Gentoo newbie checking in

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 5:34 pm Post subject:

Frogprince,

If loading time rather than runtime performance is an issue for you, use -Os in your CFLAGS in place of -O2
-Os optimises for binary size and smaller binaries load faster I use it om my old slow laptop to good effect.

-O2 uses most of the omptimisations that do not deliberately increase code size. It produces larger but faster binaries (generally) the -Os.

Theres lots to play with there
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Frogprince · n00b Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 53

Good suggestion there NeddySeagoon, I'll do that. I think I'm gonna print this entire thread before the install - there's a heck of a lot of advice I don't want to forget! But what about this Gnome issue? I'm guessing I'd have to set flags for Kde if I wanted to install K3b, AmaroK and Konqueror as they use Kde libraries. Is this right?

jmz2 · Guru Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 421 Location: Finland

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 6:22 pm Post subject:

Frogprince,

Not quite. If you choose to emerge a KDE program but normally run GNOME or soem other desktop, everything you need to make your chosen KDE program operate will be pulled in as as dependacy. USE flags select optional features onlt.

e.g. I do not have k3b (I use Gnome) but

Cyker · Veteran Joined: 15 Jun 2006 Posts: 1746

Frogprince · n00b Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 53

He He! This is why I want to try Gentoo! I feel like a kid on his first day at school! I have absolutely no idea what all these different flags (profuse and ufed) do. Do I take it that these are not specifically Kde flags? I don't want to install Gnome if installing AmaroK, Konqueror and K3b will clutter up this lovely fine-tuned Gentoo system with Kde stuff I'll never need. Is this the case?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 6:42 pm Post subject:

Frogprince,

Provided you have the drive space, adding packages only clutters up your hard drive and increases your maintainece time, as they will get updated from time to time. They have no effect on the performance of your system.

ufed and profuse are programs that you many chose to use to set your use flags. they are not in the stage 3, so you will need to emerge them if you want them.

alsa and oss are two use flags controlling optional sound support. Its not optional everywhere.
If your USE contains alsa, where alsa sound support is optional, it will be added.
If your USE contains oss, where oss sound support is optional, it will be added.

Be aware that Gentoo has default USE settings which are selected by your profile. Thus you choose the profile you want and then use /etc/make.conf to fine tune it.

The best way to learn is to do it and break it. You learn far more fixing a broken install then when you can follow the handbook and it just works. You have to be really talented to mess up a Gentoo install beyond repair.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Frogprince · n00b Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 53

OK, thanks for the explanation. I *think* I understand! I'm so glad that I didn't come here straight from Ubuntu or (worse) Windows :mrgreen:

My experiences with setting up Debian and Archlinux have helped me to understand most of what's going on here: but in neither of these distros do we worry about flags - that's the big difference I think. Now I'm raring to go and looking forward to getting my hands dirty. The Gentoo community really rocks! I'm very impressed!

OmSai · Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 10:34 pm Post subject:

Frogprince,

If you're not installing kde, then don't enable the kde flag in your /etc/make.conf

If you're not keen on using Nautilus, may I suggest Xfce instead of Gnome?
I've found it quite intuitive and it does everything I need of it.
More importantly, Xfce has the option to load Gnome and KDE services, so you can seemlessly use their applications.
I use Amarok and Konqueror, actually.
To enable the services -
Xfce Menu > Settings > Sessions and Startup Settings > Advanced > Launch {Gnome,KDE} Services on Startup

Welcome to Gentoo!

_________________
Gentoo is the stick-shift of Linux.
You work it manually, it has somewhat better performance, but it's really for the fun of it.

Frogprince · n00b Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 53

Yes, XFCE is good - but whenever I've used it before I've found some annoying things and switched back to Fluxbox. I can't remember what those annoying things are, I never do, but after a while using XFCE I re-discover them again...and switch back to Fluxbox! Another possibility is Enlightenment I suppose, but I don't find it that fast. Gentoo sure forces you to think about what you really want! Decisions, decisions...

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 5:18 pm Post subject:

Frogprince,

Gentoo forces you to make for yourself, all the decisions that are made for you by the binary distros when they are put together.
Thats because you really are making your own distro using Gentoo.

