firefox-bin, thunderbird-bin... why not kde-bin o gnome-bin?

jkriger

Hi, this is surely a subject already raised, but I would like to try it again.
If you use Gentoo you have to compile everything. That is ok! But it take nearly a complete day to compile KDE, GNOME or OpenOffice on my PC, and a few hours to compile firefox or thunderbird. It seems too much for me! But I'm lucky! I can install firefox-bin, thunderbird-bin and openoffice-bin on my gentoo in just minutes. Nice!
So will it hurt too much to have a kde-bin o gnome-bin? I don't think so.
Regards,
Julio

microbrain · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:03 pm Post subject:

feel free to roll your own binary packages and supply ebuilds for them (although I don't think it'll be easy to make them work well for lots of configurations)
_________________
"It's not stupid, it's advanced." -- Purple Tallest

PingEnt

jkriger · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:19 pm Post subject:

Yes, that is possible the correct answer. However, when I first started with Gentoo, the instalation CD came with a compile version of KDE. I'm not sure, but today instalation CDs comes with stage-3, with is a collection of already compiled ebuilds to install. Why not a "stage-3" KDE ebuilds? As with any software, it could come wuth a "as-is", so if you install pre-compiled KDE and it don't work, then you will have to compile it. I don't think it will hurt the gentoo filosofy too much, and will increase user happines.

tsunam · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Feb 2004 Posts: 343

you also have firefox-bin etc for amd64 folks who want flashplayer/java to work together nicely.
_________________
I'm not afraid of happy endings, just afraid my life wont work that way.

PingEnt · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:56 pm Post subject:

Archangel1 · Veteran Joined: 21 Apr 2004 Posts: 1212 Location: Work

I suspect it's a reflection of the fact that the various devs provide binary packages of Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice - they're not necessarily the same as you get when compiling, for example firefox-bin has official Firefox logos rather than a plain globe.
Obviously you can alter this...

AFAIK KDE and GNOME do not provide binaries, since the assorted distros are quite capable of compiling them, and they pretty much all apply their own patches anyway. Hence no kde-bin.
_________________
What are you, stupid?

pilla · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:51 pm Post subject:

If you're installing from scratch, why don't you use GRP?
_________________
"I'm just very selective about the reality I choose to accept." -- Calvin

StifflerStealth · Retired Dev Joined: 03 Jul 2002 Posts: 968

Also, if I am not mistaken, Gentoo is a _Source_ Based distro, hence all the source code. :roll:

And yes, there are binary packages because they are provided upstream. The GRP that comes with a Live CD was all compiled by the Devs. that is to give people a quick install and start using their system. It takes a long time to compile KDE, Gnome, ... and so on, so that would take up a lot of the devs time to wait for that stuff to compile before committing it. There are already quite a few unmaintained ebuilds in portage. Also, what would the binaries be compiled for? Would a binary be provided for each arch? If so, that would take even more time and a _lot_ more space on the servers. The binaries could just be for i686, but most users would want to compile it for their arch. Another words, it would take a lot of time on the devs part to get the binaries out, and then a lot of storage space. As powerful as the devs are, they do not have infinite time and space. :lol:

That is some food for thought.
_________________
Nothing to read in this sig. Move along.

Vann · Guru Joined: 04 Aug 2002 Posts: 357

Since installing binaries removes most of what distinguishes portage from other package management systems (e.g., USE flags), why even use Gentoo at all? Even if you're worried about "speed" issues, well, it is only the very large packages like Firefox, KDE, Gnome, etc., which really benefit in this way from compilation. Maybe you'd be happier with something like Ubuntu.

St. Joe · Apprentice Joined: 13 Apr 2005 Posts: 242 Location: USA

Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

karan · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 8:42 am Post subject:

Q-collective · Advocate Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 2071

If one wants to mix binaries with sources, you could try Arch Linux or ofcourse the famous and much loved FreeBSD

Chaosite · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 3:05 pm Post subject:

Carlo · Developer Joined: 12 Aug 2002 Posts: 3356

Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

Genone · Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 4:58 am Post subject:

The *-bin packages are only for packages where upstream provides a generic binary. Portage binary packages aren't in the tree, and there are no plans to add a binary tree, as we don't have the technical and human resources. Nobody is going to stop users to create their own binary trees though (just don't expect them to become official in any way).
Re St.Joe: There is no contradiction between the text you quoted and the current situation. The tools support binary packages (although it could be argued the support could be better), we just don't create them (with some exceptions).

St. Joe · Apprentice Joined: 13 Apr 2005 Posts: 242 Location: USA

butters · Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 5:46 am Post subject:

I want to revive this thread and make a suggestion to the Gentoo community:

Look at my joined date, I've been here for a while now. I started using Gentoo because it was unique and flexible. It was one of the first source-based Linux distributions and the project showed great promise. Gentoo wasn't exactly chic at the time.

Why did some other people start using Gentoo? Because it's a learning distro, exposing the middle-level details of how a Linux system works. Because it's a bottom-up installation model, encouraging lean and mean systems. Because it has a clean initscript system. Because it has great tools including Portage. Because it has a top-notch community and best-of-breed documentation.

There's no question Gentoo has changed over the years. You can see it in the forums. The thing about community projects is that, unfortunately, newbies suck the wind out of them. In order for a community project to be successful, it needs to either cater to the needs of the novice user or cater to the needs of a second project that aims to make a more newbie-friendly variant. In 2002, I thought that by now there would be tons of Gentoo-based distros. But there's only VLOS, which, frankly, sucks. In 2002, I thought that by now there would be a broad binary package repository generated and maintained through leveraging existing ebuilds and the portage tools. But there's not, and it seems like there never will be.

