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jdhore
Retired Dev
Joined: 13 Apr 2007
Posts: 106
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 Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 9:26 pm Post subject: Gentoo Rant |
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I recently installed Gentoo for both fun and boredom. Ack. For starters...It's horribly broken...I had to do quite a bit of hackery to get it to boot even from a install done via the GTK LiveCD installer. I've done a Stage3 in the past and i'm sure i could pull one off again, but i wanted to try the installer...It's a joke...
Having to compile everything sucks and CFLAGS aren't as amazingly optimized as everyone seems to claim (I use them on Arch for the packages i make, but i wouldn't recompile from scratch against them).
USE flags are a pain...Let's say i compile totem and audacious and i don't know that the USE flag for MP3 support is "mad" because, let's face it, without checking use.desc, i would've never guessed...So i compile them and i come across a MP3 i want to play...Well...I can't, i have to go googling for what the MP3 USE flag is, then i have to spend 20 minutes recompiling totem, audacious and who knows what else against the new USE flag.
The other thing is...After about a week (  ), you finally have a decently working Gentoo system...A month later, you get to spend 2 hours recompiling a new Firefox release, 2 months later, you get to spend 6 hours recompiling a new GNOME release (be it a feature release or a bugfix release) and if you run KDE...LOL...On my system that takes 8hrs to go from basic X to GNOME+Firefox...it takes about 20 hours to compile all of KDE...
Finally. I remember about 3 years ago when everyone was saying Gentoo was cutting edge...having all sorts of betas and alphas and RC's and svn/cvs/git versions in the repos. Nowadays, Gentoo is more out of date than even the non-rolling release distros like Debian and Ubuntu in some cases...and compared to Arch, everything in Gentoo is horribly out-of-date. What also makes that sentence worse is that the Gentoo devs don't have to do much work to update stuff...All they have to do is bump the version in the ebuild, get the md5sum of the tarball for the app and upload. Even for something like the kernel, it only takes like 1 minutes instead of 2hrs like on binary distros and even with that Gentoo's still horribly out-of-date...Let's play a bit and compare some versions of packages in different distro's repos (I'm only gonna do Arch, Gentoo and possibly Debian Lenny cuz i'm lazy).
Perl:
Debian Lenny: 5.10 by default
Arch: 5.10 by default
Gentoo: 5.8.8 by default, no way to get 5.10 (it's not in the repos at all)
Python:
Arch: Python 2.6 by default, Python 3.0 in AUR
Gentoo: Python 2.5 by default, Python 2.6 Hardmasked, Python 3.0 not in the repos or any overlays i could find at all
Boost:
Arch: 1.36.0 by default
Debian Lenny: Both 1.34.1 and 1.36.0 in the repos
Gentoo: 1.34.1 in stable, 1.35.0 in "softmasked/testing", no way to get 1.36.0 or 1.37.0.
X.Org:
Arch: 7.3 by default, 7.4 in Testing
Debian Lenny: 7.3 by default
Gentoo: 7.2 by default (LOL), 7.3 and 7.4 in softmasked/testing
Also, the only last upside that i can think of that Gentoo fans can say is the multiple versions of packages in the repos allow for fewer breakages. Well...This is both true and false at the same time. If you run a strictly Stable/default system, you'll rarely have issues and if you do run a mixed system, you can sometimes downgrade (doesn't always work), but in the week i've had Gentoo on my system this time (probably my 4th time installing it) i've had 2 major breakages that to fix...The only place i found the fix was a Russian Gentoo mailinglist (thank god for Google Translate). In Arch, in my year of using it and using Testing, i can't recall having more than 1 problem this major. Also in Debian, the last time i recall having any problems this major since Etch went Stable.
I don't know. This is my rant. You can call me a jackass or an idiot or whatever, but...I just kind of wanted to get it off my chest. Please don't flame me too hard. |
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Treggats
n00b
Joined: 04 Aug 2007
Posts: 46
Location: 127.0.0.1/24
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 9:37 pm Post subject: |
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You just need time to adjust to the way gentoo works
and btw to flame you might need a zippo or a lighter or something 
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Paapaa
l33t
Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 955
Location: Finland
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 9:46 pm Post subject: |
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I agree that Gentoo has slight problems getting some very popular packages to stable - see Firefox 3 for example. It really looks like Gentoo needs more (wo-/)manpower.
