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supernovus Apprentice
Joined: 13 Jul 2003 Posts: 150 Location: inside my head
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Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 6:02 pm Post subject: Gentoo all the way |
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There are so many reasons to run Gentoo other than compiler optimizations.
Now while Portage's dependancy tracking and USE flags being two of the biggest, one that I really love and hope it doesn't go away, is Gentoo's beautiful init system. This beats the crap out of SysV style init scripts and BSD style init scripts hands down!
As for some of the comments about the installation being cryptic, or the lack of binary support. I figure as the GLIS project, and the expansion of Portage to support binary packages (it's already started) will solve both of those problems, and make Gentoo the ultimate operating system for all uses. _________________ Remove OTW |
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Toth Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 23 Feb 2003 Posts: 133
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Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 6:53 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo all the way |
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supernovus wrote: | There are so many reasons to run Gentoo other than compiler optimizations.
Now while Portage's dependancy tracking and USE flags being two of the biggest, one that I really love and hope it doesn't go away, is Gentoo's beautiful init system. This beats the crap out of SysV style init scripts and BSD style init scripts hands down!
As for some of the comments about the installation being cryptic, or the lack of binary support. I figure as the GLIS project, and the expansion of Portage to support binary packages (it's already started) will solve both of those problems, and make Gentoo the ultimate operating system for all uses. |
I seriously doubt it. By using binary packages you are eliminating USE variables -- the one thing that truly sets Gentoo apart from other distributions.
And until compiling even the largest pieces of software takes no more than 20 minutes or so your "average joe" will not want to use Gentoo. If it takes him 20 minutes to install a program because it has to compile but one of his neighbors can install the same program in 1 minute using apt and his other neighbor can install the program in 3 minutes by downloading an installer and clicking next a few time in Windows, well...that "average joe" is going to use Windows or that other distribution.
Gentoo is great for those enthusiasts and tweakers out there who don't mind long compilation times and care about USE variables, but will probably never be "the ultimate operating system for all uses" as long as it is source based which is, well, what makes Gentoo, Gentoo. |
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Sergio1704 n00b
Joined: 16 Aug 2003 Posts: 73
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Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2003 8:28 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo all the way |
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Toth wrote: |
Gentoo is great for those enthusiasts and tweakers out there who don't mind long compilation times and care about USE variables, but will probably never be "the ultimate operating system for all uses" as long as it is source based which is, well, what makes Gentoo, Gentoo. |
Sorry, allow me to totally disagree.
What are the big issues at stake here?
1) The installer. Yes, that is a problem in my opinion (we all know the reasons), but I don't know why this couldn't be solved.
3) Compilation times: again, yes, it can be a problem, but time will take care of it. Remember what the average PCs were like 5 years ago and then imagine what they could be like in 5 years time.
So, never say: 'never' |
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IvanHoe l33t
Joined: 05 Oct 2002 Posts: 658
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Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 7:02 am Post subject: |
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For me it's not about raw speed; it's about control without having to go the LFS route. I guess for some having an installation that holds your hand is more important. |
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Evangelion Veteran
Joined: 31 May 2002 Posts: 1087 Location: Helsinki, Finland
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Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 9:17 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo all the way |
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Sergio1704 wrote: | 3) Compilation times: again, yes, it can be a problem, but time will take care of it. Remember what the average PCs were like 5 years ago and then imagine what they could be like in 5 years time. |
Yes, computers will get alot faster. And software ewill get alot bigger. In 5 years we will be running KDE 5.2 (for example). And I bet the compilation-time of that beast is about same as compilation-time of KDE3.1 on todays machines. Of course, the machine of the future will compile todays KDE3.1 in 1 hour or something, but how fast will it compile it's contemporary KDE? _________________ My tech-blog | My other blog |
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Sergio1704 n00b
Joined: 16 Aug 2003 Posts: 73
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Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 10:53 am Post subject: To Evangelion |
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Indeed, you got a point here.
However we should fight back this trend to have our operating systems more bloated all the time.
Such a trend belongs more to the world of M$ & CO. rather than to the world of open source.
It is absolutely true that things are not really in our hands.
However the growing popularity of minimal installs, light GUIs (Xfce4 is a beautiful example), distros like Damnsmall, do mean in my opinion that the time comes when (some) people say: 'enough is enough, small is beautiful' (I am personally a great fan of Dillo, for instance) |
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Azaghal Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 103
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Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 11:31 am Post subject: |
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the cflags dont make a difference, the use flags do. I have really onlygot installed what I want, not what a package author or a distro author thinks is best.
