Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Quick Search: in
Why should I use Gentoo Today?
View unanswered posts
View posts from last 24 hours

Goto page 1, 2  Next  
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Gentoo Chat
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
netlynker
n00b
n00b


Joined: 29 Aug 2010
Posts: 3
Location: Singapore

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 4:02 am    Post subject: Why should I use Gentoo Today? Reply with quote

Hi,

I have been using several Linux and Unix Distro in past. Some of my favorites are Centos, Debian, Ubuntu LTS, PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE, FreeBSD and so on.
Now I want to try Gentoo. I want to use it as either Desktop or Server. However, I am not sure whether it is worth to try or not because some people say that Gentoo is dead and not a suitable OS in anyways. I want to know clearly about it with proof of concept.

Please let me know all of your opinion on the subjects like Gentoo as Server and Gentoo as Desktop.


Thanks in advance.
netlynker
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Hypnos
Advocate
Advocate


Joined: 18 Jul 2002
Posts: 2889
Location: Omnipresent

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 5:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What concept would you like proved?

Gentoo works fine for me as my laptop OS (using 12 hours a day on my Thinkpad) and as the OS for my headless server (for scientific calculations). I've been pretty happy with Gentoo since 2002; it's really the only distro I know of where you can easily control the toolchain and its features.

However, if you want an operating system ready-to-run out of the box there are better choices, e.g. Arch.
_________________
Personal overlay | Simple backup scheme
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
BashNG
n00b
n00b


Joined: 29 Aug 2010
Posts: 3

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 6:37 am    Post subject: Re: Why should I use Gentoo Today? Reply with quote

netlynker wrote:
Hi,

I have been using several Linux and Unix Distro in past. Some of my favorites are Centos, Debian, Ubuntu LTS, PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE, FreeBSD and so on.
Now I want to try Gentoo. I want to use it as either Desktop or Server. However, I am not sure whether it is worth to try or not because some people say that Gentoo is dead and not a suitable OS in anyways. I want to know clearly about it with proof of concept.

Please let me know all of your opinion on the subjects like Gentoo as Server and Gentoo as Desktop.


Thanks in advance.
netlynker


To be honest, Gentoo isn't what it used to be in either case. I was disappointed today when making my semi annual stage4 for the office that emerging just xorg-server and gnome runs into all the kinds of circular dependency bs that made me switch to Gentoo in the first place. The package management has really gone to hell.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
dmpogo
Advocate
Advocate


Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 3264
Location: Canada

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 6:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Have Gentoo on laptop (thinkpad), 3 desktops and headless server, some installations since 2004. Perfectly happy, no plans to switch.

What I really liked over the years, is smooth continuing upgrade, with result that never any system was noticeably out of date.
This is to contrast with my colleagues with use Red Hat Enterprise on several machines. Installed in 2005, had service contract for couple of years, then it expired, complained for next couple of years that systems are falling behind (had issues with new hardware, but were reluctant to junk what was paid for), now are planning to upgrade, but it has to be a complete new reinstallation and redesign.

And with Gentoo I haven't even noticed that 6 years passed by - all systems are fresh and up-to-date.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
dmpogo
Advocate
Advocate


Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 3264
Location: Canada

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 6:44 am    Post subject: Re: Why should I use Gentoo Today? Reply with quote

BashNG wrote:
netlynker wrote:
Hi,

I have been using several Linux and Unix Distro in past. Some of my favorites are Centos, Debian, Ubuntu LTS, PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE, FreeBSD and so on.
Now I want to try Gentoo. I want to use it as either Desktop or Server. However, I am not sure whether it is worth to try or not because some people say that Gentoo is dead and not a suitable OS in anyways. I want to know clearly about it with proof of concept.

Please let me know all of your opinion on the subjects like Gentoo as Server and Gentoo as Desktop.


Thanks in advance.
netlynker


To be honest, Gentoo isn't what it used to be in either case. I was disappointed today when making my semi annual stage4 for the office that emerging just xorg-server and gnome runs into all the kinds of circular dependency bs that made me switch to Gentoo in the first place. The package management has really gone to hell.


One may argue that package management was simplier and perhaps more robust in the past, but I still wonder where do you people get all those problems ? I feel deprived missing any of that stuff:) There were couple of conflicts I can remember that required a bit of care, but that's it.
Admittiningly, I don't have many computers to manage and do updates semi-manually anyway.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
BashNG
n00b
n00b


Joined: 29 Aug 2010
Posts: 3

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 6:54 am    Post subject: Re: Why should I use Gentoo Today? Reply with quote

BashNG wrote:
netlynker wrote:
Hi,

I have been using several Linux and Unix Distro in past. Some of my favorites are Centos, Debian, Ubuntu LTS, PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE, FreeBSD and so on.
Now I want to try Gentoo. I want to use it as either Desktop or Server. However, I am not sure whether it is worth to try or not because some people say that Gentoo is dead and not a suitable OS in anyways. I want to know clearly about it with proof of concept.

Please let me know all of your opinion on the subjects like Gentoo as Server and Gentoo as Desktop.


Thanks in advance.
netlynker


To be honest, Gentoo isn't what it used to be in either case. I was disappointed today when making my semi annual stage4 for the office that emerging just xorg-server and gnome runs into all the kinds of circular dependency bs that made me switch to Gentoo in the first place. The package management has really gone to hell.


Ouch, sorry. That looks worse in print than it sounded running through my head. 8O
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
BashNG
n00b
n00b


Joined: 29 Aug 2010
Posts: 3

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 7:05 am    Post subject: Re: Why should I use Gentoo Today? Reply with quote

dmpogo wrote:
BashNG wrote:
netlynker wrote:
Hi,

I have been using several Linux and Unix Distro in past. Some of my favorites are Centos, Debian, Ubuntu LTS, PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE, FreeBSD and so on.
Now I want to try Gentoo. I want to use it as either Desktop or Server. However, I am not sure whether it is worth to try or not because some people say that Gentoo is dead and not a suitable OS in anyways. I want to know clearly about it with proof of concept.

Please let me know all of your opinion on the subjects like Gentoo as Server and Gentoo as Desktop.


Thanks in advance.
netlynker


To be honest, Gentoo isn't what it used to be in either case. I was disappointed today when making my semi annual stage4 for the office that emerging just xorg-server and gnome runs into all the kinds of circular dependency bs that made me switch to Gentoo in the first place. The package management has really gone to hell.


One may argue that package management was simplier and perhaps more robust in the past, but I still wonder where do you people get all those problems ? I feel deprived missing any of that stuff:) There were couple of conflicts I can remember that required a bit of care, but that's it.
Admittiningly, I don't have many computers to manage and do updates semi-manually anyway.


People with installed systems don't run into most of the broken ebuild problems because they already have dependancies that the ebuild needs but forgets to say it needs. This leads to a lot of "works on my machine"
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Administrator


Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54096
Location: 56N 3W

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 12:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Moved from installing Gentoo to Gentoo Chat as its not an installation help request
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
rh1
Guru
Guru


Joined: 10 Apr 2010
Posts: 501

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 2:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
One may argue that package management was simplier and perhaps more robust in the past.

I'd like to think that maybe the problem is that software has just become that much more complicated to install on a running system. There's a reason 99% of linux distros are binary. It's not a trival thing to upgrade and change packages on a "live" system using source code. That's why gentoo is one of only a couple. That's also why I use it. The occasional breakage/problem is to be expected and a price i'm more than willing to pay to have a system that is always up to date without having to reinstall the whole thing every so often.

I did learn a few leasons the hard way, libpng comes to mind. Instead of just updating whatever portage wants, I look through the list first now for things like graphic libs, perl, python, etc...
And I only do updates now when i have time to deal with problems. I found updating when your in a hurry or really need a working system to be a bad idea.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
skellr
l33t
l33t


Joined: 18 Jun 2005
Posts: 975
Location: The Village, Portmeirion

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 3:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Centos, Debian, Ubuntu LTS, PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE, FreeBSD and so on will be enough to keep you busy. Don't worry about Gentoo.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
XQYZ
Apprentice
Apprentice


Joined: 19 Jul 2009
Posts: 231
Location: Europe

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 3:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

skellr wrote:
Centos, Debian, Ubuntu LTS, PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE, FreeBSD and so on will be enough to keep you busy. Don't worry about Gentoo.


my thoughts exactly. OP, did you copy-paste the top nix-distributions there or are you serious? They are different enough that they hardly can't ALL be your favorites.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
d2_racing
Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva


Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 13047
Location: Ste-Foy,Canada

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2010 3:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Indeed, for my concern I use Gentoo/Funtoo and at work I'm able to use Ubuntu and SUSE.

Debian distro based and something that use yum is a must if you want to pass your LPI 1 certification.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
netlynker
n00b
n00b


Joined: 29 Aug 2010
Posts: 3
Location: Singapore

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 2:35 am    Post subject: List From Distrowatch.com Reply with quote

Of Course! I copied and pasted from Distrowatch.com. :P

- Started Linux With Knoppix Live CD
- Used Fedora and Centos For RHCE
- Used Debian Lenny for Hylafax, Samba and Print Server
- Used Ubuntu LTS for Zabbix Monitoring
- Citrix Xen and Opensuse For Virtualization
- PCLinux, Ubuntu, Sabayon for Desktop and Laptop
- Used FreeBSD one time for Squid Server :)

I admit that I am not good in all of those things. I am just eager to try new stuff. I did tried to install Gentoo. But I found out that it is very time-consuming job to install Gentoo.
Even for a minimal installation, it took half day to finish. Some say that installation Openoffice will cost over 15 hours on a decent machine. That is why I gave up installation of Gentoo from scratch and moved to Sabayon.

