly. Took CDs home. Tarred and gzipped the home directory on my Linux workstation. Copied those files to my laptop. Slapped the CD in the CD drive and restarted. Nothing - wouldn't boot (which was odd because this same CD worked while I was at work). Powered off the workstation and tried again - still wouldn't boot from CD. Powered down and reviewed the BIOS - first boot option was CD. Tried again - no luck. So, since the last time I had to install an OS on this workstation, my CD drive has died. Now I've got to scrounge one up and install it. In the meantime, I attempted to upgrade FC4 to FC5 using yum. Everything was going well until it got stuck because it had exhausted all available mirrors or something (forgot to right to error message down - will check it again when I get home). Thanks for all the suggestions. I think I will stay with ubuntu because it's really for my daughter, who is an artist, not a techie. Later, Jon --- Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins@tarcanfel.org> wrote:
On Friday 05 January 2007 09:12, Jared wrote:
Until I met Gentoo. Doing the simplest upgrade of Apache+PHP, I spent hours HOURS learning about the emerge system because PHP is considered experimental and recent releases are all kinds of INTENTIONALLY complicated, in order to keep newbies from breaking their system by installing PHP.
The nice thing about Mandriva (and Fedora for that matter) is that installing PHP doesn't break anything. Even if you're a newbie. It just works. _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
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It's interesting that "artist" was mentioned. I have resorted to using wine for art programs on linux. One of those programs which i have come to love because of the freedom (not free, but free to draw/paint) is ArtRage. Wonderfull program, a free version and the pay version is only 20.00. That brings me to my next question, outside of gimp, are there other "artistic" programs for linux that compares to the quality of art programs on windows? _________________________________________________________________ Fixing up the home? Live Search can help http://imagine-windowslive.com/search/kits/default.aspx?kit=improve&locale=e...
On Friday 05 January 2007 13:10, Jon Moss wrote:
Tarred and gzipped the home directory on my Linux workstation.
Just a quick note: if permissions/owners are important to you, make sure you use 'tar cjvpf'
So, since the last time I had to install an OS on this workstation, my CD drive has died. Now I've got to scrounge one up and install it.
Or netinstall...
netinstall ... haven't tried that one. I have a couple of servers. I'll have to read up on how to do it. Thanks for the suggestion. Jon --- Luke -Jr <luke@dashjr.org> wrote:
On Friday 05 January 2007 13:10, Jon Moss wrote:
Tarred and gzipped the home directory on my Linux workstation.
Just a quick note: if permissions/owners are important to you, make sure you use 'tar cjvpf'
So, since the last time I had to install an OS on this workstation, my CD drive has died. Now I've got to scrounge one up and install it.
Or netinstall... _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
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participants (6)
-
Dale Beams -
Jared -
Jeremy Fowler -
Jon Moss -
Jonathan Hutchins -
Luke -Jr