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Sol33t303
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Joined: 23 Mar 2018
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 Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 9:49 am Post subject: a few questions about Gentoo |
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I have been thinking about moving to Gentoo recently (I'm currently on Arch) and I have a few questions about it.
1. If I decide to compile a custom kernel, do I have to reconfigure the kernel every time it updates? I know of genkernel but according to the Gentoo handbook, it seems to just use a default kernel ("genkernel works by configuring a kernel nearly identically to the way the installation CD kernel is configured.").
2. I have compiled my own kernel before but I only changed the architecture from generic CPU to my CPUs architecture. I'm worried that I may cause some problems in some of my programs because the kernel is compiled differently, is this an issue I should be worried about? If so what can I do about it?
3. I read somewhere that portage is "git based", does this mean it can install all packages that are available on git? (I doubt it, but I'm just being sure.)
4. Probably the thing I would miss most about Arch if I move to Gentoo is the AUR. It's probably not, but just to be sure again, is it possible at all to install packages from the AUR? Perhaps there is some sort of AUR helper for gentoo?
5. Is there a way to make Gentoo a bit more bleeding-edge? Another thing I like about Arch is how bleeding-edge it is, so I would like to at least be able to select what packages I want to be bleeding-edge (such as wine and GNOME).
That's about it I think, thanks in advance for answering  |
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Kron4ek
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Joined: 23 Mar 2018
Posts: 10
Location: /dev/city
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 10:11 am Post subject: |
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| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 1. If I decide to compile a custom kernel, do I have to reconfigure the kernel every time it updates? I know of genkernel but according to the Gentoo handbook, it seems to just use a default kernel ("genkernel works by |
No, not every time. Just when major version releases (such as 4.14, 4.15, 4.16 etc.). And not reconfigure whole config, just configure some new options that were added in new release (they will be marked as NEW).
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 2. I have compiled my own kernel before but I only changed the architecture from generic CPU to my CPUs architecture. I'm worried that I may cause some problems in some of my programs because the kernel is compiled differently, is this an issue I should be worried about? If so what can I do about it? |
Just choose correct architecture and you'll be fine. There are no issues here you should worry about.
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 3. I read somewhere that portage is "git based", does this mean it can install all packages that are available on git? (I doubt it, but I'm just being sure.) |
Portage support git as sync protocol, but no, you can't install all packages available in git.
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 4. Probably the thing I would miss most about Arch if I move to Gentoo is the AUR. It's probably not, but just to be sure again, is it possible at all to install packages from the AUR? Perhaps there is some sort of AUR helper for gentoo? |
No, you can't install packages from AUR. Gentoo have overlays as alternative to AUR. And Layman to manage overlays.
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 5. Is there a way to make Gentoo a bit more bleeding-edge? Another thing I like about Arch is how bleeding-edge it is, so I would like to at least be able to select what packages I want to be bleeding-edge |
Gentoo have two branches: stable and testing. Packages in stable sometimes outdated (and honestly, sometimes in testing too; overlays can help in making Gentoo more bleeding-edge). But you can easily select what packages you want to install from testing, just add them to /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords:
| Code: | app-emulation/wine-vanilla ~amd64
app-admin/keepassxc ~amd64
app-crypt/argon2 ~amd64 |
Last edited by Kron4ek on Fri Mar 23, 2018 10:29 am; edited 3 times in total |
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fedeliallalinea
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Joined: 08 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 10:14 am Post subject: Re: a few questions about Gentoo |
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| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 1. If I decide to compile a custom kernel, do I have to reconfigure the kernel every time it updates? I know of genkernel but according to the Gentoo handbook, it seems to just use a default kernel ("genkernel works by configuring a kernel nearly identically to the way the installation CD kernel is configured."). |
No you can just use old .config.
With genkernl you can use option --kernel-config=/etc/kernels/kernel-config-x86_64-<version>-gentoo (genkernel by default backup kernel config in /etc/kernels/)
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 3. I read somewhere that portage is "git based", does this mean it can install all packages that are available on git? (I doubt it, but I'm just being sure.) |
No portage can install also package from git but isn't only git based. Usually portage download source archive o
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 4. Probably the thing I would miss most about Arch if I move to Gentoo is the AUR. It's probably not, but just to be sure again, is it possible at all to install packages from the AUR? Perhaps there is some sort of AUR helper for gentoo? |
No you can't install AUR but you can translate PKGBUILD in ebuild.
In gentoo there are overlays (like AUR where a user can manage itself personal ebuilds) that you can manage with app-portage/layman.