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alex.blackbit
Advocate
Joined: 26 Jul 2005
Posts: 2397
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 10:36 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo Rant |
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| jdhore wrote: | | Having to compile everything sucks |
so, why did you decide to use gentoo?
| jdhore wrote: | | CFLAGS aren't as amazingly optimized as everyone seems to claim |
you have CPPFLAGS (preprocessor), CFLAGS (compiler), LDFLAGS (linker). what else can you affect on building software written in C?
| jdhore wrote: | | USE flags are a pain...Let's say i compile totem and audacious and i don't know that the USE flag for MP3 support is "mad" because, let's face it, without checking use.desc, i would've never guessed... |
there is e.g. the utility app-portage/euses with the meaningful description "look up USE flag descriptions fast". and, it is not true that you need to know the useflag mad to play mp3 files on a gentoo system.
| jdhore wrote: | | A month later, you get to spend 2 hours recompiling a new Firefox release |
for rather big applications like mozilla firefox or openoffice.org there are -bin packages. so you do not have to compile them yourself in order to get a new version.
| jdhore wrote: | | 2 months later, you get to spend 6 hours recompiling a new GNOME release (be it a feature release or a bugfix release) |
well, this is how gentoo works. compiling software on the local machine. there are two kinds of linux distributions: source and binary distros. you decided to use a source distribution. now you hate waiting for compilation processes to finish. well, is this really the fault of gentoo?
and, gnome is split into tiny packages. if there is a bugfix releases for gnome-games, you only have to rebuild gnome-games, not gnome as a whole.
| jdhore wrote: | | Nowadays, Gentoo is more out of date than even the non-rolling release distros like Debian and Ubuntu in some cases... |
you list examples of programming languages. everything that is build on a gentoo system depends on them. it is _NOT_ a simply task to make a new perl or python or even gcc release available on gentoo, since the compilers themself are built on the local machine. this is not the case on a debian system.
you want perl-5.10, you get it. use the perl-experimental overlay.
you want gcc-4.4? no, you didn't ask for it, you get it anyway. use dirtyepics overlay.
you want boost-1.37, you get it. boost-1.37.ebuild
python-2.6 is available in the portage tree and masked for the reasons i already described. i don't know about py3k right now, and i don't want to spend my time searching ebuilds for you.
the 64bit adobe flash player was available in the portage tree (note, not an overlay, the normal testing tree) only hours after the release, and it is explicitly marked alpha. this is only an example.
| jdhore wrote: | | What also makes that sentence worse is that the Gentoo devs don't have to do much work to update stuff...All they have to do is bump the version in the ebuild, get the md5sum of the tarball for the app and upload. |
have you ever written an ebuild for a more complex application? it is _NOT_ true that in most cases a simple ebuild rename is all you have to do. a new version of an application means that something CHANGED. what you say is mostly true for bugfix releases. those hit the tree very fast after the release. do you have a counter example?
| jdhore wrote: | | Even for something like the kernel, it only takes like 1 minutes instead of 2hrs like on binary distros and even with that Gentoo's still horribly out-of-date... |
the kernel sources are available as- vanilla-sources in the current version 2.6.27.7 and _ALL_ release candidates of 2.6.28
- git-sources in even finer granularity.
- the official gentoo sources are only available from stable kernel versions (which is indeed a good idea). currently 2.6.27, including the patches from 2.6.27.7.
what are you missing?
additionally you can have mm-sources, hardened-sources, etc.
| jdhore wrote: | | but in the week i've had Gentoo on my system this time (probably my 4th time installing it) i've had 2 major breakages that to fix... |
please describe what problems you had.
things break in gentoo from time to time. you are right, not everything is perfect, but whining will not improve things, other doings maybe would.
these are just my .5$.
i am not a gentoo official, just a user who tries to help the project and other users. can you say that of you too?
i am not expecting a pure community project to be perfect. what about you? |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54237
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 11:03 pm Post subject: |
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jdhore,
| jdhore wrote: | | ... in the week i've had Gentoo on my system this time (probably my 4th time installing it) ... |
Please don't treat Gentoo like Windows or a binary distro. When Gentoo breaks, you can fix it and learn a lot at the same time.
There are very few breakages that need a reinstall.
You missed a good learning experiance by not doing the stage3 install too. Now you will be doing the learning you would have got at that time on your live everyday system.
