why gentoo???

quakey · n00b Joined: 21 Aug 2003 Posts: 30

Hi,

I've heard a lot of good things about Gentoo and I finally got some time to install it.

Although I am not done installing it yet (it's still building the boostrap now), I am beginning to wonder about the point of using Gentoo.

From what I know, the main attraction of Gentoo is of customization and optimization. However, you can still build stuff from source in other distro if you want to customize or optimize. You can build gnome for scratch. You can build kernel from scratch. You can build anything from scratch. And when you build them from the source, you have the chance to customize and optimize. Therefore, you can still do all those things in other distro as well. So what's the big deal about it in Gentoo?

Maybe Gentoo does make life easier by having a make.conf that acts as a systme-wide compilation flags. But still, it is not that difficult to write all the flags out when you compile from source.

Also, it takes HOURS to compile everything from stage 1. You might as well just install the pre-built binaries first to get it up and running, and then re-compile the software that you'd like to customize or optimize.

:?:

Am I missing something here about the greatness of Gentoo??

Thank you for any feedback.

CheshireCat · Guru Joined: 25 Aug 2002 Posts: 572

You're missing one thing about compiling things from scratch for installation in a binary distribution: the package manager doesn't know about them. When you merge a package with portage, it is built from scratch to your specifications, and tracks the files installed on your system. Your customized package now has everything you get with a package in a binary distribution, such as the ability to cleanly remove a package and all of the files belonging to it, or the ability to find out what installed some file you find in your system. In a binary distribution, if you build something from scratch, you may end up building anything else which would depend on that package from scratch, as well, and not being able to cleanly remove any of it if you later decide that you don't want it. While you can build binary packages from source with most binary distributions, none I've used makes it as easy to customize them as Gentoo does.

jufoa · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 10:32 am Post subject:

I few other things:
1) the filosofy to include all the cool things in ebuilds, like all the video codecs to xine and mplayer and extra fonts to xfree.

2) can upgrade system "on the fly". you can get new package as soon as its out. dont have to wait that "redhat 11" comes out.

beejay · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 10:35 am Post subject:

Simple answer : using and administrating Gentoo is fun for me. Never had so much fun with any other distro. There is also an increased speed of learning with Gentoo in comparison to other distros.

Edit:
- Fixed typo
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Evangelion · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 10:55 am Post subject: Re: why gentoo???

madchaz · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 11:01 am Post subject:

he's just asking, be nice

My personal reason for using gentoo isn't even that it's from source. It's how well it takes many headaches away from me. I get a linux from scratch that is simple to configure. I don't have to worry about dependencies and such. All I need to worry about is configuring the apps I install.

To me, that's important, because I dislike having a lot of stuff installed on my servers and not knowing what is there. With gentoo, I know exactly what is on. Makes securing the box and troubleshooting a lot easier

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HeruNoleth · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2003 Posts: 15 Location: Denmark

Evangelion · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 12:35 pm Post subject:

idl · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 12:44 pm Post subject:

Don't forget these forums! The community is a major part of Gentoo

Lycander · Guru Joined: 10 Apr 2003 Posts: 468

I use and like Gentoo because I'm secretly in love with that cow, the Gentoo mascot.
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VincentVega · n00b Joined: 04 Jan 2003 Posts: 16 Location: UK

Yup, forums rock - very friendly community and very helpful.

Gentoo is just plain fun. I quite like compiling the stuff and watching my system progress, even if it's stuff like KDE that takes absolutely ages.

You can install exactly what you want to. Don't need 120 editors like you have with Redhat? Then don't install them. I make do with nano and xemacs. Want the latest and greatest? Do an "emerge sync" and it's ready to build (usually) and works fine (again, most of the time). There's breakmygentoo as well if you want the real cutting edge things...

I used to use Suse a couple of years ago before going off Linux for a while and staying 100% a Windows user. I used to spend way too much times messing around with it, updating ancient packages and thinking nasty things about RPMs and weird dependancies than I do now. Gentoo is a pleasure to use and I feel more inclined to play around and learn about the system and start hacking KDE to bits...