Here a list of overlay
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 5. Is there a way to make Gentoo a bit more bleeding-edge? Another thing I like about Arch is how bleeding-edge it is, so I would like to at least be able to select what packages I want to be bleeding-edge (such as wine and GNOME). |
Sorry not sure if I understand. You can use unstable gentoo, I don't think that is "bleeding-edge" like arch but surely more stable (I had bad experiences with arch).
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Sol33t303
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Joined: 23 Mar 2018
Posts: 65
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 10:33 am Post subject: |
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| Thanks for answering my questions, now that I know Gentoo has an AUR alternative, that there are ways to make it more bleeding edge and that I don't have to reconfigure the Linux kernel every update, I'm probably going to try it out. Thanks again for answering my gentoo noob questions |
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Kron4ek
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Joined: 23 Mar 2018
Posts: 10
Location: /dev/city
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 10:37 am Post subject: |
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| Sol33t303 wrote: | | Thanks for answering my questions. |
You're welcome. And good luck with the installation. |
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NeddySeagoon
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Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54237
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 11:05 am Post subject: |
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Sol33t303,
There is stable, testing and live within the gentoo repo.
You get stable by default.
If you want testing, you need to ask. You can have all testing or mix a few testing packages into testing.
Personally, I use testing everywhere. It does break sometimes but there are strategies to minimise the damage.
Lots have packages have builds that pull from the upstream repo. If you want those you have to ask a bit harder.
You get to keep the pieces if they don't work.
Then, Gentoo supports overlays. Find an ebuild in an overlay, install the overlay and cherry pick ebuilds from there.
Even create your own overlay. A lot of early development work happens in overlays, so you can limit the dawage to areas of particular interest.
How close to the haemorrhaging edge to you want to live?
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Mr. T.
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Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 11:14 am Post subject: |
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It seems to me that an overlay is more complex by nature than an ebuild repository. You may be interested by eselect repository, a tool suitable for repositories.
Originally, "overlays" were created by users to support the official development but Portage (official package manager) is unable to perform some tasks.
Note the package manager tree may be (or must be) composed by various ebuild repositories.
Here is an anecdotal list concerning Portage's flaws:
- automatic creation of a single ebuild repository;
- remove duplicate ebuilds in the final ebuild tree;
- modify an existing ebuild;
- ...
The user can possibly be constrained according to its configuration. It is a pain in the ass learning the package manager!!  |
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Fitzcarraldo
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Joined: 30 Aug 2008
Posts: 2034
Location: United Kingdom
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 12:48 pm Post subject: |
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| helecho wrote: | | It is a pain in the ass learning the package manager!! |
More difficult than a binary distribution's package manager, granted, but it's a powerful package manager with a tonne of functionality.
- Main Portage tree;
- local overlay on my machine;
- third-party overlays on the Internet;
- ease of dropping in patches without needing to hack ebuilds;
- USE flags;
- world and non-world packages;
- source packages;
- binary packages;
- Stable branch;
- Testing branch;
- live (master) packages;
- package masking;
- parallel or sequential installation of packages;
- preservation of installed packages to avoid dependency breakages;
- slotted packages;
- suite of utilities to view precise details of available and installed packages, to check dependencies and rebuild if necessary, to check installation/removal history, to clean out old packages, and so on;
...the list goes on.
There's a reason Google chose Portage for Chrome OS.
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Mr. T.
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Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 1:34 pm Post subject: |
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I am not competent to develop a package manager but I believe a lot of options or configuration files could be removed.
I believe that a dynamically modifiable package manager would reduce complexity. The bash ebuilds are also restrictive.
Edit: Originally, this format was supposed to facilitate the integration of software into the system.
Last edited by Mr. T. on Fri Mar 23, 2018 1:47 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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NeddySeagoon
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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helecho,
Portage has a lot of controls. The defaults are reasonable.
If you don't know what a control does, don't fiddle with it.
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NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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Mr. T.
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Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Portage maybe is a great tool when you know how to use it. In my mind, it is too complicated to use and too complex to modify. |
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skellr
l33t
Joined: 18 Jun 2005
Posts: 975
Location: The Village, Portmeirion
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 3:09 pm Post subject: Re: a few questions about Gentoo |
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| Sol33t303 wrote: | | I have been thinking about moving to Gentoo recently (I'm currently on Arch) and I have a few questions about it. |
You can install Gentoo using Arch so you have an advantage. You just need an extra partition to put it on. It's just a tarball that you extract, throw in a kernel, and can configure your Arch boot loader menu to add Gentoo and a few things like hostname, password, networking, locale, basic stuff. You are the Gentoo installer so go ahead and keep your Arch install. If it's not your cup of tea then no problem.
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 1. If I decide to compile a custom kernel, do I have to reconfigure the kernel every time it updates? I know of genkernel but according to the Gentoo handbook, it seems to just use a default kernel ("genkernel works by configuring a kernel nearly identically to the way the installation CD kernel is configured."). |
You can copy the .config file to the new kernel directory and just run make. It will run make silentoldconfig and say no to any new options. It seems to be a good idea to reconfigure every major version.
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 2. I have compiled my own kernel before but I only changed the architecture from generic CPU to my CPUs architecture. I'm worried that I may cause some problems in some of my programs because the kernel is compiled differently, is this an issue I should be worried about? If so what can I do about it? |
Yes and no. It will throw and error and tell you what needs to be changed if it's something critical. It will warn you of optional things but still complete the install. the messages are logged: /var/log/portage/elog/summary.log
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 3. I read somewhere that portage is "git based", does this mean it can install all packages that are available on git? (I doubt it, but I'm just being sure.) |
Not quite that easy. The main repository is available as a git repo but the default is to use rsync.
| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 4. Probably the thing I would miss most about Arch if I move to Gentoo is the AUR. It's probably not, but just to be sure again, is it possible at all to install packages from the AUR? Perhaps there is some sort of AUR helper for gentoo? |
I think there was something like that quite a while ago but it's didn't survive. Arch is primarily a binary distro first and source based second. Gentoo is the other way around and it just didn't work out. What we have isn't as unified as AUR it's a bunch of small repos, user repos, developer repos, listed or unlisted. layman is configured to show you quite a few.
| Sol33t303 wrote: | 5. Is there a way to make Gentoo a bit more bleeding-edge? Another thing I like about Arch is how bleeding-edge it is, so I would like to at least be able to select what packages I want to be bleeding-edge (such as wine and GNOME).
That's about it I think, thanks in advance for answering |
Yes, there are ebuilds with versions of 9999. they pull from the HEAD of upstream so you can have all the pain you can handle. Although, you probably need to hunt for them as they are not included in the default repository. like the GNOME overlay.
Anyway, don't nuke your Arch install to try Gentoo. They are both good in different ways. |
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ian.au
Guru
Joined: 07 Apr 2011
Posts: 591
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 10:28 pm Post subject: |
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| helecho wrote: | | Portage maybe is a great tool when you know how to use it. In my mind, it is too complicated to use and too complex to modify. |
Having now read numerous unintelligible complaints / comments / general purpose bagging of Portage by you, in numerous threads; finally a sentence I can understand... but do you?
Portage is necessarily complex, it does difficult and complex things. It offers users unparalleled flexibility, and demands responsibility and attention to detail in return. A decade and a half after my first installation, I'm still surprised when I stumble over a feature / methodology that portage offers that I had no idea existed, I don't expect that to change into the future - I find the features as I need them.
If you find Portage too complicated to use, that is in your mind (it's called an opinion), nobody here can help with that. If you want to learn, all the resources are available to you to do so, including these forums - it's up to you to put the work in. If you don't want to do that, you're on your own really. Continuing to interject into other peoples threads with opinionated gibberish like this adds nothing of value.
Bottom line, this is a support thread about a tool you freely admit you don't understand: How do you expect to make a valuable contribution to it? |
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Fitzcarraldo
Advocate
Joined: 30 Aug 2008
Posts: 2034
Location: United Kingdom
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 12:27 am Post subject: Re: a few questions about Gentoo |
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| skellr wrote: | | Yes, there are ebuilds with versions of 9999. they pull from the HEAD of upstream so you can have all the pain you can handle. Although, you probably need to hunt for them as they are not included in the default repository. like the GNOME overlay. |
@skellr,
By 'default repository', do you mean the main Portage tree of ebuilds? If you do, some live (master) a.k.a. 9999 ebuilds are in the main Portage tree, they just need unmasking by keyword. To give one example:
| Code: | # eix wine-any
* app-emulation/wine-any
Available versions:
(2.0) ~2.0-r1^t
(2.19) ~2.19^t
(2.20) ~2.20^t
(2.21) ~2.21^t
(9999) **9999^t
{+X +alsa capi cups custom-cflags d3d9 dos +fontconfig +gecko gphoto2 gsm gssapi gstreamer +jpeg kerberos +lcms ldap +mono mp3 ncurses netapi nls odbc openal opencl +opengl osmesa oss pcap +perl pipelight +png prelink pulseaudio +realtime +run-exes s3tc samba scanner selinux +ssl staging test themes +threads +truetype udev +udisks v4l vaapi vulkan +xcomposite xinerama +xml ABI_MIPS="n32 n64 o32" ABI_PPC="32 64" ABI_S390="32 64" ABI_X86="(+)32 (+)64 x32" ELIBC="glibc" KERNEL="FreeBSD"}
Homepage: https://www.winehq.org/
Description: Free implementation of Windows(tm) on Unix, with optional external patchsets |
As another example, although I am running Gentoo Stable amd64 on my main laptop (I'm using Testing ~amd64 on my backup laptop) I have a few 'haemorrhaging edge' packages installed for my own reasons, and they work fine:
| Code: | # grep "\*\*" /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/*
/etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/clementine:=media-sound/clementine-9999 **
/etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/edid-decode:=x11-apps/edid-decode-9999 **
/etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/pdftk:=app-text/pdftk-9999 ** |
@ian.au,
Eloquently put.
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Clevo W230SS: amd64, VIDEO_CARDS="intel modesetting nvidia".
Compal NBLB2: ~amd64, xf86-video-ati. Dual boot Win 7 Pro 64-bit.
OpenRC udev elogind & KDE on both.
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Mr. T.
Guru
Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 6:35 am Post subject: |
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@ian.au: I express an appropriate opinion about the topic with simplicity in various threads (see below the remark). Everyone can take my critics (or perception) into account.
Moreover, my negative posts are short so they can be easily ignored. I try to expose the difficulties inherent to this or that learning, using my own experience.
I also express my frustration and this can be inconvenient. Nonetheless, I know my comments can probably have a negative influence on others.
Note: The repositories (a.k.a overlays) seemed to be important for the original poster. I noticed repositories are not well integrated in the user's environment and
the various Portage's flaws concerning repositories can be laborious to solve. Finally, new features (and also some features) appear to the user with more or less evidence. |
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Ant P.
Watchman
Joined: 18 Apr 2009
Posts: 6920
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 7:03 am Post subject: |
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| Try using smarter words instead of longer ones. |
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NeddySeagoon
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Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54237
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 10:50 am Post subject: |
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helecho,
Perhaps you are trying to work against portage rather than with it?
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NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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Mr. T.
Guru
Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 12:58 pm Post subject: |
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This is certainly the case because of several factors: some users are unsympathetic when you express your doubts, developers never participate in the exchanges,
the documentation is inadequate, experience contradicts expressed knowledge. The final impression is that things don't move in the good direction.
I realize that I have also made errors of judgment or errors of conduct because of connivances and convictions. |
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Hu
Moderator
Joined: 06 Mar 2007
Posts: 21633
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| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 4:37 pm Post subject: Re: a few questions about Gentoo |
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| Sol33t303 wrote: | | 3. I read somewhere that portage is "git based", does this mean it can install all packages that are available on git? (I doubt it, but I'm just being sure.) |
Other posters have given you an adequate and correct "No", but I want to explain why in a bit more detail. Git is a file tracking system, and many people use it for source control. Open source projects you might want to install use it. Gentoo developers use it to track the Gentoo ebuilds and supporting files (commonly called the "portage tree" or sometimes just "portage") that tell Portage (the package manager) how to install packages. The Portage tree can be fetched over Git, over rsync, or over https. Given the right instructions in an ebuild, Portage (the package manager) can fetch upstream sources over http/https, ftp, git, or a few of the more exotic source control systems. The key piece, and the reason everyone answered "No" for this question, is that installing a package requires more than just being able to download it. Portage (the package manager) needs machine-readable instructions to tell it (among other things):- How/where to get upstream sources
- What, if anything, to change locally (such as applying backported fixes)
- Which upstream-supplied scripts (if any) to run, in what order, and with what arguments, to transform the upstream source into a usable program.
- Where to put that program on your system
An ebuild (together with some supporting files also maintained by Gentoo developers) addresses all those points. If you have an ebuild that knows how to pull from upstream Git (and quite a few exist, so you have plenty of examples to work from if you need to write one), then you can install code straight from that upstream's Git repository. However, upstream use of Git does not imply the existence of such an ebuild. If it did, then the answer to your question could have been "yes." On the positive side, since there are many ebuilds that fetch from Git, if upstream's build process is not too convoluted, you can write (or ask someone to help you write) an ebuild for any upstream tracked in Git (or any of the other major version control systems) if you find a package that has no ebuild, but you still want tip of tree code. |
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