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NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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jdhore
Retired Dev
Joined: 13 Apr 2007
Posts: 106
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 11:09 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo Rant |
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| alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | Having to compile everything sucks |
so, why did you decide to use gentoo? |
It's not the fact that having to compile that sucks. I'll happily compile my kernel and any apps i want to be optimized, but i should have the option to have binaries for more than like 10 applications.
| alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | CFLAGS aren't as amazingly optimized as everyone seems to claim |
you have CPPFLAGS (preprocessor), CFLAGS (compiler), LDFLAGS (linker). what else can you affect on building software written in C? |
None, but CFLAGS (and all the other flags) are something that people say makes shit so much faster and makes compiling worth it, but for the most part, this is patently untrue.
| alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | USE flags are a pain...Let's say i compile totem and audacious and i don't know that the USE flag for MP3 support is "mad" because, let's face it, without checking use.desc, i would've never guessed... |
there is e.g. the utility app-portage/euses with the meaningful description "look up USE flag descriptions fast". and, it is not true that you need to know the useflag mad to play mp3 files on a gentoo system. |
I did notice that mp3 support now has the mp3 USE flag it seems, but my main complaint...having to recompile a bunch of apps when a single USE flag changes is ridiculous. I know i don't HAVE to, but ArchLinux for example compile audacious with support for some stuff and says: If you want to use $FEATURE, please install $DEPENDENCY. It's a binary distro and it can do that with no recompiling and not even having to reinstall the package.
| alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | A month later, you get to spend 2 hours recompiling a new Firefox release |
for rather big applications like mozilla firefox or openoffice.org there are -bin packages. so you do not have to compile them yourself in order to get a new version. |
I can't argue with you here. This is true, i'll argue my point on the next section 
| alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | 2 months later, you get to spend 6 hours recompiling a new GNOME release (be it a feature release or a bugfix release) |
well, this is how gentoo works. compiling software on the local machine. there are two kinds of linux distributions: source and binary distros. you decided to use a source distribution. now you hate waiting for compilation processes to finish. well, is this really the fault of gentoo?
and, gnome is split into tiny packages. if there is a bugfix releases for gnome-games, you only have to rebuild gnome-games, not gnome as a whole. |
First, there is rarely a singular bug fix for just gnome-games, usually whole GNOME bugfix releases come out at once and you have to recompile everything. I'm not blaming Gentoo for this, but i am blaming Gentoo for not handling it a bit less painfully...What i would do (for minor bugfix releases, for major feature releases, i'd say a recompile is OK) is diff the old version against the new and recompile only what's changed and possibly re-link/rebuild the library if necessary. Half the time of a GNOME bugfix release, there are only 1 line changes and translation updates, so i shouldn't have to spend 5 minutes recompiling a app just to get translation updates i don't use.
| alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | Nowadays, Gentoo is more out of date than even the non-rolling release distros like Debian and Ubuntu in some cases... |
you list examples of programming languages. everything that is build on a gentoo system depends on them. it is _NOT_ a simply task to make a new perl or python or even gcc release available on gentoo, since the compilers themself are built on the local machine. this is not the case on a debian system.
you want perl-5.10, you get it. use the perl-experimental overlay.
you want gcc-4.4? no, you didn't ask for it, you get it anyway. use dirtyepics overlay.
you want boost-1.37, you get it. boost-1.37.ebuild
python-2.6 is available in the portage tree and masked for the reasons i already described. i don't know about py3k right now, and i don't want to spend my time searching ebuilds for you.
the 64bit adobe flash player was available in the portage tree (note, not an overlay, the normal testing tree) only hours after the release, and it is explicitly marked alpha. this is only an example. |
Simply, i should not have to go searching. What's wrong with putting these ebuilds in the testing tree or having them hardmasked? If you're using testing or removing hard masks on packages, you should have the general intelligence to not blindly update when there's a updated package (I doubt most people globally enable testing anyway).
As for flash 10 64-bit, it was in ArchLinux's AUR within 3 hours of release (yay for RSS email notifications) and there was a binary package (?) available in the Testing repository well within 18 hours.
| alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | What also makes that sentence worse is that the Gentoo devs don't have to do much work to update stuff...All they have to do is bump the version in the ebuild, get the md5sum of the tarball for the app and upload. |
have you ever written an ebuild for a more complex application? it is _NOT_ true that in most cases a simple ebuild rename is all you have to do. a new version of an application means that something CHANGED. what you say is mostly true for bugfix releases. those hit the tree very fast after the release. do you have a counter example? |
Your statement is invalid anyway. Just in comparing Gentoo to Archlinux, Gentoo has at least 4x the amount of developers of Arch and the Arch repos are more up-to-date than even testing AND the Arch developers have to take the time to compile the packages which may take a while which is something that Gentoo devs don't. That doesn't seem logical to me how Gentoo would be out-of-date.
| alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | Even for something like the kernel, it only takes like 1 minutes instead of 2hrs like on binary distros and even with that Gentoo's still horribly out-of-date... |
the kernel sources are available as- vanilla-sources in the current version 2.6.27.7 and _ALL_ release candidates of 2.6.28
- git-sources in even finer granularity.