I took a look at the Archlinux project a few days ago and I really liked what I saw. It caters to the same user profile as does Gentoo, but it solves a lot of Gentoo's problems. It uses PKGBUILDs, which are essentially ebuilds written in normal shell script. You can use the Arch Build System (like the Portage Tree but with RCS-style versioning) to install packages from source, with dependency resolution, just like in Gentoo. However, the command to build packages from source, makepkg, by default creates a .pkg.tar.gz file instead of actually installing the package (also an option). The user can install the new package using pacman, which works very much like emerge. Then he can submit his package to the Arch User Repository, where the community can test the package and report feedback. When the package has enough votes, it goes into the official Archlinux repositories.

What does this accomplish? It means that any user who reads a project's instructions on how to build it from source can write a PKGBUILD. Very rapidly, he can not only contribute it to the ABS for other users to build from source, but he can contribute to the AUR for other users to install the binary package.

Arch has a very nice community, with a forums that reminds me of the Gentoo Forums cerca 2002-2003. What it lacks is great documentation (mostly Wikis now) and support for multiple architectures (only i686 and x86-64 right now). Arch is an example of how to make a community distribution that supports users with varying levels of experience and varying demand for flexibility. Gentoo was a good first shot, but high barriers to entry for potential contributors and source-only packaging don't lend themselves to long-term viability. If Daniel Robbins were still around he would probably agree.
_________________
If tugboats were bigger, they'd be the ones getting tugged.

Q-collective · Advocate Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 2071

butters:
Your post makes a lot of sense and I agree mostly here.
Gentoo's biggest selling point is also it's biggest flaw: USE and the lack of automation there of. A sourcebased distro like SourceMage also has a nice view on USE flags: they simply don't exist, at least not in the way we know them. They are just questions when you install a package! And I think it would be very nice to have such a system aswell for Gentoo, but in a Gentoo way: if a flag is not hard defined in make.conf, it is going to be a question, period. This way you never have to be worried anymore about new USE flags as it will just be a new question to pop up. This in turn gives developers a greater freedom for new USE flags without damaging usability.

That's a thing Arch could still learn I think, because (afaik) the ABS has a *complete lack* of the concept of USE flags. Which is nice to create a simple binary distro, but isn't very flexible.

I think an active user repository a la Arch would be a very good idea, this fills a need of a lot of users: a fast install, but with the flexibility of USE. And it won't hurt developers at all.

Sir No · Apprentice Joined: 01 May 2005 Posts: 159 Location: Poland

It is a known fact that some Gentoo users want binary packages. They have something in common - they are relatively new users OR they are in a rush, not wanting to "waste" time waiting for compiler to finish.

However, there is no need to suggest them to switch to another, binary-only distro. They are Gentoo users after all. They've done things as the docs guided them, they've changed a lot of config files, they've upgraded the system several times. But the most important thing is that they used to it. There is something in Gentoo that makes people stay with it, even if it's not perfect.

I'm already using Gentoo for over two years and I'm NOT complaining about long compilations. I am a developer too (but I'm not a Gentoo dev) and I know quite a bit about programming, so this is fine with me. People that complain, they only voice their own problem - that they have to wait. And who likes to wait nowadays?

For me, it ended in a solid hardware upgrade, just in order to shorten the emerge times (talking about dedication... :wink:

). And I'm happy with that upgrade. But I see the reason why people occasionally ask for binary packages (and it still happens).

Just as one of the posters mentioned, in some point I also expected a lot of Gentoo-based distros to pop up, but it didn't happen. And having a repository of already compiled packages (like a big fat GRP repository) would be appealing to some users. But I'm not sure if I would trade my freedom to tinker with everything for the faster software installation.

Just my 0.02 euro...
_________________
The geeks | Recommended Packages fOr Desktop & Server | Read BBCode Guide!

Koon · Retired Dev Joined: 10 Dec 2002 Posts: 518

People asking that Gentoo should support a binary package repository should have a look at GenUX.

The goal of Gentoo has always been to be a metadistribution, enabling end-user companies (or Linux distribution ventures) to build upon the power of Portage to make their own stuff.

-K

tacker · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 10:19 am Post subject:

Well, GenUX goes in that direction but I prefer community drive efforts.

What about a binary distribution based on bittorrent?
Say, users who run with "buildpck" enabled may share their package folder.
Every packages gets metadata including the arch and the use flags applied and
shared as package-version-arch-useflags so others with the same needs
could find the suitable binary package.

Maybe bittorrent doesn't fit as it has one seeder at start and not multiple.

guzhead · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 3:40 pm Post subject:

The Philosophy of Gentoo:

"It's important that our tools support binary packages, because binary packages are widely used and widely in demand in the Linux community. If our tools don't support binary packages, then we can't claim that our tools are designed to allow a user to do anything he or she might want to do. If we purposely choose to exclude binary support, then we are attempting to interfere with how users might choose to approach particular problems, by instead imposing our own will or view of how they should approach a problem. And if we do not build binary packages, then we are not taking any steps to ensure that our tools actually work well with binary packages, nor are we taking steps to ensure that others can build binary packages, nor are we able to *demonstrate* that our tools work well with binary packages. Besides these philosophical reasons, there are many practical reasons to create binary packages."[/quote]

AMEN!!!

Gentoo is about choices, there are lots of choices in gentoo, but they should let the users install binaries of the big packages if they want... I know that maybe there are some limitations, but maybe if the ask for help, or make an "official -bin forum" where the users give ideas, and the devs read say the limitations of every idea.