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codergeek42
Bodhisattva
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 5142
Location: Anaheim, CA (USA)
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 Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 12:43 am Post subject: All About Linux Reviews Gentoo |
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 My dalliance with Gentoo Linux
Seems he likes it. W00t. 
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~~ Peter: Programmer, Mathematician, STEM & Free Software Advocate, Enlightened Agent, Transhumanist, Fedora contributor
Who am I? :: EFF & FSF |
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omp
Retired Dev
Joined: 10 Sep 2005
Posts: 1018
Location: Glendale, California
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| Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 12:49 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | For example, there are a lot of GPLed libraries like gtk, gtk2, qt and so on. If I do not intend to install KDE applications or KDE desktop on my machine, I can easily disable the support for Qt library in my programs at the time of compilation. This I accomplish using the USE variable.
# USE="-qt gnome gtk gtk2" emerge abiword
... will download the source and compile abiword on my machine without any support for Qt but with support included for gnome, gtk and gtk2 libraries.
The environment variables are usually inserted one per line in the /etc/make.conf file. But as far as USE variable is concerned, you can also pass values at the time of emerging as shown in the above example. |
uh oh. 
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meow. |
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codergeek42
Bodhisattva
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 5142
Location: Anaheim, CA (USA)
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| Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 12:58 am Post subject: |
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Meh. He will learn, as all newcomers do. 
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~~ Peter: Programmer, Mathematician, STEM & Free Software Advocate, Enlightened Agent, Transhumanist, Fedora contributor
Who am I? :: EFF & FSF |
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diilbert
n00b
Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Posts: 52
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| Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 2:21 am Post subject: |
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| codergeek42 wrote: | | Meh. He will learn, as all newcomers do. |
I avoided this right out of the gate. Since there was so much opposition to it  Plus the arguments make sense |
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TwoManAdv
n00b
Joined: 03 Oct 2005
Posts: 72
Location: New York
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| Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 3:14 am Post subject: |
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It looks like somebody already corrected him about the use flags in the comments section.
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Nice review, just must warn you about those USE flags. In general it's not recommended to set them before emerge like in your example, for that you have /etc/portage/package.use file, where you can set USE flag for each package if you dont like global settings from make.conf. In /etc/portage you can also set keywords (in package.keywords) for each package, mask or unmask specific problematic package (package.mask etc.) and so on. So if you update your system with #emerge --update world portage dosent overwrite your USE settings for those packages. It's all in portage man page. I hope you will have a lot of fun with Gentoo
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That seems to be a common mistake with beginners though, when I first started using gentoo I remember reading somewhere that you were able to do that. It wasn't until I followed the forums that I found out that is an improper way of doing it. Come to think of it I did a lot of things wrong until I started following the forums. |
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<3
Veteran
Joined: 21 Oct 2004
Posts: 1081
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| Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 3:52 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | One thing which grabbed my attention was the inordinate time it took to download and install software on the machine. This is especially evident when there are dependency packages to be installed. For example, when I gave the command:
# emerge kde-base/kgoldrunner
It started downloading the first package, unpacking it in a directory and compiling and installing it. Then downloading the second package, unpacking,compiling and installing it and so on. In fact it was a download - compile - install - download - compile - install cycle.
The down side of following this cycle is your internet connection should be maintained at all times till the installation of all the packages are completed.
I feel it would be better if the emerge script is tuned to download all the package sources including the dependencies first at a single stretch and then, start the compile and install process. This way, once the download is complete, the internet connection is not important any more and even if the internet goes down, it will not hamper the installation in any way. |
I think a better improvement would be if while compiling one program portage could download and start extracting the next program. Or better yet have the ability to simultaneously emerge multiple packages. |
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allucid
Veteran
Joined: 02 Nov 2002
Posts: 1314
Location: atlanta
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| Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:37 am Post subject: |
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| I have trouble taking anyone seriously who has a blog littered with ads like that. |
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sabaisabai
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 05 May 2004
Posts: 83
Location: Singapore
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| Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 10:00 am Post subject: |
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| <3 wrote: |
I think a better improvement would be if while compiling one program portage could download and start extracting the next program. Or better yet have the ability to simultaneously emerge multiple packages. |
It's easy enough to do manually. Start-up an "emerge -uDfv world" in one console, then after a few minutes start up an "emerge -uDv world" in another. Vary the timing to ensure that downloading is ahead of compiling, depending on your connection and the download size. |
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<3
Veteran
Joined: 21 Oct 2004
Posts: 1081
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| Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2006 7:35 am Post subject: |
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| hmmm i never thought of doing that before, I'll try that next time I upgrade. THX. |
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