- the official gentoo sources are only available from stable kernel versions (which is indeed a good idea). currently 2.6.27, including the patches from 2.6.27.7.
what are you missing?
additionally you can have mm-sources, hardened-sources, etc. |
you're sort of taking what i said out of context. The last part of my statement: "even with that Gentoo's still horribly out-of-date..." was more aimed as a general statement then pointing specifically at the kernel.
| alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | but in the week i've had Gentoo on my system this time (probably my 4th time installing it) i've had 2 major breakages that to fix... |
please describe what problems you had. |
Well...As i mentioned, tons of problems with the installer whereas i've never had a problem with a Stage3 install.
Python broke on me and therefore, portage broke and that was a pain to fix and Boost broke on me, but i somehow managed to fix that.
| alex.blackbit wrote: | things break in gentoo from time to time. you are right, not everything is perfect, but whining will not improve things, other doings maybe would.
these are just my .5$.
i am not a gentoo official, just a user who tries to help the project and other users. can you say that of you too?
i am not expecting a pure community project to be perfect. what about you? |
I don't try to help Gentoo because i wouldn't consider myself enough of a Gentoo expert to be of use to anyone, but for a while i did help in the Debian and Arch community (I maintain about 15 packages in Arch's AUR and i try to help out on the forums).
I am not expecting a purely community project to be perfect, but i'm at least asking for it to be decent. ArchLinux is a 100% community project and it is quite a lot better than Gentoo (IMO), Debian is used by a lot of commercial entities and a bunch of Debian Developers are paid to do their stuff for Debian, but even with that, Debian seems loads better than Gentoo. I'm sorry for sounding like a troll here, but sadly, it's true. |
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jdhore
Retired Dev
Joined: 13 Apr 2007
Posts: 106
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | jdhore,
| jdhore wrote: | | ... in the week i've had Gentoo on my system this time (probably my 4th time installing it) ... |
Please don't treat Gentoo like Windows or a binary distro. When Gentoo breaks, you can fix it and learn a lot at the same time.
There are very few breakages that need a reinstall.
You missed a good learning experiance by not doing the stage3 install too. Now you will be doing the learning you would have got at that time on your live everyday system. |
I don't treat Gentoo as Windows. I'm saying this is my 4th time installing it, because i usually get fed up with it and reformat to try another distro. If i used Gentoo on a production box or if i could stand it for more than 3 months straight, i'd roll with it. Hell, I have a old Debian system sitting in my basement that's been running Debian Testing since 2001 and it hasn't been reformatted since (Why it still works i do not know).
As far as not doing a stage3...On my other 3 installs, i have done a stage3, i enjoy Stage3 installs and you learn a lot about both Gentoo and linux itself, this time i wanted to try the installer and see where it got me. I was disappointed and i now know not to try the installer again or at least not try it again until 2009.0 comes out and it will hopefully be improved. |
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jonnevers
Veteran
Joined: 02 Jan 2003
Posts: 1594
Location: Gentoo64 land
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| Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 11:15 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo Rant |
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| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | Having to compile everything sucks |
so, why did you decide to use gentoo? |
It's not the fact that having to compile that sucks. I'll happily compile my kernel and any apps i want to be optimized, but i should have the option to have binaries for more than like 10 applications. |
say it again out loud, "source based distro". if you want binaries use your brain and go where the binaries are: tinderbox
more then 10? i didn't even bother to read your "rant". |
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Captain Newbie
Apprentice
Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 182
Location: Socal
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 12:03 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | It's not the fact that having to compile that sucks. I'll happily compile my kernel and any apps i want to be optimized, but i should have the option to have binaries for more than like 10 applications. |
Then I'd stick with something Debian-based, and fetch source packages for stuff I care enough about to build from source.
Too, as pointed out above, tinderbox has binary packages available for a whole slew of applications.
Gentoo is occasionally a pain in the ass (see: sys-fs/e2fsprogs and sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs, which bit us recently when we weren't careful or inquisitive enough) but is an overwhelmingly positive experience.
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AllenJB
Veteran
Joined: 02 Sep 2005
Posts: 1285
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 12:21 am Post subject: |
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| Portage is constantly being improved to make life easier. Portage 2.2 (and I think 2.1.6) has proper block handling and actually handles the e2fsprogs blocks on its own without any intervention at all. |
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Captain Newbie
Apprentice
Joined: 22 Dec 2006
Posts: 182
Location: Socal
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 12:26 am Post subject: |
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| AllenJB wrote: | | Portage is constantly being improved to make life easier. Portage 2.2 (and I think 2.1.6) has proper block handling and actually handles the e2fsprogs blocks on its own without any intervention at all. |
I know. It's exciting - I can't wait.
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alex.blackbit
Advocate
Joined: 26 Jul 2005
Posts: 2397
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 12:35 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo Rant |
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| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | Having to compile everything sucks |
so, why did you decide to use gentoo? |
It's not the fact that having to compile that sucks. I'll happily compile my kernel and any apps i want to be optimized, but i should have the option to have binaries for more than like 10 applications. |
there is thinderbox. and, 99,99% of the gentoo users welcome the behavior of gentoo to compile everything on the local machine, that's why the chose gentoo.
additionally having binary packages makes it impossible to have useflags.
| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | CFLAGS aren't as amazingly optimized as everyone seems to claim |
you have CPPFLAGS (preprocessor), CFLAGS (compiler), LDFLAGS (linker). what else can you affect on building software written in C? |
None, but CFLAGS (and all the other flags) are something that people say makes shit so much faster and makes compiling worth it, but for the most part, this is patently untrue. |
who says useflags makes anything faster?
useflags are worth the effort, because that way you can decide e.g. what databases should be supported in php. it does not make sense to support firebird, interbase, mssql, mysql, oracle and postgres. gentoo users care about such things, users of binary distributions don't.
| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | USE flags are a pain...Let's say i compile totem and audacious and i don't know that the USE flag for MP3 support is "mad" because, let's face it, without checking use.desc, i would've never guessed... |
there is e.g. the utility app-portage/euses with the meaningful description "look up USE flag descriptions fast". and, it is not true that you need to know the useflag mad to play mp3 files on a gentoo system. |
I did notice that mp3 support now has the mp3 USE flag it seems, but my main complaint...having to recompile a bunch of apps when a single USE flag changes is ridiculous. I know i don't HAVE to, but ArchLinux for example compile audacious with support for some stuff and says: If you want to use $FEATURE, please install $DEPENDENCY. It's a binary distro and it can do that with no recompiling and not even having to reinstall the package. |
what do you mean with "when a single useflags changes"? useflags don't just change. you change useflags, and this means you want applications to support something different than before. this of course means recompilation in a source based distro. where exactly is the criticism? in source based distros in general? there is no other way to achieve the goal of changed demands to a software than recompilation.
what exactly does arch linux do with audacious? they cannot modify the functionality of the application ifself with addon-packages. they can only provide addons. that's what gentoo does too, but additionally gives you the freedom to decide whether you want support for e.g. native language support or not. if i am wrong, please tell me how arch linux manages to "plug" sse2 support into audacious with a afterwards installed package if it wasn't compiled in initially.
| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | A month later, you get to spend 2 hours recompiling a new Firefox release |
for rather big applications like mozilla firefox or openoffice.org there are -bin packages. so you do not have to compile them yourself in order to get a new version. |
I can't argue with you here. This is true, i'll argue my point on the next section |
well...
| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | 2 months later, you get to spend 6 hours recompiling a new GNOME release (be it a feature release or a bugfix release) |
well, this is how gentoo works. compiling software on the local machine. there are two kinds of linux distributions: source and binary distros. you decided to use a source distribution. now you hate waiting for compilation processes to finish. well, is this really the fault of gentoo?
and, gnome is split into tiny packages. if there is a bugfix releases for gnome-games, you only have to rebuild gnome-games, not gnome as a whole. |
First, there is rarely a singular bug fix for just gnome-games, usually whole GNOME bugfix releases come out at once and you have to recompile everything. I'm not blaming Gentoo for this, but i am blaming Gentoo for not handling it a bit less painfully...What i would do (for minor bugfix releases, for major feature releases, i'd say a recompile is OK) is diff the old version against the new and recompile only what's changed and possibly re-link/rebuild the library if necessary. Half the time of a GNOME bugfix release, there are only 1 line changes and translation updates, so i shouldn't have to spend 5 minutes recompiling a app just to get translation updates i don't use. |
there are bugfix releases for every part of the modularised packages like gnome, xorg, etc. those updates are reflected 1:1 in gentoo ebuilds. a minor update in the keyboard driver of xorg means you only have to recompile this driver.