This makes more of a difference, not having all those libs that I don't use _________________ generatesig |
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Sergio1704 n00b
Joined: 16 Aug 2003 Posts: 73
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Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 11:37 am Post subject: |
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Azaghal wrote: | the cflags dont make a difference, the use flags do. I have really onlygot installed what I want, not what a package author or a distro author thinks is best.
This makes more of a difference, not having all those libs that I don't use |
Exactly! |
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Evangelion Veteran
Joined: 31 May 2002 Posts: 1087 Location: Helsinki, Finland
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Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2003 12:23 pm Post subject: Re: To Evangelion |
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Sergio1704 wrote: | Indeed, you got a point here.
However we should fight back this trend to have our operating systems more bloated all the time.
Such a trend belongs more to the world of M$ & CO. rather than to the world of open source. |
Bloatness is not exclusive to closed source. Open source can and does get bloated. closed source can be lean 'n mean. Fact is that as system gain functionality, it will get more and more "bloated". But even that is relative. KDE5 wont be that bloated in 5 years time, but it would be today. 5 years ago XFCE4 would have been pretty bloated. KDE1 was once a bit on the bloated side, these days it would be anything but bloated. _________________ My tech-blog | My other blog |
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Athas Guru
Joined: 04 Sep 2003 Posts: 394 Location: Brøndby, Denmark
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Aurora l33t
Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 658 Location: Classified
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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 1:36 pm Post subject: Re: Hehe, figure this... |
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Athas wrote: | Actually, back in the days, Unix itself was considered incredibly bloated... |
Really?
This comes as quite a surprise to me. I never knew this. _________________ "My downfall raises me to infinite heights." -Napoleon Bonaparte |
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Aurora l33t
Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 658 Location: Classified
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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 1:36 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo all the way |
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supernovus wrote: | There are so many reasons to run Gentoo other than compiler optimizations.
Now while Portage's dependancy tracking and USE flags being two of the biggest, one that I really love and hope it doesn't go away, is Gentoo's beautiful init system. This beats the crap out of SysV style init scripts and BSD style init scripts hands down!
As for some of the comments about the installation being cryptic, or the lack of binary support. I figure as the GLIS project, and the expansion of Portage to support binary packages (it's already started) will solve both of those problems, and make Gentoo the ultimate operating system for all uses. |
If USE flags dissapear, then I guess Gentoo wouldn't be...Gentoo. _________________ "My downfall raises me to infinite heights." -Napoleon Bonaparte |
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mmealman Guru
Joined: 02 Nov 2002 Posts: 348 Location: Florida
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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 4:17 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo all the way |
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Evangelion wrote: |
Yes, computers will get alot faster. And software ewill get alot bigger. In 5 years we will be running KDE 5.2 (for example). And I bet the compilation-time of that beast is about same as compilation-time of KDE3.1 on todays machines. Of course, the machine of the future will compile todays KDE3.1 in 1 hour or something, but how fast will it compile it's contemporary KDE? |
That's one of those things we'll have to wait and see to really know for sure. But I think computer power increases at a faster rate than program lines of code.
I can compile a Linux 2.6 kernel today in about 10-15 mins. I don't remember how long it took to compile a kernel back in the mid 90's, but I'm pretty sure it was quite a bit longer. |
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nephros Advocate
Joined: 07 Feb 2003 Posts: 2139 Location: Graz, Austria (Europe - no kangaroos.)
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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:06 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo all the way |
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mmealman wrote: | I can compile a Linux 2.6 kernel today in about 10-15 mins. I don't remember how long it took to compile a kernel back in the mid 90's, but I'm pretty sure it was quite a bit longer. |
Mid 90s? I'd say i486/33, ~20MB RAM, ISA IDE controller.
I remember it took about three hours.
BTW I disagree that in 5 years a Linux/UNIX system will necessarily be bloated.
Basically a Linux is kernel + GNU tools (similar for a unix). It has been that way since the '70s and hasn't grown a lot. I am talking about what lives in /lib, /bin and /sbin. Everything else is usually not really crucial for the OS to function, and would be considered third-party application software.
Distributions however will be, and are already today, *terribly* bloated (doesn't SuSE ship as two DVDs already?). It is getting harder to build a lean *desktop* system, because the things you want to do with a desktop are getting more and more sophisticated.
