I'M DONE - 4 YEARS of Gentoo is ENOUGH.

Message

GODhack · Post by **GODhack** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 2:07 pm

You have M16?
We may start Gentoo revolution then.
We will create Gentoo without angry leavers posting long posts and without those bugs where someone talks about * and how update nuked his p0rn collection, but do not post emerge --info, xorg.conf and even no video player version.

wesw02 · Post by **wesw02** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:03 am

So for whatever reason (probably the massive amounts of caffine) I've just read the entire thread (all 23 pages). My first year in college I worked tech support for "Company X" and they had a saying they would use when customers were unreasonable and complaining about everything they could, that saying is "Company X is not for everyone". I think the same can be applied to the whiners in this thread, "Gentoo's not for everyone". If you want a distro to "hold your hand" while installing applications or configuring your fancy toolbar, your in the wrong place.

Bluespear · Post by **Bluespear** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 6:10 am

wesw02 wrote:So for whatever reason (probably the massive amounts of caffine) I've just read the entire thread (all 23 pages). My first year in college I worked tech support for "Company X" and they had a saying they would use when customers were unreasonable and complaining about everything they could, that saying is "Company X is not for everyone". I think the same can be applied to the whiners in this thread, "Gentoo's not for everyone". If you want a distro to "hold your hand" while installing applications or configuring your fancy toolbar, your in the wrong place.

200% agree

But has already been said I guess

Ormaaj · Post by **Ormaaj** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:30 pm

One thread of flame has generated 4 years worth of crying? Sensitive much?

This thread should have been responded to with a page or two of "fuck you. have fun with ubuntu. See you in a few weeks after you realize how much you miss us.", and left to die.

GWilliam · Post by **GWilliam** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 2:20 am

When I finally wised up and ditched Gentoo for a better distribution, I didn't natter on about it so.

Magnum_ · Post by **Magnum_** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:36 am

I'm off to "Jaunty" as well... at least for my workstation, the server remains gentoo for now.

I've been using gentoo for years now (but I'm not the most experienced user, far from...), and lately I'm noticing that I'm putting less and less effort in maintaining my systems. I used to put hours and hours in installing, reinstalling, finetuning, ... But these last few months I was not really motivated anymore to do so, I had other concerns and occupations. So, with Jaunty almost being released, I was thinking : maybe I should switch to a system that requires less effort to be updated. So I downloaded a Jaunty liveCD, and I was not really disappointed. It immediatly worked with my X4500HD, and also with my intel HDA (WITH SPDIF optical output, which took me weeks to notice that kernels < 2.6.28 simply don't have that feature for my particular card!).

But because my gentoo workstation was working, there was no reason to change yet. Maybe one reason: I couldn't really get my onboard X4500HD working as it should in gentoo, so I was forced to plug in an NVIDIA card which worked flawless. But that's no biggy. Until yesterday :

I updated my workstation yesterday for the first time in a few months probably, and had a whole bunch of issues with blocking packages and packages with errors. After finally solving those problems, I thought it would be a nice idea to revdep-rebuild, emerge --depclean --pretend, I checked the list of packages that would be removed, emerge --depclean. After all of that, my system practically died. My fault probably. I can reboot, I have the console, but X won't start. I couldn't compile _any_ packages anymore. RAGE

.
I then rebooted with the newest minimal gentoo liveCD. Started and configured mdadm. Mounted my partitions. Chrooted into my environment. Tried to re-emerge every package in the system. Same errors. Seems hopeless. I can't even bring up the courage to start looking where it went wrong anymore.

So I mounted my /home dir, and started a full backup to my fileserver yesterday night (over wireless connection, might take a few days

). When it's done, I'll probably install (x?)ubuntu, hoping that it will require much less maintenance, and an even bigger community to solve problems if they should occur.

Probably my leaving is much due to a lack of knowledge and patience. So be it then, gentoo might not be my cup of tea.

When I come to think of it, a lot seems to have changed since I joined the gentoo community. I always thought that gentoo was the bleeding edge distro, with the latest software packages available in the unstable tree, to install "at your own risk". Lately, I'm considering the stable tree as the "old" tree, with almost ancient packages (some released over a year ago). And the unstable tree as the slightly more recent but fairly stable tree.
Why are recent packages no longer "directly" available in the unstable tree? KDE 4.2, gnome 2.26, Xorg 1.6 are not directly available in the unstable portage tree, but they can be installed using an "overlay". I tried this once on a VM, but couldn't get it working. Why are these packages not directly in portage? Isn't that the purpose of the "unstable" tree?? Meanwhile, the canonical people already consider these packages stable (as they are all in Jaunty), and for gentoo they aren't even directly available, not in the stable, not in the unstable tree. I can't really see the logic in that. But I'm sure there's a logical explaination. It just doesnt seem really user-friendly, and not everyone can free up the time to follow up all of this.