what do you want to "diff"? sources? this means a recompile.
or are you planning on running diff on binaries?
| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | Nowadays, Gentoo is more out of date than even the non-rolling release distros like Debian and Ubuntu in some cases... |
you list examples of programming languages. everything that is build on a gentoo system depends on them. it is _NOT_ a simply task to make a new perl or python or even gcc release available on gentoo, since the compilers themself are built on the local machine. this is not the case on a debian system.
you want perl-5.10, you get it. use the perl-experimental overlay.
you want gcc-4.4? no, you didn't ask for it, you get it anyway. use dirtyepics overlay.
you want boost-1.37, you get it. boost-1.37.ebuild
python-2.6 is available in the portage tree and masked for the reasons i already described. i don't know about py3k right now, and i don't want to spend my time searching ebuilds for you.
the 64bit adobe flash player was available in the portage tree (note, not an overlay, the normal testing tree) only hours after the release, and it is explicitly marked alpha. this is only an example. |
Simply, i should not have to go searching. What's wrong with putting these ebuilds in the testing tree or having them hardmasked? If you're using testing or removing hard masks on packages, you should have the general intelligence to not blindly update when there's a updated package (I doubt most people globally enable testing anyway).
As for flash 10 64-bit, it was in ArchLinux's AUR within 3 hours of release (yay for RSS email notifications) and there was a binary package (?) available in the Testing repository well within 18 hours. |
if you do not understand why overlays exist, ok.
i do not know exactly how many hours it took until the shiny shiny alpha-quality flash player was in portage. if it took 4 hours, would that mean archlinux is the better distro?
| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | What also makes that sentence worse is that the Gentoo devs don't have to do much work to update stuff...All they have to do is bump the version in the ebuild, get the md5sum of the tarball for the app and upload. |
have you ever written an ebuild for a more complex application? it is _NOT_ true that in most cases a simple ebuild rename is all you have to do. a new version of an application means that something CHANGED. what you say is mostly true for bugfix releases. those hit the tree very fast after the release. do you have a counter example? |
Your statement is invalid anyway. Just in comparing Gentoo to Archlinux, Gentoo has at least 4x the amount of developers of Arch and the Arch repos are more up-to-date than even testing AND the Arch developers have to take the time to compile the packages which may take a while which is something that Gentoo devs don't. That doesn't seem logical to me how Gentoo would be out-of-date. |
the time it takes to compile a package is not the point. that would make a difference of some hours even for the biggest packages like ooo on recent hardware, no word said about distributed compiling.
the point is that (i think i say that the 10th time) ebuilds must be able to let the software compile in the environment existing on the users computer, on that certain cpu type, with his compiler version, with his use flag settings.
the devs of a binary distro do only have to get the stuff compiled somehow on there machines because the target environment is predictable.
| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | Even for something like the kernel, it only takes like 1 minutes instead of 2hrs like on binary distros and even with that Gentoo's still horribly out-of-date... |
the kernel sources are available as- vanilla-sources in the current version 2.6.27.7 and _ALL_ release candidates of 2.6.28
- git-sources in even finer granularity.
- the official gentoo sources are only available from stable kernel versions (which is indeed a good idea). currently 2.6.27, including the patches from 2.6.27.7.
what are you missing?
additionally you can have mm-sources, hardened-sources, etc. |
you're sort of taking what i said out of context. The last part of my statement: "even with that Gentoo's still horribly out-of-date..." was more aimed as a general statement then pointing specifically at the kernel. |
the kernel was one of your examples. i only noted that the available kernel sources on gentoo are _VERY_ up-to-date and indeed most other software is too.
| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | | jdhore wrote: | | but in the week i've had Gentoo on my system this time (probably my 4th time installing it) i've had 2 major breakages that to fix... |
please describe what problems you had. |
Well...As i mentioned, tons of problems with the installer whereas i've never had a problem with a Stage3 install.