But you can build a pretty useful server system on under 300MB and I don't think this will grow that much in the future. _________________ Please put [SOLVED] in your topic if you are a moron. |
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zez Apprentice
Joined: 13 Jun 2002 Posts: 256 Location: Oregon, United States
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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:21 pm Post subject: |
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Gentoo is more about control than anything else. I might not need super-agressive CFLAGS on every machine, but the capability is always there. I might not need to use five pages of CFLAGS, but the capability is always there. Giving the user a choice of using binary packages helps to reduce install time, but the most important part is that the user still has a choice. Compiling KDE and GNOME doesn't bother me, but I don't want to take the time to compile OOo. Still, someone else might want to spend the time to compile OOo from source.
That is how I see it.
(And after compiling fluxbox on a 486DX4-75, it doesn't seem so "lightweight" anymore ) |
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Athas Guru
Joined: 04 Sep 2003 Posts: 394 Location: Brøndby, Denmark
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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 5:22 pm Post subject: Re: Hehe, figure this... |
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Aurora wrote: | Athas wrote: | Actually, back in the days, Unix itself was considered incredibly bloated... |
Really?
This comes as quite a surprise to me. I never knew this. |
Look at it this way:
Today, Unix/Linux/*BSD is (rightfully so) considered extremely light, highly optimized operating systems, that uses very few system resources, but in itself have limited abilities (remember that a *NIX system is made up of a lot of smaller utilities) compared to the "everything-and-their-brother-is-integrated"-hell of Windows.
Now, imagine Unix running on hardware from the 70's and 80's... then it suddenly turns far more bloated
And it was, compared to the software of the time.
Remember that bloat doesn't mean badly coded software, it means software that is so big, that has so many features, that it doesn't really run properly on current hardware. _________________ Emacs-optimized danish console keymap - My .emacs
Climacs - next generation Emacs. |
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Retriever II Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 07 Sep 2003 Posts: 93 Location: Northampton, MA, USA
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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 9:02 pm Post subject: |
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I've noticed a speed difference between slack 8.0 and gentoo on only one application, which is jEdit (and that's a java program, thus runs through the java runtime). The difference is quite substncial. On my slack box, it was practically unuseable, but it's faster than my favorite windows editor now running on gentoo. But that's where the speed differences end for me.
I think Gentoo because of convenience. Portage, USE flags, just make everything easier. Long compilation times don't bother me in the least bit, and upgrading can be done in a pinch. And there's no chasing down versions and dependencies.
The first linux system I ever tried was Slack 8.0, which was probably a mistake on my part, allthough I think it's for the better since I did survive. For the linux n00bie (me, anyway), slackware was a maintainance nightmare, so trying Gentoo was an immediate relief in that regard. |
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someguy Guru
Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Posts: 433 Location: (-_-) .::OH_WELL::. (-_-)
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Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2003 9:01 am Post subject: |
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ive had a much better experience with my machines since moving to gentoo for one things are MUCH more stable than they were in libranet i mean i havent had one app crash outside of vlc (and that was because i needed to reemerge nvidia stuff) _________________ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
while [ 1 ] ; do echo "*" | telnet ip.of.print.er 9100 ; done |
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The Mountain Man l33t
Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643
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Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2003 8:37 pm Post subject: |
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Aurora wrote: | My fault on putting this in the wrong forum.
Quote: | Conclusion: ArchLinux, Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, etc are all just as fast as almost any gentoo install, because they are all i686 optimized. |
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I don't suppose he had any real world numbers to back-up his conclussion?
Anyway, I like Gentoo because I can compile only what I need to compile, and keeping it update via Portage is a piece of cake.
Gentoo is about working smarter, not harder! The best part is, if someone doesn't like Gentoo, for whatever reason, they are free to choose from a few dozen other Linux distros. That's the beauty of Linux. There's something for everybody. |
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kalisphoenix Apprentice
Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 211 Location: Ohio
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Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2003 7:22 am Post subject: |
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I recently convinced a Debian diehard to try Gentoo. His first response was, and I quote:
"Oh, wow! You've got to love this! An install that dumps you at the prompt!"
He wasn't being sarcastic... for some of us, I think Gentoo's LFS-lite approach is one of the sweetest things about it.
Redhat is horrifically slow compared to Slack or Gentoo :-/
Portage is God's gift to me. Portage and the Gentoo forums are what made a successful Linuxer out of me.
I first installed XP on this computer. I seem to recall (and I might be mistaken) checking the disk display soon after I installed it and discovering that over a GB was taken up on my HD. That was before installing a lot of crap.
I have 4GB taken up on this, and I have more applications than most Windows users ever SEE, much less install.
I have a 20GB HD, and for the first time I'm not all that worried about filling up a drive merely with apps. I'm looking forward to filling it with music
Song and dance!
