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Ion Silverbolt
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:52 am    Post subject: Anyone else here have issues running other distros? Reply with quote

I been using Gentoo since around 2004, and have grown enough with it that I can handle just about any problem as far as fixing the system.

The odd thing now is, it seems so easy to get everything running, and keep everything running great in Gentoo. But whenever I attempt to run another distro for someone else because it's "easier", I always run into problems. Some of them are minor annoyances such as the useless gnome-keyring that so many distros think we need. But there are other issues. Like in LMDE, I installed ripperX for someone, and it seemed to work fine, but would only rip 0kb files. I took a look and noticed the lame package was broken. Never got informed that it installed incorrectly by the installer. The easiest solution I could do was to download the source and compile myself. Then in Mint and Xubuntu, there's this bug in Xfce that causes right-click menus to vanish in thunar unless you HOLD down the button. In OpenSuse 12.1. It didn't seem bad at all at first, but then I noticed terrible wireless performance. I tried disabling the firewall they use, but the disable firewall function does nothing but disable all network traffic! Then there was a bug in Chromium that would cause it to crash when doing searches on youtube.

I could go on all day about various problems/annoyances that other distros cause me. I'm not here because I want to bag on other distros, but it seems to me a lot of problems slip through the cracks on these distros. Or they are so bloated with so much that the chance of problems are higher.

So anyway, last week I installed Gentoo on a clients PC. I had a binhost all set up and I had a fully working Xfce desktop on their PC in just around an hour. It runs so much better than anything else I had installed on their PC previously, and there hasn't been one hiccup with that PC since.

Anyone else here have similar experiences when they try out other Linux Distros?
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avx
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 4:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Then in Mint and Xubuntu, there's this bug in Xfce that causes right-click menus to vanish in thunar unless you HOLD down the button
Got that problem in Gentoo, too, to it only happens when right-clicking a file/folder, right-clicking an empty spot works as intended.

As for the question, yes, I for one am constantly annoyed with my wife's Fedora box. Needing to hunt down common things in other repos, because of license trouble(mplayer for example) and the weird problem, that I can't upgrade to the latest version without a complete new install, because Fedora decided a small /boot-partition is enough, but now a bigger one is needed for the update...

But I guess, once you've stayed long enough with a distro, you accept it's quirks and get used to it, thus overlooking things not so perfect, but yeah, I'll stay with Gentoo for the foreseeable future.
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eccerr0r
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 4:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually I think other distros tend to be fairly clean in general, however, since they're not floating version... their software can easily get out of date. That's where I see the versionless system of Gentoo showing a great advantage.

However with great power comes great responsibility -- I've seen Gentoo break over the years spectacularly several times. There are some version bumps that aren't smooth. And some of these version bumps are required else portage will complain at you forever. These things make one wish they would just reinstall... but if you were running any other distribution, you'd have to reinstall anyway...

Most of the time I'd have to say that portage is doing the right thing nowadays... before so I've ended up with broken setups often... it's a gamble each time, usually winning recently however.
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nomilieu
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 4:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not lately; I've already put in my time and figured out which distros are annoying.
I would, however, recommend finding at least on binary distro you like.
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jdhore
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

For me, the biggest ways to fix stuff in gentoo is via package.keywords/package.mask and emerge --unmerge.

AFAIK, most binary package managers make it really difficult to remove a package that other stuff depends on...Also, it's so easy to fix a new version of a package breaking stuff when you can just echo >old-version to package.mask and emerge package. (Or echo "package" to package.keywords if you choose to fix it via a newer version)
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phajdan.jr
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 30, 2012 6:37 pm    Post subject: Re: Anyone else here have issues running other distros? Reply with quote

Ion Silverbolt wrote:
The odd thing now is, it seems so easy to get everything running, and keep everything running great in Gentoo. But whenever I attempt to run another distro for someone else because it's "easier", I always run into problems.


Yeah, it also happened to me. I wonder how much of that is because I don't know those other distros as well as Gentoo.

The best non-Gentoo thing that works pretty well for me is Debian.
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Ion Silverbolt
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 31, 2012 1:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

avx wrote:
Got that problem in Gentoo, too, to it only happens when right-clicking a file/folder, right-clicking an empty spot works as intended.

That's odd. I wonder why I don't get that behavior in Gentoo, but get it in Xubuntu and LMDE Xfce. Maybe I'm missing a use flag or something for thunar somewhere that triggers the bug.

phajdan.jr wrote:
Yeah, it also happened to me. I wonder how much of that is because I don't know those other distros as well as Gentoo.

I think that's a part of it as well. Another thing is, I think it's easier to find solutions to problems in Gentoo because it's easy to try a different version of a package, or to add/remove use flags as needed. I don't think I could ever live with another distro. I would miss Gentoo's flexibility too much.