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:41 am

Magnum_ wrote:Why are these packages not directly in portage? Isn't that the purpose of the "unstable" tree?? Meanwhile, the canonical people already consider these packages stable (as they are all in Jaunty), and for gentoo they aren't even directly available, not in the stable, not in the unstable tree. I can't really see the logic in that. But I'm sure there's a logical explaination. It just doesnt seem really user-friendly, and not everyone can free up the time to follow up all of this.

First, Gentoo need to compile packages, so making something stable can take some extra time.

Magnum_ wrote: Meanwhile, the canonical people already consider these packages stable (as they are all in Jaunty).

That's not a great reference you know.... Ubuntu = SID + 6 months and everything is stable out of the box for their concern, Xorg-Server 1.6 kernel 2.6.29,KDE 4.2.2,Xfce 4.6.1, Gnome 2..26 etc... etc... So that kind of reference is Zero, Rien, Nada, nothing IMOO.

MaximeG · Post by **MaximeG** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:54 am

Gentoo and Ubuntu/Debian use 2 different philosophies.
It's a matter of choice and freedom, so don't try to compare them please.

I personnally consider Gentoo as an opened and living distribution without fixed releases/versions as opposite to Ubuntu with its 6 month release cycle.
Which approach is the best ? Well, the real question is 'who cares?'.

Now, if you feel like quitting, then quit and that's it, nobody will complain.
Good luck with your other distributions and be well.

Regards,
Maxime

Tekeli Li · Post by **Tekeli Li** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 12:06 pm

Magnum_ wrote: I've been using gentoo for years now (but I'm not the most experienced user, far from...), and lately I'm noticing that I'm putting less and less effort in maintaining my systems. I used to put hours and hours in installing, reinstalling, finetuning, ...

I've noticed many such statements where people say they're putting lots of time and effort in maintaning a Gentoo system.

I'm really wondering what is that all about, unless they're constantly trying new things and experimenting with the distro, in which case i'm sure same amount of time should be required regardless of the distro.

When I install a new gentoo system, using latest stage3 tarballs and portage tree, I spend 10-15 minutes, if that much, configuring the stage and then leaving it to remerge world with my new settings (going about my business), which is on modern systems done in 6-10 hours (full desktop installation + open office). After that, I spend up to an hour configuring a working desktop to my liking, after which it is all set for production.

Updating/upgrading is, in vast majority of cases, just a matter of running emerge --sync and emerge -va(D)u world, in which case it works in the background, so the user can continue to work on the machine with no interference. Occasionally something requires an etc-update. Of course, I am NOT obliged to do critical updates to the toolchain or kernel, and those do not come that often anyways. And if a package breaks, I can always remerge an older version and wait until the breakage is resolved, if I'm not willing to resolve it myself.

So, I'm asking, what is it that takes hours and hours of installing, reinstalling and finetuning, for a normal production environment (desktop or server), except the initial installation which basically takes 15 minutes of tinkering.

snailhead · Post by **snailhead** » Sun May 10, 2009 3:49 am

Tekeli Li wrote: ...
So, I'm asking, what is it that takes hours and hours of installing, reinstalling and finetuning, for a normal production environment (desktop or server), except the initial installation which basically takes 15 minutes of tinkering.

I think an insight into how Gentoo is used may answer this question. Clearly, someone with a modern computer, wanting to be productive like "now" with a not too terribly steep learning curve best not choose Gentoo.

My first Gentoo install was on a relatively primitive machine because I felt that with enough optimizations, I could tweak enough performance to stave off the land fill, err recycle depot. That is a hobbyist approach to the distro which appeared to be encouraged. It took me a good weekend to implement all the optimizations suggested in the handbook and in the forums. And when things didn't work, it's booting off the LiveCD, mounting chrooting, recompiling the kernel, reading genkernel's man page, reading emerge's man page, et. al. Did I mention that on an old, slow machine this takes time?

There may be a fundamental gross conceptional error about how some of the Gentoo distro's are used. And that those same issues are handled efficiently albeit in a fascist manner by the Ubuntu distro maintainers. In Ubuntu land, if you change the stock complied kernel in any way, you are a leper. And as also mentioned here in this thread, the updates are done in blocks much more tightly defined than in Gentoo.