*falls on his head* |
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ali3nx l33t
Joined: 21 Sep 2003 Posts: 722 Location: Winnipeg, Canada
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Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2003 8:15 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | I recently convinced a Debian diehard to try Gentoo. His first response was, and I quote:
"Oh, wow! You've got to love this! An install that dumps you at the prompt!"
He wasn't being sarcastic... for some of us, I think Gentoo's LFS-lite approach is one of the sweetest things about it.
Redhat is horrifically slow compared to Slack or Gentoo :-/
Portage is God's gift to me. Portage and the Gentoo forums are what made a successful Linuxer out of me.
I first installed XP on this computer. I seem to recall (and I might be mistaken) checking the disk display soon after I installed it and discovering that over a GB was taken up on my HD. That was before installing a lot of crap.
I have 4GB taken up on this, and I have more applications than most Windows users ever SEE, much less install. |
I was recently doing some config on a quad kitami redhat 9 box in italy over ssh and couldn't help but notice that gcc in redhat 9 was compiled with i386 flags... Really suprised me. I orginally tried gentoo because so many people in my ircd were saying how nice a distro it was... top of the lot among the common n00b~linux savvy populus agreed 5/10 with 50% going to Slackware. I also tried it because i was using borrowed hardware and my sound config wasn't working on mandrake at the time (just last august) and gentoo has been an untertaking with many educational rewards that will most likely be the foundation of a greater portion of my IT career skillset. Thx to Gentoo i've learned more about linux in under 4 months than i thought possible |
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Ari Rahikkala Guru
Joined: 02 Oct 2002 Posts: 370 Location: Finland
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Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2003 10:47 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo all the way |
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Evangelion wrote: | Yes, computers will get alot faster. And software ewill get alot bigger. In 5 years we will be running KDE 5.2 (for example). And I bet the compilation-time of that beast is about same as compilation-time of KDE3.1 on todays machines. Of course, the machine of the future will compile todays KDE3.1 in 1 hour or something, but how fast will it compile it's contemporary KDE? |
You know, this particular example is broken by the fact that compiler technology advances, too. KDE in particular will benefit a lot from gcc 3.4's precompiled header support and its new C++ parser. Not that it would really matter - shortening the time it takes to compile code by improving the compiler doesn't make the code any less bloated. It's just that I wanted to point this little technical detail out... _________________ <laurentius> gentoo linux?
<ari> Yesh.
<laurentius> they look horny |
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Promit Guru
Joined: 15 Nov 2003 Posts: 344
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Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2003 1:40 pm Post subject: |
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I first started running Linux ~5 months ago, while I was at Governor's School (basically, 80 11th grade techies living together for 5 weeks in a dorm). It was essentially a game to try something new, and frankly, it still is. I installed RH9 back then, and now I've switched to Gentoo.
The main reason many people don't want to switch to Gentoo is because whatever they're using now works. That's fine; some people don't want to risk destroying their set up. But people who just plain bash the system don't really know anything.
Every distro has its plus and minus points. Compiling everything on my system may or may not provide benefits--I can only tell any difference with a small handful of apps, like Moz. What I do know is that I can get packages for almost anything from Portage, and the really big ones usually come in binary versions. I also know that I understand my system way better than I did a month ago, when I got off RH9. It was either Gentoo or Debian, and I basically chose one at random.
There's no point bashing distros, since no one is forcing you to use anything. |
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Eldomir n00b
Joined: 09 Nov 2003 Posts: 63 Location: Madrid/Spain/EU
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Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2003 1:48 pm Post subject: |
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I'm a total n00bie, but I just want to say I disagree with this:
Quote: | Gentoo is great for those enthusiasts and tweakers out there who don't mind long compilation times and care about USE variables, but will probably never be "the ultimate operating system for all uses" as long as it is source based which is, well, what makes Gentoo, Gentoo. |
Gentoo is -much- more than a source-based distribution. Even if Gentoo used mostly binary packages (which would be bad, and I'm not arguing that), I would still use it for its other virtues. Gentoo is about choice and flexibility, not source. It's a good thing to have binaries for large ebuilds, since it gives users the choice not to use source when it doesn't suit them - call it blasphemy if you will
From the "Philosophy" link in the main page:
Quote: | We have become known as a "from source" distribution, but the heart of the Gentoo concept is not "from source." "From source" is an important and key aspect of Gentoo, and something that was and will continue to be necessary for Gentoo, but it is not the only issue or most fundamental issue. |
I like the source part, but what makes Gentoo Gentoo is NOT source - I guess "flexibility" is too abstract, but maybe someone more experienced than me can explain what it is |
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guy Apprentice
Joined: 31 Mar 2003 Posts: 286 Location: USA
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