The good news is that it need not be right first time. Installing other things may take a lot of CPU time but it wants very little of your own time and you can use what you have while other things install.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Sprotte · Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 8:35 pm Post subject:

This has already been said, but just to make it stick:

- Installing even a single KDE program like K3b will pull in the KDE base libs (the fundamental parts of KDE) and QT (the graphical toolkit.) This means that you have half a KDE install anyway, so why not go all the way ;-)

- It is possible to install very light versions of both KDE and Gnome. Many people pick one and try to stick with it, but technically you can have both.

Find out which apps you simply *need*. Then install the desktop environment that satisfies the most important of those needs. Find alternatives for the rest.

Example, if you simply NEED K3b, then you should go for KDE. KDE also includes a very good browser, Konqueror, and an email program, Kmail. Once you installed the KDE base, these are very simple to add. No need for Firefox or Thunderbird then. It's all highly integrated.

Gnome is good, but different. It seems a bit more simplistic while KDE has everything and the kitchen sink. Gnome's graphical toolkit is GTK, which is also used by Firefox/Thunderbird, GIMP, and a number of other standalone apps. GTK is rampant everywhere in the Linux world, more so than QT. Gnome's browsers typically require Firefox (Mozilla) as a base, so you'll just install that anyway. Ubuntu uses Gnome.

You will normally have GTK and/or QT installed anyway, even as a Fluxbox user, because graphical applications commonly use them. For example, I used Openbox + GTK apps exclusively for a long time. Then I decided I wanted Opera, which uses QT, so now I have both :-)

My long term idea is that I'll probably convert to a light QT/KDE install and use Konqueror.

It's really a question of which applications you need, and many people have tried both desktops during their Linux career. You can use Live CD's like Knoppix and Ubuntu to get an impression of both. :-)

KDE or Gnome compile time should be bearable with your machine.

@ Kernel compile time: It should be much faster if you only enable those modules you really need. Recompiles (if you selected a different wifi driver for example) are much faster than the first compile of a new kernel version. My server kernel is 1.5 MB, my desktop kernel is 1.6 MB. So they almost fit on a floppy disk.

@ startup times: Check fine tuning of your harddrives' DMA setting and inform yourself about "prelinking" (I forgot if this is standard now or something.) Gentoo as a whole will adopt OpenRC soon, which will speed up booting among other things.

@ compiling in general: Inform yourself about ccache and distcc (Gentoo has guides about them afaik.) It's a combination of a compiler cache and distributed compiling using the other machines on the LAN.

Another tip is to use the stable keyword (x86 as opposed to ~x86) in your make.conf and just unmask individual packages from unstable using /etc/portage/package.keywords. This will give you a stable base system. And as others said, don't tinker too much with CFLAGS (but do tinker with USE flags.)

Read /etc/make.conf.example and /etc/conf.d/net.example. Also read the emerge manpage.

"emerge -av package" will show you exactly the USE flags and dependencies of "package." Always check the forum before updating gcc, glibc, baselayout or similar to see if there are problems.

Sorry if all this is a bit general, but let's think of the other newbies reading this... Happy Gentooing and remember to RTFM. :-)

Frogprince · n00b Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 53

Thank you very much for that clear and detailed summary. That's brilliantly explained.

Frogprince · n00b Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 53

I just wanted to tell you all that I've done it! Horray!

I've spent the last week re-reading all the documents, printing all the relevant stuff from my computer and re-reading this thread. Yesterday I had to stay off work, and so I started the install. I did it from the System Rescue CD (excellent advice, by the way! Being able to use the Internet was a fantastic plus!) and downloaded the funtoo stage 3 tarball. All went smoothly, but Grub gave me a little runaround for a while when it produced error 15 and error 13 messages. I was trying to use the same configuration that I had when I was sharing this machine between Debian and Archlinux; that is chainloading Gentoo. Grub didn't seem to want to do this in Gentoo, although it did in Archlinux, so in the end I opted to emerge -C grub and write Gentoo into the menu.lst file in Debian. This worked flawlessly, and I now have a lovely flashing cursor and a black screen - this is where the real fun starts!
By the way Sprott, you were right about the kernel compile. I printed out my previous choices in menuconfig (based on an i686 .config file that I had downloaded) and noticed that there were a few things I could leave out: most notably generic x86 support, which was absolutely unnecessary. It made quite a difference: down from 3 hours to around 20 minutes!
Now for a couple of questions: First, I forgot to set the flags as you suggested - ie -Os instead of O2; profuse and ufed. Should I set them now, before I've installed anything much (I suppose I'll save myself a lot of time if I do)? If so, what command do I need to run to get them up and running? Secondly, there are a lot of error messages during boot up, so I'd like to run dmesg to re-read them. But how do I get dmesg to stop scrolling so fast?

Thank you guys all very much. You gave me the motivation to go through with this and the support to make it possible!

Sprotte · Posted: Sat May 31, 2008 10:48 pm Post subject:

dmesg problem:

You type "dmesg | less" instead of "dmesg". The | is called "pipe".

-Os problem:

This doesn't really matter, you can change -O2 to -Os at any point, and the next few updates will use it and thus propagate it to most of the installed packages.

- profuse, ufed problem:

Ufed is an application, not a flag. I guess profuse is something similar. Ufed is an editor to make setting USE flags easier, but you can set them by hand, too.

The installation manual (handbook?) tells you at which point to edit your make.conf. You can also set USE flags at that point. You shouldn't change too much yet.

If you want to put something like "-gnome" or similar, you should do that around the time you emerge X or KDE/flux/whatever.

RedSquirrel · Guru Joined: 22 Apr 2008 Posts: 336

Frogprince · n00b Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 53

OK, thank you both very much. I've now re-set the flags to include Java (didn't think of that!) and I ran emerge --update --deep --newuse world to reconfigure the system to the flag change. As for 02, I'd already done that without realizing what I was actually doing - I was just following the guide and I guess I was getting tired by that point. Everything's now set, and I'm ready to start building up a working system. I'll start a new thread for any problems I may encounter. Don't worry though: I certainly haven't forgotten to RTFM! In fact, I'm spending all my spare time doing this! Thanks once again!

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Hi FrogPrince,

Firstly, welcome to Gentoo and to the community. Secondly, I wanted to give you a heads-up that I missed one of my first times with Gentoo. Overclocking can cause some serious problems. I don't know if you've overclocked anything at all, but during compilations, you can see some serious breakage. Thirdly, and just as general advice, ask as many questions as you need; Gentoo has a steep learning curve, and we are all here to help you with it.

Again, welcome!

_________________
“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
---avatar cropped from =AimanStudio---

Frogprince · n00b Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 53

Thanks Kalos. Can you tell me what you mean by "overclocking"?

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Overclocking is essentially manipulating settings to force your hardware (processor, video card, or RAM mainly) to operate faster than it is supposed to. If you didn't make any changes to the system either through an advanced BIOS or an overclocking program (popular in M$ Windows), then you have nothing to worry about.

Please let me know if you have any more questions. Take care.
_________________
“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
---avatar cropped from =AimanStudio---

Frogprince · n00b Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 53

Thank you for your explanation kalos, I see what it means. I'm certainly not into overclocking! If Windows users are tempted to overclock because they think their computers are too slow, then perhaps they should change to Linux!

monsm · Guru Joined: 26 Sep 2007 Posts: 467 Location: London, UK

Welcome frogprince,
I came to Gentoo almost a year ago now (well, September last year), never regretted. I have just ugraded to gnome 2.22.1 on my system. It updated about 145 packages, but I run it overnight, so when I got up in the morning, it was all complete. I have been doing similar things when updating openoffice and running those "emerge -DNuav world" updates. I have a AMD3200+ machine with 1.5Gb memory, so not too far away from yours.
So, presumably you leave your machine alone for a few hours from time to time, so these updates shouldn't be a problem, even big ones like Gnome, KDE and Openoffice.
Moving to Gentoo was a huge improvement for me. I was running Gnome and Compiz on Fedora earlier, the machine is so much more comfortable now, no more sluggishly spinning Compiz cubes

I made a little test here (see first and last post of the thread):
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-desktop-74/beryl-nvidia-slow-performance-586438/

That is not a very scientific test, but still, it makes an indication of the improvement when using the 3D compiz environment on my machine (I also might have had things on my Fedora installation that slowed it down unnecessarily).

Anyway, I am not going to a different distro. Upgrading from one version of a binary distro (like Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, etc) to the next every half year is more trouble in my view then running the occasional emerge world update on Gentoo.

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Frogprince · n00b Joined: 25 May 2008 Posts: 53

Well, Kalos, you advised me to ask you when I have a problem, and I've already got one! It's a very weakling, newbie problem, but you'll find it herehttps://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-5111098.html#5111098