I think if I had to pick a backup binary distro, I guess it would be Debian. I would jump all over Arch as a backup one if it weren't so bleeding edge. It's a shame they don't slow it down a bit to ensure stability. Really I'm surprised at how many people like it. It's great when it works, but a bug can make the whole system unbootable. That's something that rarely happens with Gentoo unless you throw caution to the wind.
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Yamakuzure
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 31, 2012 7:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, the Arch philosophy is simple: "If upstream says it is stable, we accept that." - I must say that this approach is quite appealing to me...
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nrezinorn
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 11:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've never had issues with other distros as much as I've had problems on Gentoo [usually brought on by not updating regularly]. The only barrier to other distros is learning where the config files are and how to autostart daemons on boot, such as how ArchLinux does it. There is also the nuances of package management.
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nbittech
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 9:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Anyone use FreeBSD? Its not Linux, but it's more Gentoo-like than anything i've tried, and the stability is amazing, everything is simple, until you try and install X, or deal with the famous "java download one pacakge at-a-time and accept the EULA" issue. Also, I find the "USE flag popup window every time you walk away" issue kind of annoying too. But my server loves it, and it's a really fun toy to keep the wife pissed off at you!

Hardware support is sometimes a pita though.
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Gentoo64
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 9:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You can choose to set USE flags or "knobs" I think they're called in FreeBSD all at once before you install btw. There's something about BSD, I've only ever played with Free and Open BSD, I really like the basic solid approach to them, but for a desktop I would never use it over Linux. BSD imo requires a lot more tweaking to get the most out of it, but I can understand why people use it for servers it's very stable and secure.

If I had to use a binary distro I would probably use Arch because it's minimal like Gentoo and rolling release- would def be my distro of choice if I got a netbook
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khumba
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2012 8:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey, Gentoo runs just great on notebooks too! :P (Actually, what surprises me is how well a minimal KDE runs on netbooks.)

package.accept_keywords, --depclean, and USE are the bare essentials for me, so I'm pretty much doomed anywhere else. As far as I understand, with FreeBSD's knobs, it's impossible to set them on a global scale, right?
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john.newman
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i run into a few "other" distros at work ... and they don't make any sense. Where is /etc/init.d/ and /etc/conf.d/ ... how simple is that. Where is /etc/conf.d/net .. oh it's /etc/network/interfaces or /etc/rc/conf.d/networking .... :roll: The /etc directory is one of the problems, everyone puts their own spin on it, and gentoo's particular spin is either just flat out the
most sensible, or i'm at least the most familiar with it.

The other problem, as stated above, is what we have with portage to be able to add entries to /etc/portage/package.* and emerge -uDN world and sweep across everything no problem. Done. In ubuntu, i had to downgrade libvirt-0.98 as it's full of bugs on their end ... I couldn't figure out how to do it (at least I didn't want to spend the time), so I just said screw it and fetched the tarball and make installed to a separate directory :roll: That process seems to happen a lot with other package managers, and using portage I have never had to even think about doing that.

I do need to find one binary distro that I like (or at least can stand enough to work with). perhaps sabayon is the best fit there.
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invasivenorman
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 5:36 pm    Post subject: Speaking of FreeBSD . . . oh, sorry. Reply with quote

nbittech wrote:
Anyone use FreeBSD? Its not Linux, but it's more Gentoo-like than anything i've tried, and the stability is amazing, everything is simple, until you try and install X, or deal with the famous "java download one pacakge at-a-time and accept the EULA" issue. Also, I find the "USE flag popup window every time you walk away" issue kind of annoying too. But my server loves it, and it's a really fun toy to keep the wife pissed off at you!

Hardware support is sometimes a pita though.


There's a good reason FreeBSD seems "Gentoo-like" ;)

The problem I have is trying to deal with distros that try to obscure the command line, or worse that pretend, like a certain company who shall not be named, that a command line is somehow frightening or advanced or dangerous. My wife has done far more harm to her system through rather innocuous-seeming clicking than I've ever managed with a stray "rm -r".

Wandering a bit far Off Topic, but on the subject of FreeBSD:

If you install from ports using ports-mgmt/portmaster, it'll round up all those config options and offer them all to you before it starts building anything. I presume portmanager & portupgrade have this functionality, as well, but there's a certain appeal to a system that relies on /bin/sh and practically naught else.

& if you want to just get rid of all those annoying config pop-ups and go with the defaults, add BATCH=yes to either your make environment, or just stick it in /etc/make.conf

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gerard27
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@john.newman,
I tried sabayon once,it was 3 0r 4.
It might have improved but to me it was a nightmare then.
The *buntu's are plain horrid,look at the root directory tree.
That you can't find /etc/init.d I don't mind.
Most distro's still use the old RH rc system but buntu have their own non standard garbage.
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wuzzerd
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gerard, I must agree with you concerning the *Butus. Fixing minor networking problems is a nightmare. In gentoo just a little research finds the solution.
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asturm
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2012 10:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am lost every time I need to work on my father's Ubuntu system.
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