Now I am testing Squid Server on FreeBSD 8. I know that using ports to install softwares on Freebsd takes long time like using emerge on Gentoo. However, Freebsd did give us an option to install pre-compiled software by pkg_add -r <package's name>. How about Gentoo? Is it practical to use it as Server/Desktop? If you say "YES!", How?

I am still learning things, so my thoughts may be wrong. Forgive me!

Best Regards,
Netlynker
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
BitJam
Advocate
Advocate


Joined: 12 Aug 2003
Posts: 2508
Location: Silver City, NM

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 4:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

@netlynker, if you are considering trying Gentoo then take a look at the Gentoo Installation Handbook. It shows you step by step what you will have to do to install Gentoo. There is no fancy GUI based installer (that works). It is all done on the command line. There are many steps and people often don't get it right the first time and struggle for a couple of days.

You should also be aware that you have to compile ALL the software you are going to use. A large system like KDE can take many (many) hours to compile. IMO, the Gentoo package system (called Portage) is much better and more stable than when I first started. I also think that Gentoo takes more work to install and to maintain than the binary based distros (which is just about all the Linux distros except Gentoo). The reason I stick with Gentoo even though I've got other distros I play with on my hard drive is because Gentoo gives me much more control over my system.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Ormaaj
Guru
Guru


Joined: 28 Jan 2008
Posts: 319

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 6:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No other distro really does what Gentoo does. Fundamentally if you want a source-based rolling-release distro, Gentoo is it. It's not hard to install or maintain. Compile time isn't that big a deal. You can do other things while you compile. If you have a fast machine you can compile things for other machines. The fact that the system can build packages for itself as well as for other systems IMO makes it easier to maintain, it actually makes it nearly impossible to break. Lots of really nice tools like eix.

I think a system like Portage is really the only right way to do package management. It certainly isn't the most ideal possible implementation, but it's the best we've got at the moment. Most of my criticisms of Gentoo have more to do with it's package maintenance. It kind of sucks when you're too small for upstream to really give a fuck about you. The stability classification system of masks and keywords could probably be improved, as well as the ease of querying the system to resolve circular dependencies and various other conflicts. All that is pretty minor though.

The fact that the homepage looks like it's from 10 years ago I think doesn't help sell the idea that Gentoo is a modern and well-maintained distro especially to newcomers. Just compare it to every other distro... Theirs actually sell it as being an active user-friendly "product" (for those who care about such superficial things)... ours has blog posts and links to big lists of disorganized badly maintained documentation. Even simply sprucing up the stylesheets a bit could do us wonders - if only to kill off some of this FUD.

I think you can rest easy knowing that there aren't any viable replacements for Gentoo out there so I don't think it's going anywhere.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
rockdragon
n00b
n00b


Joined: 18 Jan 2009
Posts: 8

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 8:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I stick with BitJam. I'm using gentoo as desktop system for almost 2 years now and the best thing about it is control.
You can (and have to ;) ) configure your whole system: you have to customize your boot environment, your kernel and set your own USE flags, which providing some sort of system-wide layer for setting specific technologies on and off (-java ;) )
You will only have stuff on your harddrive if you want it to be there.

However I've no experience with gentoo as server system yet.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
netlynker
n00b
n00b


Joined: 29 Aug 2010
Posts: 3
Location: Singapore

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 8:34 am    Post subject: Anybody made a tutorial about install gentoo for Desktop? Reply with quote

If it is not too much trouble for you, pls give me some good tutorials of installing Gentoo for Desktop Usage.

Thanks in advance
Netlynker
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
AllenJB
Veteran
Veteran


Joined: 02 Sep 2005
Posts: 1285

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 9:25 am    Post subject: Re: Anybody made a tutorial about install gentoo for Desktop Reply with quote

netlynker wrote:
If it is not too much trouble for you, pls give me some good tutorials of installing Gentoo for Desktop Usage.

Thanks in advance
Netlynker


There's no single guide. With Gentoo you get to configure your system exactly how you want. You start with a basic, command-line only install that the Gentoo Handbook gives you, then use the wide range of documentation available, which includes the Documentation section of gentoo.org and the unofficial Gentoo Wiki as well as a wide range of developer and user blogs.

Gentoo is a distro that gives you a lot of control over what gets installed and how its configured, but that does come at the price of having to read documentation to get things working a lot more than other distros.

In my opinion Gentoo is far from dead. It doesn't advertise itself like distros such as Ubuntu and RedHat/Fedora, who have commercial backing, do, and it's not aiming to grab all the new Linux users. It's certainly not perfect on the development front, but then neither is any other distro I've seen.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
disi
Veteran
Veteran


Joined: 28 Nov 2003
Posts: 1354
Location: Out There ...

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 9:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Take/use the distribution where you know your way around... then you won't get disppointed.

I just installed Gentoo on this laptop :)
Pentium-M with 1.6 GHz
The whole system to boot via xdm into xfce4 with and emerge -e system before installing ui stuff, took me about 12h. Before I tried arch and got annoyed by pacman, because I had to try some different xf86-input-devices. Once installed, you cannot remove them -.- cannot resolve dependencies and it blocks.
Arch suffers from this Intel/kernel bug, but it is harder to use fbdev in Arch than in Gentoo -.-

Anyway another thing is that Arch has no USE flags. In Gentoo, you set your USE flags, kick off the installation and go away for a few hours. Once finished, you have a fully functional system to your liking :)

//edit: 12h, where I used the Arch boot cd and only realized after about 5h emerge -e system and glibc+gcc compiling, that the cpu freqency was stuck at 600MHz and I couldn't change it. Tried modprobe (the modules for the governors are there but don't have any effect), must have been set to powersave instead of userspace?
_________________
Gentoo on Uptime Project - Larry is a cow


Last edited by disi on Mon Aug 30, 2010 9:53 am; edited 2 times in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
krinn
Watchman
Watchman


Joined: 02 May 2003
Posts: 7470

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 9:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Why are all those people comes to a "random" forum and ask if "random" is a good product ?

What do you expect ? If the product is bad, the haters post a "i will never come back" thread and so you won't get an answer from them.
So whom will answer to a question like that ? Only the remaining ones: the ones that love the product, and you are asking them what they think about ?

Just to show you something you miss: you won't get objectives answers here about gentoo, except maybe this one i can give you: gentoo (like linuxfromscratch kind of distro) are the worst distro for linux starters and the best ones for learning linux in depth.
But for using it, it depend on you and i don't think distrowatch (or us) could answer to that one.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
d2_racing
Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva


Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 13047
Location: Ste-Foy,Canada

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 11:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:

Just to show you something you miss: you won't get objectives answers here about gentoo, except maybe this one i can give you: gentoo (like linuxfromscratch kind of distro) are the worst distro for linux starters and the best ones for learning linux in depth.
But for using it, it depend on you and i don't think distrowatch (or us) could answer to that one.


Yeah, Gentoo is not for standard newbie, actually if a newbie wants to install Gentoo, he will need 2 ingredients : patience + time, because Gentoo has one of the biggest learning curve that I know, but once you handle that, then you have a solid ground to even pass the LPI certification Level 1.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
rockdragon
n00b
n00b


Joined: 18 Jan 2009
Posts: 8

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 1:30 pm    Post subject: Re: Anybody made a tutorial about install gentoo for Desktop Reply with quote

netlynker wrote:
If it is not too much trouble for you, pls give me some good tutorials of installing Gentoo for Desktop Usage.

Thanks in advance
Netlynker


I would start with the gentoo handbook to set up my install and then continue with your favorite windowmanager
Most of the time, the documentation on the main page is what you want. (Gentoo Handbook & Docs)

It's perfectly normal to screw things up at the beginning (especially the kernel config, if you don't know much about your hardware)
So the only way is to keep going until everything works :)


Last edited by rockdragon on Mon Aug 30, 2010 6:24 pm; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
dmpogo
Advocate
Advocate


Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 3264
Location: Canada

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 4:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
Why are all those people comes to a "random" forum and ask if "random" is a good product ?

What do you expect ? If the product is bad, the haters post a "i will never come back" thread and so you won't get an answer from them.
So whom will answer to a question like that ? Only the remaining ones: the ones that love the product, and you are asking them what they think about ?



Well, actually it is informative to hear what for people love/hate things. Even if testimonials are not objective, you start feeling what is the common theme people highlight as poor or as good. All customer reviews work like that.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Ant P.
Watchman
Watchman


Joined: 18 Apr 2009
Posts: 6920

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 6:12 pm    Post subject: Re: List From Distrowatch.com Reply with quote

netlynker wrote:
Some say that installation Openoffice will cost over 15 hours on a decent machine.

Yeah, it's 14.5 hours to find anything truthful buried in all the anti-gentoo FUD, 60 seconds to type "emerge openoffice-bin", 25 minutes for the download on an average connection...
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
rockdragon
n00b
n00b


Joined: 18 Jan 2009
Posts: 8

PostPosted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 6:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

IF you're using the binary package, which is an exception to the rule that packets always compile ;)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Gentoo Chat All times are GMT
Goto page 1, 2  Next
Page 1 of 2

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum