Why I don't care if you are dropping recommend of Gentoo

[warrens]

I have been using Gentoo since December 2004, and I have had only a few minor problems, nothing really major. I started with Stage 1 installs simply because at that time I could not get a working system using the 2004.3 stage 3, I even had a failed stage 3 install with 2005.0.

So when it was decided that Stage 1 installs would no longer be supported with the release of 2005.1 I was upset. I even thought about leaving Gentoo at that time and I bitched and moaned about the dropping of Stage 1 in these forums. Releng team had decided that Stage 3 was "good enough." Unfortunately this "good enough" attitude infects more than just Gentoo, nearly all the other Linux distros, Apple, and MS have this problem to varying degrees, but only Gentoo gives you the tools to do something about it and build you the best possible system. I chose to use those tools and solve the problem of no Stage 1 support my way and created my own Stage 1 install method that has produced the most trouble-free Linux system that I have used thus far, and that using ~x86 with what some call insane CFLAGS!! I even posted a guide to my install method on these forums, here is the latest version. I have had some compliments and of course there are those that read it and slammed it without even trying it.

Now what am trying to say? Is Gentoo perfect?? By no means!!! Can Gentoo be improved?? Yes most definitely!!! If you do not like the state of Gentoo why do you not try doing something about it, instead of complaining about how bad Gentoo is You don't have to be a developer to change things and you might not be able to change things for everyone, but you can make Gentoo better for yourself no matter what.

Basically if you can't recommend Gentoo I could care less.

[chrisfreet]

Hey - at least I didn`t get my e-dick wedged in

In my point of view it is suffering if you have to actually sit there and watch warning messages as you update or else.If I can read after the fact what was screwed up and there is no way to recover qualifies as additional torture.

Sorry if anybody got offended - that wasn`t my intention.

I just fail to see why you would have an advanced OS on a million dollar machine that isn`t able to put out a warning and stops until instructed otherwise on a potentionally critical screwup.

Hey you are supposed to be in charge.The way this goes you are in charge of either waste your life in front of the computer catching lines or hoping for the best.

This logic is poor. If you are in charge of a million dollar machine you should know the consequences of whatever action you take, regardless of the environment you work in. (Why would one update a stable machine - especially a million dollar machine - without knowing exactly what the outcome will be? and why do it without testing on another less important platform?)

I'm no admin, but logic dictates to me that no matter what platform or environment you are using, testing the outcome on a mission-critical piece of hardware seems like a small price to pay. Exactly what platform or environment would you trust without first testing?

[metacircular-evaluator]

(Why would one update a stable machine - especially a million dollar machine - without knowing exactly what the outcome will be?

@chrisfreet: You really don't get it right?

If there is a must for updating - for example a security reason - then in Gentoo you have to update to a new version.
Because:
a) you have to get a new portage to be able to emerge the updated package, and in there is new version (always)
b) you have to emerge to the new version
to get rid of the security fault.

Yes, you are right, that a good administrator doesn't emerge system because of one userland package.
Yes, you are right that a good admin doesn't ermege sync;emerge system every day just for the sake of it and
a good admin also has the right compile flags and use flags.

But you know: That there is no mechanism to update as you can in Debian - speak: staying at the same version of the package
to be updated and getting the security update, but also at the same time staying at the same version down to the toolchain and kernel -
this is not possible in Gentoo .
And for real servers this is the reason not to run Gentoo on them.


EDIT:

1) To all who wrote that the problems with Gentoo are user problems: The above mentioned problem is not user made! I as a user cannot do somethign against it.

2)With real servers I mean machines (and maybe clusters) which are in the range of 250k$ or more. Something like z9. Noone at the mailinglist of Linux for z9 is even thinking of installing Gentoo on such a machine ; and just getting a "test machine" for just emerging is more than laughable.

Make this "real stable" addon to Gentoo then we get the best distro: from the user controlled configuration at compile time over compiling for the own machine (arch) - and for some domains this is important - to very good documentation, everyt thing would be in Gentoo.

[Dralnu]

(Why would one update a stable machine - especially a million dollar machine - without knowing exactly what the outcome will be?

@chrisfreet: You really don't get it right?

If there is a must for updating - for example a security reason - then in Gentoo you have to update to a new version.
Because:
a) you have to get a new portage to be able to emerge the updated package, and in there is new version (always)
b) you have to emerge to the new version
to get rid of the security fault.

Yes, you are right, that a good administrator doesn't emerge system because of one userland package.
Yes, you are right that a good admin doesn't ermege sync;emerge system every day just for the sake of it and
a good admin also has the right compile flags and use flags.