Python broke on me and therefore, portage broke and that was a pain to fix and Boost broke on me, but i somehow managed to fix that. |
is the installer marked stable?
| jdhore wrote: | | alex.blackbit wrote: | things break in gentoo from time to time. you are right, not everything is perfect, but whining will not improve things, other doings maybe would.
these are just my .5$.
i am not a gentoo official, just a user who tries to help the project and other users. can you say that of you too?
i am not expecting a pure community project to be perfect. what about you? |
I don't try to help Gentoo because i wouldn't consider myself enough of a Gentoo expert to be of use to anyone, but for a while i did help in the Debian and Arch community (I maintain about 15 packages in Arch's AUR and i try to help out on the forums).
I am not expecting a purely community project to be perfect, but i'm at least asking for it to be decent. ArchLinux is a 100% community project and it is quite a lot better than Gentoo (IMO), Debian is used by a lot of commercial entities and a bunch of Debian Developers are paid to do their stuff for Debian, but even with that, Debian seems loads better than Gentoo. I'm sorry for sounding like a troll here, but sadly, it's true. |
it is great that you participated in other projects, but it is gentoo that you think needs polishing. nobody starts as a gentoo expert. that's not a good reason to let it be.
you like archlinux, others like gentoo. that's fine, now we know. |
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dmpogo
Advocate
Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 3267
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 12:39 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Having to compile everything sucks
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Why do you even try Gentoo then ?? |
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alex.blackbit
Advocate
Joined: 26 Jul 2005
Posts: 2397
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 12:44 am Post subject: |
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| gentoo seems to work very well for most users. |
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Nephilim666
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 07 Jul 2007
Posts: 148
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 1:21 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo Rant |
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| jonnevers wrote: |
say it again out loud, "source based distro". if you want binaries use your brain and go where the binaries are: tinderbox
more then 10? i didn't even bother to read your "rant". |
Quoted for truth! |
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tanderson
Retired Dev
Joined: 11 Apr 2007
Posts: 193
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 1:26 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo Rant |
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| jdhore wrote: |
Your statement is invalid anyway. Just in comparing Gentoo to Archlinux, Gentoo has at least 4x the amount of developers of Arch and the Arch repos are more up-to-date than even testing AND the Arch developers have to take the time to compile the packages which may take a while which is something that Gentoo devs don't. That doesn't seem logical to me how Gentoo would be out-of-date.
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That's just plain wrong. Gentoo developers still have to compile their packages before committing them so that we can ensure some level of QA. If anything, we have to spend more time testing because of how USE flags can interact with each other and break things.
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Aquiles
Apprentice
Joined: 23 Feb 2007
Posts: 230
Location: Somewhere, surrounded by my circumstances.
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 9:23 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo Rant |
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| jdhore wrote: |
Having to compile everything sucks
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Well, having to compile everything is sort of the point, isn't it? If you don't like it then you use a binary distro. I don't know what else to say, it's like buying a supersports car and then complaining about how unconfortable it is...
So, if you want to compile, use Gentoo. If you don't, do not use it. And I don't think that's one of those things that could just be changed or even discussed. I mean, Gentoo is a source based distro, that's what it is. If you change that, then it is not Gentoo. And I think it is interesting to have a source based distro out there for those who want.
| jdhore wrote: |
USE flags are a pain...Let's say i compile totem and audacious and i don't know that the USE flag for MP3 support is "mad" because, let's face it, without checking use.desc, i would've never guessed...So i compile them and i come across a MP3 i want to play...Well...I can't, i have to go googling for what the MP3 USE flag is, then i have to spend 20 minutes recompiling totem, audacious and who knows what else against the new USE flag.
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You are right. The answer to your question might be "experience" or "learn". I mean, now you do know that the USE flag for MP3 support is "mad", don't you? Well, that's how all of us work our way through Gentoo. We compile without a needed flag, we notice something is missing, we look/ask for the flag, we recompile and in the end, we have learned something that will allow us to keep on with Gentoo more smoothly.
In short, what you are saying is that you have to learn things to run Gentoo. That's right.
| jdhore wrote: |
The other thing is...After about a week ( ), you finally have a decently working Gentoo system...A month later, you get to spend 2 hours recompiling a new Firefox release, 2 months later, you get to spend 6 hours recompiling a new GNOME release (be it a feature release or a bugfix release) and if you run KDE...LOL...On my system that takes 8hrs to go from basic X to GNOME+Firefox...it takes about 20 hours to compile all of KDE...