All of us that fill that hobbyist niche don't play on our machines every day. When it comes time to do look-see at patches, it's not for the faint of heart: emerge -avDuN world, revdep-rebuild, emerge -e world, did I forget a new kernel feature? Oh-oh, a "new" X version... good bye ATI drivers, how come VESA doesn't work anymore? System Admins using Gentoo in production are either Super Admins or very brave, or swap out the complete system to perform a significant upgrade.

Punchline: Run Gentoo to learn, Run Ubuntu if you're short on time. It's not the Install, it's the Optimizations that are Maintenance-phobic (patch-phobic? e.g. pp?)

Oh, I run a raid1 system that triple boots Gentoo, Ubunto, and XP. What's funny is that I used what I learned setting up Gentoo to get Raid to work with Ubuntu.

So the second punchline is: Gentoo is so flexible that to characterize any arbitrary installation as a "normal production environment" is truly a non sequitur, and fundamentally, is missing the point of the distro.

Tekeli Li · Post by **Tekeli Li** » Sun May 10, 2009 8:00 am

IMHO, the bottom line is much more simple. Gentoo is just a meta-distribution, a set of tools which enables the user to set up any system configuration he or she pleases. That alone defines Gentoo as not just "yet another distro but with super cool optimializations". It's a toolset.

So you can hit a nail with a hammer. Or you can use a (easy to use) toolkit that builds the hammer of just enough size and weight for your beloved nail, and it drives it perfectly into the wall, not a micron more or less (the process in which you learn alot about hammers, nails, driving the nails into walls, etc...).

So yes, if one "just" wants a distro to play games / do office work / play movies, Gentoo may be an overkill. "Just" hitting a nail sometimes requires "just" a hammer. So blaming Gentoo for being what it is is ludicrous. You don't want (and don't need) to build a hammer of just enough size and weight? Then don't.

Sprotte · Post by **Sprotte** » Mon May 11, 2009 3:11 am

The thing is, if you already know Gentoo, and if you aren't interested in the latest stuff, you have to spend very little time on updates and practically no time on optimisations.

I run stable with safe CFLAGS and update system about every six months or so (once I went a year without updates). I use Openbox and GTK, and just a minimal setup really.

Updating stuff like Openbox, Gimp, or GTK I see as totally optional. System is what matters.

Security updates, well, I have no really sensitive stuff on my machine, all my dev work is in an SVN at assembla.com, or backupped, and I run a homemade router with a totally rigid firewall. My firefox is auto-updated via Mozilla's online update.

The programs I use most are vim, mutt, some Quake clients (not online), firefox (updated), irssi, and some obscure stone-age Windows programs (texture editor, level editor, wav editor). How vulnerable are those. I use different passwords on my router and desktop. I download no shit from the internet. I don't IM or play online.

I believe my risk is rather low, and my update schedule is very relaxed.

It's not true that you have to "always compile stuff". You have the option to do so, yeah, but only if you're obsessive-compulsive.

I should probably do GLSA updates, but I forget how to do them and can't really be arsed. I am not the target group for crackers or trojans.

regeya · Post by **regeya** » Wed May 13, 2009 4:49 am

Magnum_ wrote:I'm off to "Jaunty" as well... at least for my workstation, the server remains gentoo for now.

Oddly enough, I'm building a Gentoo system in a chroot on a Jaunty machine.

All in all, Ubuntu is a high-quality system. There are just...you know...things which will get to you after a while, like having the way they handle X config changing drastically on every release, or having a card, say a sound card, which has been supported for years, then having to build a kernel to support it because it's not supported despite being supported in the past, or having packages which are insanely popular that never manage to make it out of Universe or Multiverse where they just take packages from Debian Unstable (hasn't even made it into Sid yet, at that point--yes, there is an unstable beyond Sid!) and make sure they build, and no support of course because only packages in "main" are supported.

I had an epiphany where I realized I was building custom kernels, building apps and deps by hand (up until Jaunty, DVD Styler wasn't available, for one) and fighting with NetworkManager, grabbing up-to-date software from a half-dozen PPAs (with the associated breakages) to the point where I just realized that, while I wasn't putting in as much work as I did back when I dropped Gentoo in '05 (first daughter was born in '05, didn't want the hassle anymore, yadda yadda) and right now I'm STILL trying to track down I was still maintaining a system at least somewhat by hand, and because of that, I was having to do fresh installs on each new release, which should never be necessary on a Debian-derived release.

So, although I'll probably kick myself later, I'm going to give Gentoo a shot again. I'm already kicking myself because of one thing you mentioned--KDE 4.2.

I will point out that the Ubuntu devs almost never release the right Kubuntu packages and there's almost always something major broken on the Kubuntu KDE packages.

It is sort of nice not ever needing to enter a root password to get admin access, though.

Yamakuzure · Post by **Yamakuzure** » Thu May 14, 2009 10:26 am

Hrmpf. Since I once had to compile vmware-modules on a debian Lenny machine, I know how much luxury I have with gentoo. Just go and try to figure out what you all need to get the right kernel-headers, toolchain, compiler, whatever with apt-cache and apt-get. At least you are forced to learn how to use "grep" *very* quickly...

...and even with alot of "unstable" packages in my portage.keywords, I have no problems, and updates/upgrades are fast and flawless... No need to spend more time than an hour or two per month(!!) on maintenance for two desktops and one laptop.

noisebleed · Post by **noisebleed** » Thu May 14, 2009 10:33 am

Yamakuzure wrote:Hrmpf. Since I once had to compile vmware-modules on a debian Lenny machine, I know how much luxury I have with gentoo. Just go and try to figure out what you all need to get the right kernel-headers, toolchain, compiler, whatever with apt-cache and apt-get.

You're so right...

twstd3bc · Post by **twstd3bc** » Fri Jun 05, 2009 6:59 pm

noisebleed wrote:
Yamakuzure wrote:Hrmpf. Since I once had to compile vmware-modules on a debian Lenny machine, I know how much luxury I have with gentoo. Just go and try to figure out what you all need to get the right kernel-headers, toolchain, compiler, whatever with apt-cache and apt-get.
You're so right... :)

To be fair, though, there are some secrets Gentoo users take for granted. Nevertheless, you only have to install build-essential et al on Debian (or Ubuntu) just once, and if you like Debian stable, you really don't have to do much afterwards. With lenny, it seems now a relatively recent Debian release will have lots of advantages over an up-to-date Gentoo install. I think people should consider trying Debian stable on a test server, just to get a feel for it. The automatic customization of services is pretty good. And for linode users like myself who used to run Gentoo there, I realize now that since it's a shared resource (and linode has been good to us so far) I'm a better citizen for using Debian.

Shovas · Post by **Shovas** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 1:11 pm

Ormaaj wrote:One thread of flame has generated 4 years worth of crying? Sensitive much?

This thread should have been responded to with a page or two of "fuck you. have fun with ubuntu. See you in a few weeks after you realize how much you miss us.", and left to die.

This is an absolute testament to the problems of gentoo.

Why am I still here? Like I said it takes a lot of effort to move OS' so I'm still maintaining gentoo and right now I'm looking a page full of kde blockers so I was searching the forums yet again on how to fix this or why it's even a problem.

ilovebeer · Post by **ilovebeer** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 1:21 pm

GWilliam wrote:When I finally wised up and ditched Gentoo for a better distribution, I didn't natter on about it so.

yet your still in the gentoo forums!

10wattmindtrip · Post by **10wattmindtrip** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 11:30 pm

I barely say anything on here but I suppose I'll just throw my 2 cents out there.

Gentoo may have some issues. So what? Instead of leaving the community why not try and help out? Even little things help.
I personally haven't had too many issues with my system. I've been using Gentoo since around 2002, maybe even earlier. Sure, compiling sometimes goes for a dump, but there are usually solutions to the problems. I've read a lot of threads on here for help and almost all of them have useful information that leads to a solution(s).

While I agree that Arch Linux is a very nice system, I don't think moving my distro of choice over is a wise thing for the Gentoo community. Negative things can be fixed. There is a vast amount of work that goes into maintaining a OS such as Gentoo. I certainly won't expect things to be a certain way immediately. Rolling distro's such as Gentoo just make more sense to me.

I don't know.. just a few thoughts.

-10

altrhombus · Post by **altrhombus** » Thu Jun 11, 2009 5:16 am

Key word being community..

*group hug everyone*

Gentoo's philosophy of choice is a huge reason I'm still an active user (and I was one of those sadist users who picked up Gentoo as my first serious Linux OS), but the biggest reason is the community. I saw a forum sig once that said something like 'my post count may be low, but that's because I research for my problem before asking.' That definitely applies here.

To those who think Gentoo is out to get them and they're going to pack their bags:
If a fellow member has a problem and you know how to fix it, respond with your thoughts!
If a fellow member has a problem and you have an idea about it, respond anyway! There have been so many occasions where just a single line in a post can trigger a thought that leads to a fix.
If a fellow member has a problem and you're clueless, keep tabs on it. Either you'll have useful comment later, or you'll learn something new.
If you have a problem, post it! Explain it clearly, and describe your troubleshooting steps. Verbose, verbose, verbose.

I think the forums need a special place for the ranting posts. That way, the unique "publicly-announce-i'm-leaving-gentoo-but-i'll-still-discuss-why-amongst-fellow-haters" groupies can hang out over there

stmiller · Post by **stmiller** » Sat Jun 27, 2009 2:32 pm

noisebleed wrote:
Yamakuzure wrote:Hrmpf. Since I once had to compile vmware-modules on a debian Lenny machine, I know how much luxury I have with gentoo. Just go and try to figure out what you all need to get the right kernel-headers, toolchain, compiler, whatever with apt-cache and apt-get.
You're so right...

On debian/ubuntu you just have to do this:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install build-essential

slowride · Post by **slowride** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 4:17 pm

To be fair, though, there are some secrets Gentoo users take for granted. Nevertheless, you only have to install build-essential et al on Debian (or Ubuntu) just once, and if you like Debian stable, you really don't have to do much afterwards.

This does work for Vanilla [desktop] hardware with everything {"Stable"}.... I've been piddling with Linux since SUSE-5 on a 486 . Been the mandriva route, love Debian, wont run the [*]untu's, but thankful for all the users and solutions that could easily be translated back to Sidux or Kanotix....

Then came "Off the wall laptop" Now I'm stuck in m$ coz somebody INTENTIONALLY broke NDIS-wrapper which is a BETTER DRIVER (more flexible and CAPABLE) than the dumb thing that loads the castrated drivers.

Alot of effort, much learned, still no wireless

and "up the pipe" (Since none of the solutions worked for me, I checked to see what is "upstream"?) it was the GeekY equivalent of "Jerry Springer" as to WHY things had to change for "licensing" and STILL no solution... It eventually dawned on me that I was ALLOWED to un-sabotage the NDIS-wrapper, all I had to do was build kernel from scratch -- hozing the whole install everytime I tried I just gave up... ITS A "MANAGED DISTRO" and for MYSELF it will no longer work.

It's a matter of principle. Hardware has De-Volved, and I require an dist that CAN PREVENT my hardware from running around Buck Nekkid Showing it's Private DNA parts....

So I end up Gen2, for things like Wistron bios driving buttons that can't work without their litte brains being loaded like the old Win-Modem.... Gentoo people were getting "Off the Wall" to RUN (regardless of what *buntu people said) ...

My view is all *nix's are the RESULT of devoted efforts, good community's -- All of our efforts are good, coz every1s results are available for all... underneath all the rpm's and debs there is ALWAYS a .tar or .gz .pl .c and so on. Every1 running the same dist reduce us to all eating our institutional food with plastic "Spork" .....

I have NEVER understood the reason for "Version A, Version B" of a program, OS, etc --- can't folks see the FILE DATE? Build Number? But, I'm old and wierd and really grateful I found a dist that would load on a Mac-Saurus now being resurrected

THANKS U

01allein · Post by **01allein** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 6:15 pm

Well see you back, theres nothing else but GNU/Linux Gentoo...

Most people like ~(unstable), and if you dont know how to handle this, then you get sick...

See you soon

MarcusXP · Post by **MarcusXP** » Mon Aug 03, 2009 3:42 am

randy_waterhouse wrote:I quit.

I've been an enthusiastic supporter of Gentoo since I found it. I've been on Gentoo for at least 4 years, on 4 or 5 different boxen. I've converted 3-4 other users from both Windows & Linux.

I'm f***ing done. I quit. I've had it.
............................
Ubuntu, here I come.

So did you wipe out your Gentoo boxes or not yet? How's Ubuntu?

shickapooka800 · Post by **shickapooka800** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 6:32 pm

holy shit people, is this thread still alive? everyone comes back to gentoo if they liked it at one point.
look at me, i am back in thiscrap after much debian faggotry. although I am still banned from OTW, so I am spamming gentoo chat.

I'M DONE - 4 YEARS of Gentoo is ENOUGH.

How alive/dead is Gentoo for you? (Only vote, if you use Gentoo for at least one year.)

It's always WORK, but results?

Re: I'M DONE - 4 YEARS of Gentoo is ENOUGH.