But you know: That there is no mechanism to update as you can in Debian - speak: staying at the same version of the package
to be updated and getting the security update, but also at the same time staying at the same version down to the toolchain and kernel -
this is not possible in Gentoo .
And for real servers this is the reason not to run Gentoo on them.

Look up glsa-check.

[Dralnu]

In my point of view it is suffering if you have to actually sit there and watch warning messages as you update or else.If I can read after the fact what was screwed up and there is no way to recover qualifies as additional torture.

PORTAGE_ELOG, and common sense.

I just fail to see why you would have an advanced OS on a million dollar machine that isn`t able to put out a warning and stops until instructed otherwise on a potentionally critical screwup.

thats why there is emerge --oneshot, and why you can emerge one package at a time. If you are in charge of a million dollar machine, you generally are going to know the system you are working with

Hey you are supposed to be in charge.The way this goes you are in charge of either waste your life in front of the computer catching lines or hoping for the best.

See previous comments.

[Dralnu]

At this point I wouldn`t recommend it except to someone that needs to build a special system and stick with that or for playing around.

Nothing wrong with issues and things going wrong once in a while - that tends to happen anywhere BUT the way things are handled is ridiculous.

Putting out an installer that is at best pre-beta and clobbers partitions is a joke.There was something mentioned in the docs me thinks (never used the installer anyway) BUT where is the problem with putting up a message during the install that explains the situation?

Um, if you ask most anyone, they will tell you use the minimal install disk, or the way I prefer, Knoppix. Sometimes research beforehand is worth quite alot.

Same with expat and other things like it - what is the big deal with parsing the warning messages of the ebuilds that are going to be installed and put those up before things get merged preferably with a nice little question like: `You really want to do this?`

Then those who can handle their system without having their hand held would get annoyed and just run yes | emerge.

Would that be that fscking complicated to implement???

Since it isn't needed, it won't be done.

Ok - seems that there are enough ppl in this thread that think suffering is something that builds leetness or something.I happen to object

Only suffering I've dealt with was a few minor breaks in obscure packages, which I generally made a user error with. Same for many people.
.

If the packaging system is borked (and hell - it is; don`t even try to argue the point: portage supposedly does dependeny checking) and whoever is in charge or the distro (seems to be nobody - cool thing exoneration of responsibility by default/commitee) thinks it`s more important to do graphical installer that don`t work it`s a testimonial to ignorance.

Exactly why there are people working on alternatives for Portage. Until then, Portage works.

If - as I suspect - everybody just does what he feels like thats even worse - saw comment by a dev in thread where he went like `QA - what QA? There is none`

The devs do their work of their own free will. They deal with what interest them first, since they are NOT paid by anyone to do the work. If you want to fork over a paycheck to them and all that fun stuff, from your generall attitude I've got a feeling they would just tell you to shove it.

And no - again - right now I wouldn`t recommend gentoo but I ain`t going to open up a thread about it either.How could I??

This is either the smartest thing you've said, or one of the dumbest. It depends on your exact meaning.

[isnogood]

Um, if you ask most anyone, they will tell you use the minimal install disk, or the way I prefer, Knoppix. Sometimes research beforehand is worth quite alot.


Then those who can handle their system without having their hand held would get annoyed and just run yes | emerge.



Since it isn't needed, it won't be done.



Only suffering I've dealt with was a few minor breaks in obscure packages, which I generally made a user error with. Same for many people.
.


Exactly why there are people working on alternatives for Portage. Until then, Portage works.



The devs do their work of their own free will. They deal with what interest them first, since they are NOT paid by anyone to do the work. If you want to fork over a paycheck to them and all that fun stuff, from your generall attitude I've got a feeling they would just tell you to shove it.


This is either the smartest thing you've said, or one of the dumbest. It depends on your exact meaning.

No reason to get all worked up. Telling me I am a IT wuss that needs handholding ain't going to prove your 'points'.

Elog - yeah right.I could tell that someting doesn't work afterwards in the DOS era,too.

And BTW there are more than ond or two ppl that think democracy in SW development doesn't work.

What kind of logic is that? They are working on portage because it is broken but until they fixed it it works (as in is not broken)??

[Lloeki]

Elog - yeah right.I could tell that someting doesn't work afterwards in the DOS era,too.

yeah, so you are able to predict if something doesn't work beforehand? are you some kind of medium or what?
or maybe you suggest that it should Just Always Work(tm). hell, planes do crash, even with all the good will in the world.

But you know: That there is no mechanism to update as you can in Debian - speak: staying at the same version of the package
to be updated and getting the security update, but also at the same time staying at the same version down to the toolchain and kernel -

you seem to be completely missing the whole point. a package security flaw has to be fixed by upstream, not gentoo package maintainers, which will obviously release it as a new version, may it be a -r*. thus, any security fix implies a version upgrade. what debian does is roll up their own patch for the broken software, package that and say 'hey it's fixed'. but contrary to debian, gentoo does not have enough manpower to do so at the scale debian does (and contrary to what you think, it does so, hence the .patch files in many ebuild 'files/' subfolder). as with any opensource software, manpower is the key, you are welcome to take a look at a debian patch, and propose an updated ebuild.

What kind of logic is that? They are working on portage because it is broken but until they fixed it it works (as in is not broken)??

you don't even read what Dralnu has said. he said:

Exactly why there are people working on alternatives for Portage. Until then, Portage works.

If the packaging system is borked (and hell - it is; don`t even try to argue the point: portage supposedly does dependeny checking

please, name one dependency issue.
the way you spit out at portage makes me think you don't know what you're talking about, and that you wonder why:
- --depclean does not magically removes stuff in your system
- --unmerge does not remove dependencies recursively
- why things like build time dependencies are polluting your system
- why revdep-rebuild exists
- why the hell is there --oneshot and a world file
and so on. and based on that, you conclude that portage is slow, borked and does not resolve dependencies correctly.
whatever, you you just don't seem to know about how portage works, and don't care about why it works this way, and just because it doesn't work like you expect it to work (i.e like apt), you decide "it's borked".
whatever, you seem to be the kind of guy who won't listen to valid points, and hold up your stance whatever one may say, so yes, I won't argue further.

reading between the lines, it seems
- you are absolutely frustrated maintaining a gentoo system, may it be because you failed to understand its ins and outs, for sure vastly different than for a bin distro.
- you advocate for other distros (e.g debian), because hey, it's so much more stable.

whatever, if maintaining a gentoo system is totally unfun for you, then we certainly won't force you to do so, and if you feel comfortable with debian, then go on. that's why so many distros exist: because there is a need for each one.
so get on with it, and respectfully let us live with our flawlessly working gentoo boxes.

and FWIW, I have two gentoo laptops and one debian NSLU2 at home, and had the latter been something else than a 266MHz&32MB machine, I'd run gentoo on it.

[Gruelius]

Hi everyone,

Ive been a windows user for 12 years or so linux user for 3 weeks and a gentoo user for.. well, 5 hours now

I tried Ubuntu, and i found the interface really ugly, too sharp, and i found all these little errors that i was nitpicking with and that no one on ubuntuforums could help me fix. I figured the main issue was that i didnt really understand the OS well enough to fix it myself, i understand packages dependancies, filesystems, xorg.conf (edited far too many times ) but i understand linux is MUCH more complex than that.

Apart from enjoying using the console it was really just annoying me so i figured id go and learn an OS by jumping in the deep end I guess that is a better description than learning from suffering.

An analogy could be buying a kit car and putting it together is harder and will however the end result would be faster compared to buying a finished car, doing up the engine, removing all the unnesicary seats and things like that. you would also gain a much better knowledge of how the car works i guess

So far ive had alot of fun learning how to work fdisk, mke2fs, emerge and all the other instillation tools however ive still got a few things i havent figured out (how to scroll up the console to read lines passed -.- ). At the moment im just downloading gnome however im pretty sure ive done something wrong with my make.conf USE flags, so i will be having alot of fun annoying all of you tonight :p

Anyway can someone FAQ slap me or something so when i make future threads i dont annoy anyone? heh

Looking forward to becoming an active member here

Julius

[BlackEdder]

how to scroll up the console to read lines passed

shift+pageup

and I hope you know about tab completion

[Gruelius]

and I hope you know about tab completion

It seems as if i will be making many posts here then lol...

As long as the downloads i do are not wasted its all good, i have too much time to play , i understand i can copy the stage 3 + portege files to my spare disk however im not sure if the gnome files i download are going to be wasted. Being in australia i have to treat bandwith like gold (No decent unlimited bandwith plans!)

*edit* i know what it is i remembered it as "thingy i can use to stop me from typing as much"

[isnogood]

the way you spit out at portage makes me think you don't know what you're talking about, and that you wonder why:

There was no spitting involved.If you got wet in front of the computer then you can't be that good about running them either.

Besides I really don't have a inclination to discuss anything at all with ppl that feel the need to get all personal about technical problems.

[chrisfreet]

@chrisfreet: You really don't get it right?

If there is a must for updating - for example a security reason - then in Gentoo you have to update to a new version.
Because:
a) you have to get a new portage to be able to emerge the updated package, and in there is new version (always)
b) you have to emerge to the new version to get rid of the security fault.

First of all, I do get it, but thank you for giving me your opinion that I don't.

Second, this idea that you cannot emerge the same version package in portage is baloney.

Third, exactly why do you have to do anything within the context of the portage system? I've used a Debian system before, and, God help me, tried as much as possible NOT to use the package management system. I got news for you: it ain't perfect either. And that goes for rpms, too (especially).

[jonnevers]

@chrisfreet: You really don't get it right?

If there is a must for updating - for example a security reason - then in Gentoo you have to update to a new version.
Because:
a) you have to get a new portage to be able to emerge the updated package, and in there is new version (always)
b) you have to emerge to the new version to get rid of the security fault.

First of all, I do get it, but thank you for giving me your opinion that I don't.

Second, this idea that you cannot emerge the same version package in portage is baloney.

Third, exactly why do you have to do anything within the context of the portage system? I've used a Debian system before, and, God help me, tried as much as possible NOT to use the package management system. I got news for you: it ain't perfect either. And that goes for rpms, too (especially).

The real problem with this sort of discussion is I'd bet most of these people aren't in any way involved with an IT department or a software development house. so, this all just needs to be taken with a grain of salt b/c I haven't heard anyone arguing against Gentoo on a production server bring up some of the "real" issues around using Gentoo in such an environment.

The sum of the arguments so far amount to just this; "portage is too hard to maintain in a production environment"

the problem with this argument is that it varies from person to person. what is "hard" for one person is super-duper easy for someone else standing right next to them.

[chrisfreet]

The real problem with this sort of discussion is I'd bet most of these people aren't in any way involved with an IT department or a software development house. so, this all just needs to be taken with a grain of salt b/c I haven't heard anyone arguing against Gentoo on a production server bring up some of the "real" issues around using Gentoo in such an environment.

The sum of the arguments so far amount to just this; "portage is too hard to maintain in a production environment"

the problem with this argument is that it varies from person to person. what is "hard" for one person is super-duper easy for someone else standing right next to them.

I believe this is all very true.

I too believe the vast majority of people using Gentoo are non-production types. I also believe that the vast majority of all Linux kernel users are also non-production types. So this argument about Gentoo in the context of production doesn't really have much traction, although I understand the sentiment. I don't agree with the premise of the argument, though.

To the extreme, I believe the people who would rather complain than "fix" (i.e. aid in development to help perceived short-comings) are the type who would rather pay $$ to feel like they are going to be immune to any and all disaster. But, using Microsoft as an example, I don't believe the trade-off has been definitively proven to favor a Windows environment, and, speaking from experience, the attempt would generate only a feeling. (Boy this is opening a whole other can of worms.)

[Dralnu]

No reason to get all worked up. Telling me I am a IT wuss that needs handholding ain't going to prove your 'points'.

It annoys me when someone who obviously doesn't know what they are talking about starts spouting off about how bad something is.

Elog - yeah right.I could tell that someting doesn't work afterwards in the DOS era,too.

You might want to look up ELOG. I can tell you have no clue what I'm talking about

And BTW there are more than ond or two ppl that think democracy in SW development doesn't work.

Try to stay on topic. Its annoying when someone tries to change the subject to something else when they know theyre losing the argument.

What kind of logic is that? They are working on portage because it is broken but until they fixed it it works (as in is not broken)??

Like he said, read what I said.

[Lloeki]

The real problem with this sort of discussion is I'd bet most of these people aren't in any way involved with an IT department or a software development house.

In fact, I am (dev-side), and were we not having some über-powerful IT maintenance dept (block-)head, we would certainly not be running RHEL4 on prod' (they only recently moved from RHEL3, took time to make them do so) and could dev in php5, or preparing for php6, or even go python (dreams, dreams) and not be forced to cope with php 4.3.9 (they even refuse to upgrade to 4.4, even given the security flaws).
sometimes, choices do not belong to competent people, and you just have to cope with some political or administrative force, or even some extreme laziness.

so, I don't say we would be running gentoo, but hey, we don't even have the beginning of a choice here, so I reckon it's just the same in many places.

[harryy]

...
anyone who has used Gentoo and tried to do any kind of administration/development in Ubuntu can feel my pain! It is not easy. Nay, I say it's damned near impossible to do in Ubuntu, and I don't care what their fancy forum posters say
...

Installed Ubuntu on my girlfriends laptop yesterday and installed beryl for her today. I feel you're pain. You would belive that with all that documentation and communities Ubuntu have, that you could find at least one good guide when you have a problem.

[chrisfreet]

Installed Ubuntu on my girlfriends laptop yesterday and installed beryl for her today. I feel you're pain. You would belive that with all that documentation and communities Ubuntu have, that you could find at least one good guide when you have a problem.

If you want Beryl and all the fancy schmancy crap on Ubuntu, I suggest Ubuntu Ultimate:

http://ubuntusoftware.info/

Unfortunately, their site is down because they don't have the bandwidth to support its popularity, but when it's back up, I suggest you try it. It is simply the updated Ubuntu installation with gobs of pre-installed software, Beryl being one of the already-installed packages. This was how I bypassed some of the pain when I used Ubuntu. (I stress used.)

[baigsabeeh]

I agree with you one-hundred percent. I've run the gammot from Fedora Core to Ubuntu to Slackware and probably everything in between, and I have to say there is no distro like Gentoo. No distro can replicate the "ease of use" and the ease of maintenance that Gentoo comes with. It's as simple as that. I don't care that I have to compile almost everything; the fact is that I don't. I make binary backups of packages with quickpkg to get my system up and runnning quickly after a reinstall, and I can do so because my make.conf hardly ever changes from install to install. Tell that to the Ubuntu-philes who make Gentoo seem like such a nuisance.

[d2_racing]

You can also do a Stage 5 backup : http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-534039.html

[chrisfreet]

... I make binary backups of packages with quickpkg to get my system up and runnning quickly after a reinstall, and I can do so because my make.conf hardly ever changes from install to install. Tell that to the Ubuntu-philes who make Gentoo seem like such a nuisance.

You can also do a Stage 5 backup : http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-534039.html

This is exactly the kind of flexibility the people who whine and bitch about Gentoo don't know about. And the kind I didn't know about; I've been looking for something like this. Thanks to the both of you for the coincidental information.

[Dralnu]

... I make binary backups of packages with quickpkg to get my system up and runnning quickly after a reinstall, and I can do so because my make.conf hardly ever changes from install to install. Tell that to the Ubuntu-philes who make Gentoo seem like such a nuisance.

You can also do a Stage 5 backup : http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-534039.html

This is exactly the kind of flexibility the people who whine and bitch about Gentoo don't know about. And the kind I didn't know about; I've been looking for something like this. Thanks to the both of you for the coincidental information.

Not to mention there are dozens of other backup methods ranging from tar-based to cpio based to just a bzip dir.

[wolf31o2]

If there is a must for updating - for example a security reason - then in Gentoo you have to update to a new version.
Because:
a) you have to get a new portage to be able to emerge the updated package, and in there is new version (always)
b) you have to emerge to the new version
to get rid of the security fault.

For some packages, yes. Many times we simply install an upstream patch, rather than upgrade. Also, there's *nothing* stopping you from back-porting the patch yourself. You've got the package manager. You've got the ebuilds. You've got the source.

But you know: That there is no mechanism to update as you can in Debian - speak: staying at the same version of the package to be updated and getting the security update, but also at the same time staying at the same version down to the toolchain and kernel -
this is not possible in Gentoo .

Bullshit.

You are more than welcome to back-port patches and submit them. You have everything you need to do so. Debian has a policy of doing back-ports. Gentoo does not. If you would like Gentoo to do back-ports, then shut up and start helping! That is how everything is done in Gentoo. Incessant bitching doesn't help anyone.

As for GLEP19, it's dead and won't ever be revived. Instead, I am working on a different concept. To put it simply, new releases get their own CVS/rsync tree. If you install 2007.0, you're syncing against the 2007.0 tree. The current tree would be renamed to "current" and still be available for everyone who wants it. Patches will be back-ported into the release trees.

What we haven't determined yet is the amount of time we'll back-port patches, or how exactly we're going to accomplish all of the back-porting. Most likely, we'll be forming a new team specifically for the back-ports. So again, if you want to see the situation improve (and this is one situation where I truly agree with you, hence my "release tree" concept being born), then start contributing.

[dtjohnst]

Great post Chris. When people ask me what Distro they should use, I completely ignore their experience and tell them "Gentoo". I've done Slack and I toyed with Debian, and I played around with a few others. And Gentoo might take longer to install, but in the end you know HOW you installed it, WHY you did certain things, and what the point of it all was. It only seems hard because it's a lot of typing commands that are so foreign initially. But after you've installed it 3 or 4 times and created a half dozen kernels or so, you can sit back and laugh at how you were intimidated.