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zietbukuel
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 28, 2011 9:42 am    Post subject: I'm back... Reply with quote

Hey guys, I've been using Gentoo since 2005, left because of some major problems with the distro and switched to many different distros, right now I'm using Ubuntu. I'd really like to give Gentoo another chance, but I feel kinda lost, since I've stopped using it since 2009. Has there been any significant changes since I left? I dunno, anything? or it's almost the same thing? How stable do you consider Gentoo using its latest stable version? Thanks for any info :)
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avx
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 28, 2011 1:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, stage3 is now the default way to install, portage (and other parts) have made (huge) steps forward and unstable is stable for me for years. But it's still not holding your hand, so if you need that, your wrong here.

Anyways, welcome back (I should really start counting these 'I am back threads', seems like there are at least 2/week)
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cwr
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 28, 2011 3:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I wouldn't consider Gentoo especially stable, but the problems are all upstream,
not in Gentoo. For instance, Gnome themes still crash on a regular basis, as
they have since 2.28, Gnome terminal has started producing a corrupted background
(from 2.30), ath9k wireless drivers no longer cope with hostapd changing the regional
settings, and so on.

But these aren't major problems, and mostly things work.

Will
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zietbukuel
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 29, 2011 4:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the input guys. How stable would you say Gentoo is compared to Ubuntu?
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John R. Graham
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree with Will: things mostly work. But, if stability is your primary goal, I don't think you're in the right place. I don't think Gentoo will ever be as stable as a well-managed, well funded binary distribution. But, stability isn't Gentoo's primary goal. Gentoo calls itself a meta-distribution; more colloquially, it could be described as a custom distribution building toolkit. If that's what you want, then it's great: best of breed, in fact. If you don't like to tinker and tweak, at least a little, then you may not want to come back.

Gentoo is improving over time. Portage's dependency resolver solves more blocks on its own now—and gives better advice when it can't. The other tools are noticeably better since you left as well.

- John
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John R. Graham
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, yes. Moved from Installing Gentoo to Gentoo Chat. If you decide to actually do an install, open a new thread. :wink:

- John
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phajdan.jr
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 29, 2011 5:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

zietbukuel wrote:
Thanks for the input guys. How stable would you say Gentoo is compared to Ubuntu?


For me Gentoo is more stable than Ubuntu, and slightly less stable than Debian (but obviously more up-to-date).

I think that most problems are either upstream, or created by users themselves (i.e. having an overly complicated setup, mixing stable with unstable and using too many package-specific settings). Of course sometimes we (developers) screw up and something broken gets shipped to stable (it's harder to avoid that with a rolling release; you can't freeze things and test them for weeks/months), but I don't remember any real show-stoppers. Using a lean desktop environment like XFCE has helped in my case (and it also compiles faster and drags less dependencies).

Finally many improvements have been made. Portage is much smarter as already mentioned, and stabilizations at least for amd64 and x86 are managed in a much more controlled and efficient way.

I'd say give it a try, possibly dual-boot, and let us know what you think. :wink:
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Kollin
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 29, 2011 9:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

avx wrote:
Well, stage3 is now the default way to install...


Come one guys, even in 2005, when i made my first Gentoo install, stage3 was the default method. :lol:
Of course there was some stage1 guides lurking in to the forum, but the default was stage3 :wink:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-319349-postdays-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html
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zietbukuel
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 1:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kollin wrote:
avx wrote:
Well, stage3 is now the default way to install...


Come one guys, even in 2005, when i made my first Gentoo install, stage3 was the default method. :lol:
Of course there was some stage1 guides lurking in to the forum, but the default was stage3 :wink:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-319349-postdays-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html

That's true, I always installed Gentoo with the stage3 tarball.

Now what I wanna know is what GNOME version are the stable and unstable branches are using atm?
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Veldrin
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 30, 2011 1:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Now what I wanna know is what GNOME version are the stable and unstable branches are using atm?

2.32 is stable, and 3.2 is in unstable. (just a brief check on amd64)
from what I've heard, 3.2 might get stabilized, but I may be that you have to wait till 3.4.

V.
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cwr
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 01, 2012 7:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd really just use stable for everything for the _first_ install, and then add
unstable for only the things you really need (or which are significantly broken).
Bits of Gnome post-2.28 are in fact broken, but they don't cause major
problems - I wouldn't go for Gnome 3.x for a while yet, though.

Will
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drwook
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 01, 2012 8:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been running unstable for everything for years now... in amd64's case I recall (some time back! :) ) that 'stable' was if anything less so than unstable, and since jumping I don't think I've looked back.
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