Clearifying 1.4-rc1 vs 1.4-rc2

[ebrostig]

I have seen a lot of posts and questions about upgrading to 1.4-rc2 and I guess there are some confusion out there about it.

1.4-rc2 is the version of the LiveCD that you use to initally install your system. Once the system is installed and you boot from your PC and not the CD, the system is installed to 1.4-rc2.

Now, if you installed with 1.4-rc1 previously and then have been using emerge rsync and emerge -up world your system is up to date. There is no reason to go through the whole process again.

This is really the best thing about Gentoo. You could just as easy start with the old 1.2 version of the LiveCD and end up at the same level as someone who installs using the 1.4-rc2.

Bottom line: LiveCD 1.4-rc2 is just used during the initial install of Gentoo After that, all systems are more or less at the same level if you update using emerge on a regular basis.

Erik
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[kry0]

Thank you very much for taking the time to post this. You answered the question that I have been trying to find out with many a search.
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[JWU42]

That answered whther I needed to think about an upgrade to 1.4 for this older 1.2 server. It gets an emerge rsync and emerge -u world and emerge -u system every week or two.

[phong]

Thanks for the post - there have been a lot of questions about this lately, and your explanation is good so this thread is being made sticky.

To make one clarification - if you are using a version PRIOR to 1.4_rc1, gcc will not get upgraded, though other packages are (actually, glibc might not - I'm not sure). The reason for that is because there were some changes in gcc 3.2 that broke compatability in certain things. There is a specific procedure for upgrading gcc documented here. If you're using either of the 1.4 release candidates you do not need to use that procedure. Also, I don't believe you'll need it if you installed 1.3a or 1.3b during the short period they were available.
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[fruitmonkey]

This may be pretty stupid, but why was -rc2 released if it's basically the same as just keeping your system up to date with "emerge rsync && emerge -u world"? So you're saying that with my 1.4-rc1 system up to date using the above commands, there is no reason for me to 'upgrade' to 1.4-rc2? Thanks for your patience...

One more thing, will there be a reason for me to upgrade from 1.4-rc1 to 1.4-final?

[abhishek]

[rac]

[Exci]

Gentoo does not have a version number system
only the live cd does

so it's wrong to say "I installed Gentoo 1.4-rc2"
but right to say "I installed Gentoo-Linux from a 1.4-rc2 live cd"
am I right?

[hhaamu]

Well, the version of Gentoo is based on the gcc version where it's built from, so you still can run 1.2 if your system is build with gcc-2.95 and 1.4{rc1,rc2,final} if you have gcc-3.2.

[UnderDog138]

[tredman2]

I think that this argument could be applied to most distributions, and really isn't Gentoo-specific. Any distribution that maintains some kind of package system, be it RPM, APT or Portage, is in a position to keep itself up to date.

It's conceivable that if you installed RedHat 5.0 and brought all of the RPM's up to date, then you'd have the equivalent of a brand spanking new RedHat system. Same goes with Debian, Mandrake or any of the others with good package management.

The version numbers really only apply to new installations, since the install CDs have initial support for certain hardware. If you have a really old Token Ring card on your computer, you may even get better results by using an older version of a distro and just updating it to current, since those drivers may have been obsoleted in the newer versions of the install CDs.
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Tim
"I drank what?" - Socrates, 399 BCE

[bdonlan]

[tredman2]

It won't hurt anything right now to stay with GCC2. From what I understand, GCC3 speeds up the execution of a program at the expense of taking longer to compile. However, I believe I remember seeing something in a mailing list where they had fixed that to a certain extent.

As far as I know, there are no applications out there that cannot be compiled with either GCC2 or 3.
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Tim
"I drank what?" - Socrates, 399 BCE

[s003apr]

So what then is the main difference between the two live cds (rc1 versus rc2)?

Clearly there is a difference in the kernel on the disk because my computer could boot rc1 but has a kernel panic when I boot rc2.

I guess also the apps like gcc and lynx which are on the cd are more up to date. correct?

But am I correct in assuming I could use the rc1 live cd along with a stage tarball from rc2 and still end up with the same result?

[tredman2]

That's correct. The biggest difference between the CD's is are the drivers that are installed in the default kernel, and the extra little bells and whistles that come with it, including programs like pci-setup and such.

Actually, I was having problems installing on my Compaq server, and I used the 1.2 CD to install the 1.4rc2 stage 1 file. The 1.4rc2 CD didn't work (can't remember exactly why), and 1.4rc1 didn't allow me to enter the kernel parameters that I needed to set up the memory.

Of course, that was last weekend, and my server is only a PPro200, so the merge is still going on (basic install and xfree are finished, just waiting on KDE now), but I'm confident that the install should be done in my lifetime...

...I hope...


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Tim
"I drank what?" - Socrates, 399 BCE

[Dragon561]

Is there anywhere that 1.2 is still available?

[gsfgf]

[SeaPig]