Big Heads Up after impressive re-acquintance with Gentoo

heegs

Hi All,

I have to admit I hadn't looked at Gentoo for ages. The first time round was a couple of year ago and I wanted to use it as a solid optimization and custimization alternative to FreeBSD in a high-volume ISP. I loved the idea and vision behind it, but at the time it was just too fiddly and beta to use in an environment where way too many customers expected everything to be delivered instantly. Having since then moved back to embedded design (thank god ;-)

it stuck in the back of my mind, mainly because of the potentially brilliant buildsystem but in the hustle and bustle never really got round to giving it another serious go to see if it'd fit my needs.
That is, until a telemtry project came along last year that included both "huge" embedded hardware, a P4 based cPCI system with CF card and plenty of RAM making a good introductory target, as well as shore-based Opteron machines, both requiring optimization to the teeth due to the amount of data flowing through the system.
Well, having just finished that one using Gentoo I can safely say I was blown away by the pollish and slickness of the build system and the entire distro in general.
Granted, a couple of years is a long time, but the scalabiliy of the build system beteen hardware platforms and the finesse allowing both the most detialed micro-build-management as well as being lazy for a simple testbuild, setting a few params and letting it run was a breate of fresh air in a world of extremes, where build systems are either completely overcomplicated or largely non-exisiting. I'm impressed and at any rate, wheter it's been a couple of year or not, this is a fine piece of technology that I'll most defnitely be seeing a lot more of again in the future.
Heck, I might even be able to contribute to the embedded effort that's well underway, but first things first and hats off to everyone that enabled Gentoo to evolve as much as it has, art in the making if you ask me ;-)

steveL · Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 11:05 pm Post subject:

Yay! I've been saying Gentoo really has improved over the last few years, so it's good to hear it confirmed. Welcome back :-)

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

I briefly used Gentoo back in the day, but I didn't know much of anything about Linux, and abandoned the distro. Now that I have invested the time to learn, I have found no other distribution that is as comfortable and extensible as Gentoo. I'm glad to hear that you gave it another try, and that you were impressed. The developers around here are definitely top-notch.

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steveL · Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:33 pm Post subject:

heegs · Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:01 am Post subject:

I think with it's current abundance of good documentation (the handbook being a prime example) it's probably one of the best ways for Linux newbies to install Linux while actually learning and picking up how it works under the hood. Most modern distro's strive too much to be the next windows, automagically doing everything leaving a huge stream of largely clueless Linux "users" in there wake. Perhaps there's something to be said for either approach but with default security policies on a lot of those distros being extremelyn weak as well, it's usually another bot-net and large scale DDoS attack waiting to happen while there's no considerable inroads into MS dominance on the desktop anyway. I'd say let Apple try and take on the desktop with BSD/Darwin based OSX and focus on more technically sane Linux environments (like Gentoo) for more advanced technical use, servers, embedded space, etc.
In any case, I don't want to get involved in another yes or no on beating MS and Linux on the desktop religious war, but I'd be far happier if more people took the time to REALLY learn Linux through tools like Gentoo that still take away the steepest parts of the learning curve without dumbing Linux and new users down too much. Compared to pre-0.97 kernel days, it should be easy for anyone with a bit of computer knowledge, half a brain and some patience.

My .02 euro anyway ;-)

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

steveL · Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:55 pm Post subject:

c8a7w · n00b Joined: 06 Oct 2005 Posts: 62

the community is great. i can never explain it to other linux users they simply say it takes to long to install packages from source for gentoo to be worthwhile

they dont know what they are missing!

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

c8a7w · n00b Joined: 06 Oct 2005 Posts: 62

djdunn · l33t Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 810

the BSD ports and Portage work very much alike, thats why i came from BSD to gentoo linux
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d2_racing · Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 4:27 am Post subject:

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Malakai · Apprentice Joined: 24 Dec 2002 Posts: 299

I also recently started using Gentoo again after several years away, and I too love how it has evolved.

Still all the great advantages from before, with simpler portage configs and more intuitive features.

I love how gentoo focuses largely on constantly improving their CLI programs rather than shove GUI's down our throats. System administration is just so much easier from bash.

steveL · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:14 am Post subject: