Somehow, somehow you can not see any difference in comparison with the same arch linux.
Well, supposedly you installed either gento or arch from the binaries, or even assembled your own (LFS).
But who forbids you to delete everything unnecessary in these systems or configure everything that is needed or compile programs from source code?
You can compile in any Linux, what is the difference guys, explain who is alive?
What is the difference in comparison with eg arch linux ...
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- aleksandr-mozg
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- NeddySeagoon
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aleksandr-mozg,
Lets think of Gentoo as LFS with a package manager.
Installing LFS is one thing. Keeping it up to date with no package manager is another.
You try deleting 'everything unnecessary' from <Random Binary Distro> or building you own packages.
You will fight the <Random Binary Distro> package manager every step of the way.
What is 'everything unnecessary'?
Gentoo gives you over 1,000,000 ways to put libreoffice together. If you start with the one way offered by <Random Binary Distro> how do you remove parts you don't want or add parts that you do?
Do not think of Gentoo (or LFS) as distros. They are not.
Gentoo is the ::gentoo repo and the Portage package manager. Everything else is $UPSTREAM.
Gentoo is a toolkit you use to design, create and maintain your own Linux distro. Its not a distro itself.
Lets think of Gentoo as LFS with a package manager.
Installing LFS is one thing. Keeping it up to date with no package manager is another.
You try deleting 'everything unnecessary' from <Random Binary Distro> or building you own packages.
You will fight the <Random Binary Distro> package manager every step of the way.
What is 'everything unnecessary'?
Gentoo gives you over 1,000,000 ways to put libreoffice together. If you start with the one way offered by <Random Binary Distro> how do you remove parts you don't want or add parts that you do?
Do not think of Gentoo (or LFS) as distros. They are not.
Gentoo is the ::gentoo repo and the Portage package manager. Everything else is $UPSTREAM.
Gentoo is a toolkit you use to design, create and maintain your own Linux distro. Its not a distro itself.
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.
Speed
More specifically (in my case only) gentoo runs faster. I could compile archlinux binaries to run faster, but it would take more of my time to maintain them. This may or may not be true for you.
Finally, a post I can respond to... I switched from arch a week or so ago. I still use arch on my laptop, but I've switched my main machine to gentoo dual booted with windows (I have to use it for school. Can't vm because exam proctor... -_-) I still don't have a complete understanding of what gentoo is. I'll just talk about how gentoo has helped me personally.
In gentoo, you compile everything (for the most part) by default. How this actually benefits you is you don't end up installing a bunch of extra stuff with certain packages and it makes them run faster (at least in my case) as a result. A few concrete examples of this have been gimp, emacs, libreoffice, and firefox. Firefox ran and looked awful for me on arch so I used chromium. I could've taken the time to tweak firefox, downgrade it or whatever, but it was actually faster for my by default on gentoo. Historically, it has always taken gimp a few seconds to open on other distros. Some being like 5-10 seconds. It opens nearly instantly for me on gentoo. Libreoffice still sucks, but it is fast and crashes less (haven't had it crash on me yet on gentoo).
You can compile everything on other distros if you want, but it's a complete pain. Gentoo simply provides you an environment + scripts and tools to do so without having to manually find dependencies that work for whatever version and install them. USE flags make it so you don't have to tinker with autoconf and make stuff by default. When you successfully emerge a package, it means you've configured and compiled it for your machine without having to do anything other than set some use flags, which you don't even have to do for the most part because the profiles you set during installation do a lot of that for you. It's actually a really cool concept I wish I could use for actually developing software instead of just using software.
Because everything is compiled by default (including and especially your kernel) low level things tend to just work (as long as configured properly). For example, I uninstalled gentoo right after I installed it (because I got pissed at some issue) reinstalled arch and noticed that cpu scaling didn't work for whatever reason. Things like this tend to just not happen on gentoo because by default you're not as bleeding edge as arch. You can be if you want, but things are more stable here. The downside of this is that you have far fewer options as far as installing the latest versions of niche software, but this won't be the case for most things.
tl;dr it's really hard to explain. you just have to try it if you feel like it and have the time. A working, stable gentoo install functions better than an arch install for me.
edit: completely forgot to mention my only intention with using gentoo right now is to learn more about linux. I think it's doing its job there as well. Arch, to me, is more about learning about various niche pieces of software and less low level stuff.
In gentoo, you compile everything (for the most part) by default. How this actually benefits you is you don't end up installing a bunch of extra stuff with certain packages and it makes them run faster (at least in my case) as a result. A few concrete examples of this have been gimp, emacs, libreoffice, and firefox. Firefox ran and looked awful for me on arch so I used chromium. I could've taken the time to tweak firefox, downgrade it or whatever, but it was actually faster for my by default on gentoo. Historically, it has always taken gimp a few seconds to open on other distros. Some being like 5-10 seconds. It opens nearly instantly for me on gentoo. Libreoffice still sucks, but it is fast and crashes less (haven't had it crash on me yet on gentoo).
You can compile everything on other distros if you want, but it's a complete pain. Gentoo simply provides you an environment + scripts and tools to do so without having to manually find dependencies that work for whatever version and install them. USE flags make it so you don't have to tinker with autoconf and make stuff by default. When you successfully emerge a package, it means you've configured and compiled it for your machine without having to do anything other than set some use flags, which you don't even have to do for the most part because the profiles you set during installation do a lot of that for you. It's actually a really cool concept I wish I could use for actually developing software instead of just using software.
Because everything is compiled by default (including and especially your kernel) low level things tend to just work (as long as configured properly). For example, I uninstalled gentoo right after I installed it (because I got pissed at some issue) reinstalled arch and noticed that cpu scaling didn't work for whatever reason. Things like this tend to just not happen on gentoo because by default you're not as bleeding edge as arch. You can be if you want, but things are more stable here. The downside of this is that you have far fewer options as far as installing the latest versions of niche software, but this won't be the case for most things.
Gentoo is different from any os or distro I've ever used because I've always had the "it doesn't matter if something breaks because I can just wipe the drive and start over" approach, and I do still do this for pretty much everything else. But in gentoo this is discouraged because of how easy it is to unbreak your system (given you haven't gone out of your way to not use portage to break it). Starting over would be a nightmare because I'd have to recompile everything. It's fairly straightforward to just unmerge a package or recompile something to get it working. Rather than install a binary, it break your whole environment and you have to google for hours to figure out some bandaid. Or even worse, in arch, when you install something that doesn't work you just have to hope someone has a different build on the aur for it to work on my machine.But who forbids you to delete everything unnecessary in these systems or configure everything that is needed or compile programs from source code?
tl;dr it's really hard to explain. you just have to try it if you feel like it and have the time. A working, stable gentoo install functions better than an arch install for me.
edit: completely forgot to mention my only intention with using gentoo right now is to learn more about linux. I think it's doing its job there as well. Arch, to me, is more about learning about various niche pieces of software and less low level stuff.
Re: ...
Alex, I have read your question in both threads, here and in the Russian-language forum, I think I understand the question well, so I will try to share my own understanding in the manner of analogies.aleksandr-mozg wrote:Somehow, somehow you can not see any difference in comparison with the same arch linux.
Well, supposedly you installed either gento or arch from the binaries, or even assembled your own (LFS).
But who forbids you to delete everything unnecessary in these systems or configure everything that is needed or compile programs from source code?
You can compile in any Linux, what is the difference guys, explain who is alive?
Let's compare emerge and pacman on a high level + we add some imagination.
Imagine what Arch would look like if pacman always ran ABS on every invocation.
In this case, users will install from source by default, and if they need a binary package, they will pass a special pacman flag, something like --usepkg, as in emerge, just to bypass the ABS system.
Doesn't this imaginary situation look like emerge?
The difference is in goals:
– Arch is more about how to get a copy of a ready-to-use distribution (a copy of someone's decisions in a form of a copy of his kingdom);
– Gentoo is more about tools to help you create your own distribution (you use own decisions to build a kingdom).
If you use ABS a lot, then it makes sense to try Gentoo.
If you find that staring at „Malevich's square” with long compilation output is boring – then you need a binary distribution, and I think Arch is a good option.
There are already some answers I really like, still maybe my story and view from a pretty fresh not-even-user of Gentoo helps a bit.
I do see an important difference: afair arch has binary packages. Hence I as user am kind of bound on what is in the repositories (I know that I can compile there, too, but at least at Ubuntu it is kind of - well, not really fitting the workflow)
Now, my story:
When I had my first contact with a PC, Linux didn't even exist. We had MS-DOS (or DR-DOS), later on Windows 3.11. I think it was with Win95 or so, maybe the Millennium edition, that I came across SuSE first time. There was something on my PC that didn't work in Win, don't remember, what it was. Anyway, I found SuSE, not working out of the box directly, but I found everything I needed in the internet. And I was like "wow, all written clearly and I even could create my own eye candy on the desktop like windows etc. if I just had time!". I also learned a lot about my PC.
So, I happily worked, with SuSE, with Caldera, with RedHat, whichever distribution liked to work in my at that time current PC, tipped once or twice my toes into the cold waters of Gentoo but at that time documentation for me didn't work. Later switched to Ubuntu, all was fine.
At one point Ubuntu switched something and I didn't find all the configuration files any more, but well, it worked, so what. Must have been a switch from OpenRC to systemd, but this I found out only lately on my second serious try this time with Gentoo At one point the maintainers of Ubuntu also decided to switch to PulseAudio, for me a constant pain in the b.... Ubuntu is a nice distribution with nice people who help you along; they all do their very best to make it simple for the user (Arch's approach for kiss from my point of view strives more to keep the system simple and slim, but that sometimes makes it difficult for the user). But this ease of use has it's backfire.
Ubuntu has over time become more and more similar to Windows in some ways. Configs often aren't clear text any more, Pulse - well, let's not talk about that one (I like to record music sometimes, not high end but Pulse still doesn't help at all for that) and every time I'd like to have a new version of a program I either need to add the repository (which is not recommended) or have to wait until it's packed into the official repositories - often enough that doesn't happen for the current LTS and I'd need to install / upgrade to the actual version, no matter if it's long term or one of the other releases.
Gentoo is made for compiling packages and still getting the dependencies sorted out, so what I hope is that I can keep my system up-to-date without having to install a new version of the complete OS every other time when I want to have the new version of Musescore, for example. And it comes with almost nothing pre-installed, compared to a distribution. So I can choose what I want. Only one editor for x, no darktable when I prefer digicam anyway, no "LMMS" (don't even know what this program does but it came with my Ubuntu) and a ton of other programs I really never ever klick on in the menu. Oh, besides, only about three fonts or so (this might change with LibreOffice, though - yes, I use that one indeed a lot). Additional benefit: I learn a lot about my PC (and kernel options
) again.
LFS - well, learning curve is still to steep for this one. So, Gentoo seems to be the one for me right now. The time I save because I don't have to uninstall a ton of useless (for me) packages or search for other stuff I can easy put into compiling.
If "you" means me, you're wrongaleksandr-mozg wrote:Somehow, somehow you can not see any difference in comparison with the same arch linux.
I do see an important difference: afair arch has binary packages. Hence I as user am kind of bound on what is in the repositories (I know that I can compile there, too, but at least at Ubuntu it is kind of - well, not really fitting the workflow)
Let's say I am installing (with the help of) Gentoo right now, in pieces, because of different reasonsaleksandr-mozg wrote:Well, supposedly you installed either gento or arch from the binaries, or even assembled your own (LFS).
No one, but why should I?! I mean, where is the point of installing something packed in a distribution first only to uninstall it later on because I know that I'll never use it? And why should I compile on a binary-package-based distribution with all it's hassles on administering the system later on (and there's always something with the from source compiled programs...) if I can have it here "for free"?aleksandr-mozg wrote:But who forbids you to delete everything unnecessary in these systems or configure everything that is needed or compile programs from source code?
The difference for me is more freedom and independence.aleksandr-mozg wrote:You can compile in any Linux, what is the difference guys, explain who is alive?
Now, my story:
When I had my first contact with a PC, Linux didn't even exist. We had MS-DOS (or DR-DOS), later on Windows 3.11. I think it was with Win95 or so, maybe the Millennium edition, that I came across SuSE first time. There was something on my PC that didn't work in Win, don't remember, what it was. Anyway, I found SuSE, not working out of the box directly, but I found everything I needed in the internet. And I was like "wow, all written clearly and I even could create my own eye candy on the desktop like windows etc. if I just had time!". I also learned a lot about my PC.
So, I happily worked, with SuSE, with Caldera, with RedHat, whichever distribution liked to work in my at that time current PC, tipped once or twice my toes into the cold waters of Gentoo but at that time documentation for me didn't work. Later switched to Ubuntu, all was fine.
At one point Ubuntu switched something and I didn't find all the configuration files any more, but well, it worked, so what. Must have been a switch from OpenRC to systemd, but this I found out only lately on my second serious try this time with Gentoo
At one point the maintainers of Ubuntu also decided to switch to PulseAudio, for me a constant pain in the b.... Ubuntu is a nice distribution with nice people who help you along; they all do their very best to make it simple for the user (Arch's approach for kiss from my point of view strives more to keep the system simple and slim, but that sometimes makes it difficult for the user). But this ease of use has it's backfire. Ubuntu has over time become more and more similar to Windows in some ways. Configs often aren't clear text any more, Pulse - well, let's not talk about that one (I like to record music sometimes, not high end but Pulse still doesn't help at all for that) and every time I'd like to have a new version of a program I either need to add the repository (which is not recommended) or have to wait until it's packed into the official repositories - often enough that doesn't happen for the current LTS and I'd need to install / upgrade to the actual version, no matter if it's long term or one of the other releases.
Gentoo is made for compiling packages and still getting the dependencies sorted out, so what I hope is that I can keep my system up-to-date without having to install a new version of the complete OS every other time when I want to have the new version of Musescore, for example. And it comes with almost nothing pre-installed, compared to a distribution. So I can choose what I want. Only one editor for x, no darktable when I prefer digicam anyway, no "LMMS" (don't even know what this program does but it came with my Ubuntu) and a ton of other programs I really never ever klick on in the menu. Oh, besides, only about three fonts or so (this might change with LibreOffice, though - yes, I use that one indeed a lot). Additional benefit: I learn a lot about my PC (and kernel options
) again. LFS - well, learning curve is still to steep for this one. So, Gentoo seems to be the one for me right now. The time I save because I don't have to uninstall a ton of useless (for me) packages or search for other stuff I can easy put into compiling.
cu
Monika
Monika