I am about to give Gentoo up

[Cyker]

Yeah it's a pain in the neck; The idea is that you update as frequently as you can but need to be prepared to spend a chunk of time debugging a change if it goes wrong.


What I normally do is run a sync and pretend world, and if there is anything to do with core stuff - gcc, libc, python, stuff like that - Then I don't bother until I hit a holiday as they are almost guaranteed to break something and require more time.

If it's just end-user apps, libreoffice, browser, e-mail etc. then I just let them install as they rarely cause system-crippling breakage.


I also check the forums for things like this Profile update - Again, almost guaranteed to require more time, research and reading to avoid pitfalls!


The biggest problem with going out of date is that the middle-stepping stones, if you will, that you would have upgraded through would have been removed by Portage so you're trying to take a big leap, which is why upgrading from an old system is so difficult. Some times you can pull old ebuilds and temporarily install them just to give you a leg up, but on the new git repo I find this is 10000x harder than it was on the old CVS web repo.



On my old Gentoo box I got so behind it would literally have been easier to nuke the whole thing and start again than it would have been to try and upgrade it; In the end I just stopped upgrading and just manually pulled in ebuilds for end-programs I wanted to update, or rolled my own where they weren't compatible with such an old system. I didn't want to spend time since I was planning on moving to a new platform (x86 -> x86_64) and knew I couldn't just directly transfer the system over liked I'd done all the other times.

One problem with Gentoo's rolling upgrade system is that it has no milestones, so situations that, in another distro it would be a major version upgrade that required a full reinstall, Gentoo treats these the same as regular trivial updates - If there are a lot of those between your last update and the current, it is a real slog to get through all of them!

[ct85711]

You can easily install new versions of gcc without any issue, as the system DOES NOT switch to new versions by its self. Since all of the gcc main versions are slotted, it means you can install new versions of gcc along side other versions without breaking stuff, then switch when you have time. Most times, it isn't an issue on switching to new versions. The big one, was on gcc-5 in that upstream changed the ABI, which broke most stuff. Even then, that one was marked as unstable for a while before it got marked stable. So, just watching the forums, you would have seen the various discussions about the new versions, to know what to do for various issues ahead of time. This also applies for most other blockers and stuff, in that paying attention to the forum, you'll know what to expect ahead of time and not have much issues...

[Waterdevil]

Hello World,

One reason for my permanent, persistent troubles with emerge are too much bugs.

Why does it hit ME every time? I've every month a bug and one or two weeks downtime.
See newest issues: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8171520.html#8171520

There are more than 100 bugs since 2017 in such unnecessary pkgs like glibc (bugs.gentoo.org). How much swords of Damocles are hidden in my 1850 pkgs?

As I was developer in 1980's, if I had the second severe bug in a year, I had to look for a new employer.

Maybe developers with such swiss cheese packages should think about another scope if it is all too complex for them...
Or I don't understand the reasons and solutions and gentoo is too complex for me...
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[Tony0945]

Waterdevil, I have not commented in the topic "Install issue gdk-pixbuf" because I don't run gnome. Are you running gnome with or without systemd?
If without systemd, have you considered mate or xfce, Is your laptop 32bit or 64bit?
If with systemd I cannot help because I do not know much about systemd and what I do know persuades me to NOT learn more.
But I want to help if I can.

[NeddySeagoon]

Waterdevil,