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You're right, these things happen. Then again, if that's a pain in the ass for you, then perhaps Gentoo is not the distro that best fits your needs. But as I already said, being source based is in the core of Gentoo, and of course that carries a lot of assets as well as drawbacks, one of the last being, for instance, what you just pointed out. You always pay a price for everything, and it's you who shoud decide if it is worth it or it isn't.
| jdhore wrote: |
Finally. I remember about 3 years ago when everyone was saying Gentoo was cutting edge...having all sorts of betas and alphas and RC's and svn/cvs/git versions in the repos. Nowadays, Gentoo is more out of date than even the non-rolling release distros like Debian and Ubuntu in some cases...and compared to Arch, everything in Gentoo is horribly out-of-date. What also makes that sentence worse is that the Gentoo devs don't have to do much work to update stuff...
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I agree with the firs part. But I don't belive that Gentoo devs don't have to do much work to update stuff...
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lightvhawk0
Guru
Joined: 07 Nov 2003
Posts: 388
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 3:08 am Post subject: |
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| dmpogo wrote: | | Quote: |
Having to compile everything sucks
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Why do you even try Gentoo then ?? |
hahahaha hahahahaha
ok I'm done.
I bought a Quadcore just for Gentoo. -j5 is awesome. I would love to run dual quads even.
btw my recent Gentoo install was done in one day.
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jonnevers
Veteran
Joined: 02 Jan 2003
Posts: 1594
Location: Gentoo64 land
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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| lightvhawk0 wrote: | I bought a Quadcore just for Gentoo. -j5 is awesome. I would love to run dual quads even.
btw my recent Gentoo install was done in one day. |
you mustn't have used a funtoo.org stage3 tarball, makes any gentoo install only a couple hours or so.
of course, that wouldn't exercise a quad-core  |
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monsm
Guru
Joined: 26 Sep 2007
Posts: 467
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 5:19 pm Post subject: |
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| lightvhawk0 wrote: | | dmpogo wrote: | | Quote: |
Having to compile everything sucks
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Why do you even try Gentoo then ?? |
hahahaha hahahahaha
ok I'm done.
I bought a Quadcore just for Gentoo. -j5 is awesome. I would love to run dual quads even.
btw my recent Gentoo install was done in one day. |
LOL What compile time was it they talked about above?
Remind me to put together a AMD Phenom II quad box when the new CPU is out
I do like a rant from time to time though and on some things jdhore has a point. At least it is true that the LiveCD installer is for the most part broken (or very fragile).
Most of the rest I must say is just how Gentoo works. While long installation is going on, read up on use flags and portage. There are good documentation for most of these little cultural oddities. And I would say, if there wasn't any compilation, there would be no need to have a Gentoo distribution (it would then be the same as any other).
I have been running Gentoo for 2 years now on a relatively modest Athlon XP 3200+ (32 bit single core). I am getting used to checking useflags for new apps, using google and letting the machine do big emerges over night. And I do have both Firefox 3 and Openoffice 3 installed (none-binary obviously).
Thanks for the rant, jdhore. Don't give up though. You'll see it is all worth it
Mons |
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djdunn
l33t
Joined: 26 Dec 2004
Posts: 810
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:56 pm Post subject: |
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be like me... sit and watch the compiler and meditate...
or i might just be crazy
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platojones
Veteran
Joined: 23 Oct 2002
Posts: 1602
Location: Just over the horizon
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| Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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| djdunn wrote: | be like me... sit and watch the compiler and meditate...
or i might just be crazy |
You're crazy I watch tv on my computer and/or surf the web or do anything else I need to get done while I'm emerging...doesn't phase my box at all. And except for installs, there's nothing I'm so excited about installing that I can't wait a little while for it to finish. |
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NathanZachary
Moderator
Joined: 30 Jan 2007
Posts: 2605
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| Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 4:13 am Post subject: |
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| djdunn wrote: | be like me... sit and watch the compiler and meditate...
or i might just be crazy |
You know, I've found myself doing this as well from time to time. I don't know why, but it does seem interesting to watch.
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hielvc
Advocate
Joined: 19 Apr 2002
Posts: 2805
Location: Oceanside, Ca
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monsm
Guru
Joined: 26 Sep 2007
Posts: 467
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 9:35 am Post subject: |
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| hielvc wrote: | I do the same,but its not as good as the windows 98 defrag with boxs changing color and MOVEING  |
True. I run framebuffer video driver in text mode and have the nice smiley penguin in the background (newtux theme I think it is). Its quiet nice though sitting and watching a compile in that fullscreen with the penguin and the text falling over him like snow at home in Antarctica...
Mons |
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