If you can't be bothered with all the compiling, as others suggest, why not start from stage 3? Sure, your system won't be quite so optimised as it might be, but it'll do whilst you're getting to grips with how the thing works. If you decide you like it, then start again from stage 1 and compile everything (it doesn't take long if you've got a fast system). If you decide you don't like it, then install something else. It's your choice, unlike Windows where it's either all or nothing...

christsong84 · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 2:38 pm Post subject:

for me, it's teh ease of maintenance...I don't have to keep up to date on a million packages as they come out...it's as simple as two commands (one of which is on my cron for a daily update)

emerge sync (the daily cron)
emerge -up world

tada...those are the packages available for update...and I have control over which ones are updated as well as which ones i want installed overall...no kde or gnome 'cause I need to keep my diskspace to a minimum (pet peeve as well as makes more available for the other users on the server)

edit: oh yeah...almost forgot...best part is the support I can get from the forums for almost anything!
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UncleTom · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 2:53 pm Post subject:

Couldn't agree more with what has been said. I might add the following advantages of Gentoo that really did it for me:

First, I learned a lot more about Linux just by installing Gentoo than by using SuSE or RedHat. In my opinion these systems hide too much from the user, assuming he's too dumb to understand anyway.

Second, when I emerge something it usually works without too much fiddling around. After installing RedHat I had half a dozen programs for every conceivable task I didn't need to perform, but maybe 10% of them worked out of the box.
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Xiol · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 209 Location: UK

I dunno what it is about Gentoo, really... It's not the optimisation, because I don't notice it to be any faster than a binary distro on my main machine.

I really like the USE flags though, and Portage. Compiling from source makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside too...

I guess it's cause it's like a much easier LFS. This is my system. There isn't 1001 applications taking up space that I won't need, there isn't any services started at startup that aren't necessary or there without my permission, and I find it really easy to tweak stuff and change settings.

Also, stuff just works! I've had trouble with other distros in the past where some things were broke and wouldn't work, but I've not had that trouble with Gentoo.

I've learned so much too. I'd spent months with other distros, yet I learned more in a few weeks with Gentoo than I had done with those. 'Those' being Mandrake, Red Hat, Yoper (sucks, IMO), Vector and Slackware, which never really worked cause I was such a n00b.

With other distros I always found myself booting back into Windows to do stuff and play games - Well no more. Gentoo is now my main desktop. (Although, I do have a WinXP partition standing by for when Half-Life 2 is released... A Linux port seems unlikely.)

Plus it's a great community. I've had some teething trouble with Gentoo, I'll admit, but these forums and the people on #gentoo have helped me through them.

I don't think I could go back to a binary distro now. Hell, installing binary packages on my shiny Gentoo system makes me feel dirty.

Liathus · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2003 3:43 pm Post subject:

optimization really has nothing to do with it for me. All of my gentoo systems are stage 3 with GRP. I used to use redhat, but I have found it less and less what I want since 7.3 (their last OS worth using IMHO).

I use gentoo because i love how easy it is to maintain once its running. Every once and a while i do a emerge sync and a emerge -p world. I then decide what i need to upgrade to keep my systems current and stable. You do this once a week and its not much of a chore.

In the simplest terms possible. I use gentoo because there is nothing out there thats is easier to use for me. Plus its is the most customizable linux I have used yet. That last part means a lot to me as I run gentoo on a few servers and on my desktop.

A lot of people bitch and moan about compile times. I dont have any issues with them, the only slow ones are the desktop apps really. and I can always nice them to 15 or somethign so i dont even notice they are running. (if i even need to do them as I use GRP).

For my servers compiles are quick... the biggest things are apache, sendmail, or samba...

anyhow... im done with my un-structured rant now :)

quakey · n00b Joined: 21 Aug 2003 Posts: 30

Hi,

Gentoo really has a great community! It is certainly shown by the number of responses I got so far.

Still, you guys claim that Gentoo allows you to learn more about Linux and I have some questions regarding that claim.

The emerge and ebuilds thingy in Gentoo seem to be the driving force behind Gentoo. But how much can you really learn from using them? I haven't tried them yet, but, if I am not mistaken, it bascially downloads the latest source (including the dependency) for you so you can re-compile. How is that different than use a RPM package? You check for the new ebuild (or RPM), then download them and compile (or install for RPM) them. They both make our life easier except that for ebuilds, you still have to compile.

Also, by using emerge, I don't see how that can help you learn more about compiling. You download new source, and it compiles everything for you (including dependency). It's just a matter of choose which package you want to update and that doesn't seem to help you gain the insight of compiling process.

Furthermore, the new update is only available when it's put up by Gentoo developer (I guess). I konw there are thousands of ebuilds scripts already, but maybe there are still a few apps that you'd liket to install but doesn't have the ebuild script for them? What are you going to do? Some people may grow dependent on the facility of Gentoo and do not really know how to compile the source themselves since they never actaully needed to run gcc (or whatever) themselves b4.

