Gentoo - A Fat and Lazy Penguin

[Etal]

I was going to point you to drobbins' Funtoo, but it seems they no longer seem to offer any recent non-3 stages anymore either. (They did about 2 years ago.)
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[FastTurtle]

I think very few understand the differences between stages anymore. The build process is supposed to start with stage1 and the only project out there that does the same thing is LFS. The only time a stage1 build is needed is changing cpu types (Intel to ARM) or an upgrade to the toolchain itself. That shouldn't be more then every couple of years unless the GCC group screws up or offers a feature that major packages suddenly jump on. Then you may be forced to.

Next is stage2. This includes many of the basic/common packages that need to be installed in order to have a working system. Things like System Utils, filesystem tools, base layout, networking, the kernel, configuration issues such as editing fstab, setting a root pw, selecting and installing the kernel and bootloader and once done, you reboot into a stage3 system.

The stage3 tarball only needed the user to select the kernel and bootloader and edit fstab along with setting a root pw before rebooting. The rest of it could be done afterwards and would have been the selection of the varous packages and final installation. About the only thing a user would have to do was an emerge -e world after changing useflags or editing make_opts. Otherwise they were already up and running in a working system and could get on with installing the packages they wanted.

In regards to the many differences between the Stage2 and Stage3 tarballs, I tend to disagree with most of the choices made because those flags were/are set as global flags in make.conf where I set very few. It's the extra dependencies - ie setting gtk for one app only add gtk support while for another it pulls in all of gnome that I don't want. That's why I tend to use /etc/portage/package.use very heavily (is it still there?) as I can set the flags I want a specific package to always use.

It seems that no one has even bothered to offer more then "Jump! Jump! Jump!" to someone standing on a ledge, so imagine my suprise that this thread actually stirred my memory enough to pull up the stage2 command of "emerge -ep system" and unless that's been removed, it's exactly what I need. It should get me to the point that I can then properly complete the stage3 build out the way I want it.

Etal: Thanks for the link though it looks like they're down to either a stage1 or stage3 build themselves. I can certainly handle a stage1 if needed.

Based on my current system, it shouldn't take more then 30 minutes for stage1 and the rest of the build shouldn't take more then 4 hours as the old athlon 950 I started with only took 8 to get to a working system. So I'm going to close this thread - Yes I know somebody is going to just have to post but Sorry folks, I'm hanging up the phone and will talk at ya later.

[eccerr0r]

I do have to say some of the things in Gentoo, it's not stages that's the problem, it's mostly that software packages are getting harder to disable certain dependencies, and those dependencies are what uses a lot of disk space. It takes quite a bit of effort to maintain the ebuilds for every single possibility of customization of each package as well.

I'm also not quite sure why someone couldn't do a stage1 build with a stage3 download, just build to a different directory...

But anyway I do have several "bastardized" Gentoo installations - those without portage and cannot self-update - the smallest I got was only around 400MB or so with X11 and firefox a few years back, and fit on a 2GB CF card with plenty of room to spare. If I had included emerge/portage, it would have instantly added all the python, glib, etc. libraries all the way through their dependencies as well as the portage tree itself, and would completely choke the 2GB disk... (btw glib != glibc != gtk != gnome...)

It's a tradeoff, can people live without portage/emerge? It's another flexibility point Gentoo offers. (unfortunately /var/db/pkg/* still consumed a lot of disk space/inodes if the fs doesn't support tail packing... but it's the remnants that it's still Gentoo even when portage isn't installed...)
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What am I supposed watching?

[djdunn]

Gentoo only gets fat and lazy if you keep feeding it the emerge command

besides stage 1 and 2 left some cruft around that portage couldn't know about which means portage couldn't get rid of. my machines just as lean and mean as it always was, even after changing chost or anything i never really needed a stage 1 or 2 tarball. and honestly a stage 1 or 2 is just adding more places to screw up in order to do something you can do anyways with a stage 3?
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“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”

― Plato

[Yamakuzure]

C'mon guys, quit it. FastTurtle already said he'll not look again in here, and that's for a good reason, obviously. No matter what counts agains stage1/2, he'll just wanted to "be right" and to "prove" that all gentoo devs (and us users) are wrong. If he'd read what we wrote, he'd know by now that he has got no point.
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Important German:

1. "Aha" - German reaction to pretend that you are really interested while giving no f*ck.
2. "Tja" - German reaction to the apocalypse, nuclear war, an alien invasion or no bread in the house.