For me, I didn't learn nothing new by going through the installation of Gentoo. I don't mean that I understand everything the installation guide tells me to do, but it doens't try to explain either. For example, there are many times that it just shows you the commands to run, but doesn't tell me WHY and WHAT they are (env-update? It's Gentoo-specific command). I actually thought that I would have learnt more since that was the main reason I tried Gentoo: too learn more about Linux.

Anyways, I am trying to bash Gentoo or anything. Just some questions I have in mind. I actually think Gentoo is pretty hip (being different than other distros) and I am sure I will need help from you guys in the future about Gentoo.

Thank you.

mmealman · Guru Joined: 02 Nov 2002 Posts: 348 Location: Florida

Learning:

Gentoo is generally a "learning" distro because the install is so transparent. Compare a Gentoo install vs a Mandrake or RHAT install and Gentoo is much more hands on.

You may not know WHY you're installing cron or syslog, but at least in Gentoo you know they're being installed.

Ebuild dependance:

It's actually fairly easy to write your own ebuilds under Gentoo. In fact, many times if a package gets updated and there's no new ebuild you merely have to change the ebuild name for it to be updated. Like if apache goes from version 2.0.47 to 2.0.48 renaming the apache-2.0.47.ebuild to apache-2.0.48.ebuild will likely let you upgrade.

Compared to Red Hat RPMs and Debian DEBs, ebuilds are very easy to create on your own. And you can submit any ebuilds you make to bugs.gentoo.org.

Gentoo is "cool" because

1> It's a source based distribution with a package manager that rivals Debian's apt.
2> It has a very transparent nature so it's easy for the community to mod.
3> Because of 1 and 2 it has a very active, vibrant and diverse community.

UncleTom · Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2003 9:29 am Post subject:

Mystilleef · Guru Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 561 Location: Earth

I have some questions for you. Based on them, I might be able to relate better to your situation.

1) What distro have you used prior to Gentoo?

2) What have you noticed about Gentoo that makes you think it is the distro for you?

3) Have you compiled the Kernel?

4) Why have you continued to install Gentoo despite the fact that you think it doesn't feel any different from other distros?

Why do I like Gentoo?

1). Excellent package manager.

2). Excellent file system structure layout.

3). Customizable.

4). Excellent community

5). Excellent learning environment- Visit the documentation tips and tricks forum

6). Believe it or not, Gentoo is the fastest Linux distro I've used.

7). Gentoo is the only Linux distro I"ve used where all packages work.

. Gentoo maintainance scripts are lovely. {etc-update, rc-update, env-update, gentoolkits}

9). Excellent documentation- Gentoo Desktop Howto, ALSA Howto, GNUP Howto, to mention but a few.

10). It just works. I've used several OSs, software package and linux distros where things always partially worked, but never fully. In Gentoo, EVERYTHING JUST WORKS FINE. And really, that's all I need.

Regards,

Mystilleef
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castorilo · Apprentice Joined: 25 Dec 2002 Posts: 157

I went from slackware to redhat to mandrake to suse. Slackware was just "a bunch of files", no real package management that I could see (this was ages ago, I don't know about now). Redhat, mandrake and suse frustrated me with the dependency hell, and the obfuscated rpm format, I decided to try something different so I tried gentoo.

I am very happy with gentoo and I am never going back to any of the other distros.

This is the list of Pros and Cons that I have seen so far:

Pros:

* Never had to reinstall the system again. With the other distros, once they came out with a new version, I ended up reformating the hard drive and reinstaling the new version. Upgrading was a pain. This is how I upgrade my system now:
emerge rsync ; qpkg -I -nc | xargs emerge -u --oneshot
Hell, I can even put that in a cronjob.

* Stay up to date. With the other distros, I had to wait for ages until they decided to upgrade packages or release a new version before I could get the latest version of program xxx. With gentoo, it is just a matter of:
emerge -u xxx
and that will give me all the latest version of xxx and uninstall the previous version.

* No dependency hell. I don't know how much time I spent on rpmfind.net trying to look for a library that was required by the program I wanted to run. Now it is just a matter of: emerge pepe and that will download, and install all the dependencies of pepe.

* Package making hell. It is horrible to make an rpm, I always prefered to just ./configure && make && make install, loosing all the benefits of the package manager. Making an ebuild for gentoo is so much simpler.

* Choice. I get to choose everything, from log daemon, to compiler, to whatever option I want in a particular program.

* Speed. It is definatelly the fastest distribution I have seen.

* Forums. People are very friendly, and you can find answers to most of your question. People are even corteous and have patience with newbies

* Learn a lot. This is only a plus if you are interested on learning about computers.

* Documentation is excelent.

Cons:

* It takes ages to install anything. I have literally grown beard while waiting for emerge kde to finish.

* It requires a person who knows what he is doing. Even though the documentation is excelent, it still needs someone who can understand it. You will have to compile a kernel.

* Installation is a pain, not only because it takes for ever, but because it is far more complicated than other distros. They are working on it though. Some people will say this is a plus because you learn stuff, but not everybody likes it.

* Configuration is pretty much manual. There is lots of editing /etc files to configure stuff. Again, some people will say this is a plus. You can try with packages such as webmin, but this is far from something like the control panel in windows.

This is what I have concluded about gentoo:

It is not for newbies. I would not recoment gentoo to someone who has not used linux before.
Even though installation is very long, I have only had to do it once. I would have to say I have wasted more time reinstalling linux every new release with other distros, so dont get too discoraged by this. Once you have it up and running, is when you will start seing the benefits.
You should consider gentoo, if you are frustrated with other distros package management or if you are constantly anoyed by not being able to test something that has just being released.

I hope this gives you an idea of what to expect from gentoo.

shash · Apprentice Joined: 18 Apr 2003 Posts: 220 Location: India

Why do I use Gentoo? Let me list some history:

I actually started using Linux from the time I was in my 10th class in school, mainly because my cousin had got me all excited about this free OS that could help me learn more about computers (and might I mention that he was absolutely right

). Well, that thing was RedHat 5.0, back in the time when Redhat was still more console based than now, and the only WMs I had were Afterstep, Lestif and FVWM (and of course, TWM). My video card at that time, an SiS 6215C didn't have any drivers for X shipped in the release (3.3.6, IIRC) and I had to find it for myself. Well, long story short, I stuck with RedHat until 7.1, when I found Debian in a magazine CD. I decided to try it out, and found it kewl, powerful, reliable and hopelessly out of date (that was Deb. 2.1.5, using the 2.2 kernel when everyone else was using 2.4, and it still had an ancient XFree86). So, I went distro shopping and found Mandrake. I found its eye candy nice and stuck with it for a couple of years.... Until I got to the point where I didn't want to go through RPM hell for every package I wanted, and not have programs' default directories changed so that things like the Liquid theme didn't work. Also, KDevelop needs kdoc to work properly (works without it, but most of the documentation is not there), and Mandrake has no RPM for it. Well, the same cousin who introduced me to Linux also told me about Gentoo, and I switched about a month ago.

Sure, the install process was (is) very painful, and I had to keep my sys. on for days on end, but it paied off in the end!

I guess, I use gentoo because I found that it's as reliable as Debian, but not as fossilized!

Corporal Dan · n00b Joined: 29 Jul 2003 Posts: 32

Alright, I've been using Gentoo (switched from RedHat) for a few months and I have a similar question.
Historically, which grows faster over time, compilation speed or source code complexity? If compilation speed grows faster, then source-based distributions are a excellent proposition because over time, the hours spent compiling will fade to minutes and so on. Eventually, compiling from source could become just an ordinary, non-time-consuming part of all open-source software installations. However, if source code complexity grows faster, then source-based distributions seem doomed. The time spent compiling, say, a web browser can only grow.
I would assume that compilation speed grow faster because it seems bound to the CPU speed, which has very quick growth. But for my peace of mind, I'd like confirmation of this.

BitJam · Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2003 7:35 pm Post subject:

Code complexity increases to match compiler speed.

There are good common sense reasons for this. But regardless of reasons, the amount of time I spend compiling has stayed roughly the same over the past 25 years.

tphamm · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2003 3:40 pm Post subject:

Speaking as someone who's used Red Hat, Mandrake, and Linux from Scratch, I find that Gentoo is the perfect balance between a customized, do-it-yourself distro and an automated, we-do-it-for-you distro. Mandrake and Red Hat were just too confining, because I always wanted the latest stuff TODAY. That, and the "RPM Hell" issue that has been beaten to death already.

Since I was compiling all my software already, I decided to try LFS, and went with that for two years. It was swell at first, but once the swelling went down, I found that I was craving some form of automation and package management (you get neither with LFS, unless you implement it yourself). Gentoo's Portage system gives me that automation and package management I've been looking for.

The real power of Gentoo (well, Portage really) is truly demonstrated when installing large, complex software projects like GNOME. Just type "emerge gnome", and all 50-or-so packages are downloaded, compiled, and installed without any human intervention. After witnessing that, I never wanted to return to the manual "download, extract, configure, make, make install, rinse, repeat" cycle of LFS (and Red Hat and Mandrake, if nobody's built RPMs for the latest betas).
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