New user: How stable is Gentoo?

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WWWW · Post by **WWWW** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 9:55 am

I can't say anything about about gnome3 since I don't use it and it's a monster on its own and has nothing to do with the stability of the OS.

As for Gentoo linux, I have to say that over the years has become rock solid even while doing experimental and non-standard installs.

If you are starting with Gentoo it's important to understand that it's very different than any other OS out there. A great system to learn lot's of stuff.

Gentoo is not for everyone but by using it it will give you an overview of the variety of tools and packages out there to do things. After this you will adapt Gentoo to your needs and wants.

Patience is important in order to absorb many concepts of Gentoo and time to achieve results which are two things needed to learn something.

People have mentioned here USE flags, this is something unique to Gentoo but this is one detail of Gentoo. Another interesting place is make.conf. Yet another one that I often find a torture is make menuconfig. Etc... you'll have to deal with many config places something that's not an issue on binary distros as everything is pre-digested for you.

Recently, as like couple years, I've been surprised how stable is ~amd64 compared to early days even at the current trend of fast pace versioning.

So I think you at a better moment now with Gentoo than early days with crazy stage 1, etc...

I recomend you to hang out in gentoo IRC channels, the forums and bugzilla for support. Or call Gentoo customers services, I forgot the phone number though.

There's nothing unstable about Gentoo, in fact binary distros, debian, suse, arch, butuntu sometimes make it harder for you to do things the way you want it as they rely heavily on automation, auto-starts, and services restarts the moment they are killed that many times get in the way.

arrivederci.

ct85711 · Post by **ct85711** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 12:23 pm

I will give one warning, that is most frequently an issue that keeps coming up. Gentoo is NOT designed to be forgotten about after you install it, you need to update regularly. Failure to do so will run a very high chance of issues. I recommend updating about weekly to every other week, monthly at the very least. The longer of amount of time between updates, more packages needs updated increasing the chance for more issues.

krinn · Post by **krinn** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 12:57 pm

Most new users don't know what they are doing, because they are learning.
And any system that is handle this way can only be unstable.
So, i think it is that: "New user: how stable is gentoo" -> totally unstable because you're new.

hasufell · Post by **hasufell** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 2:00 pm

DanielCarrera wrote:I'm not sure if I chose the right forum for this question. This is an opinion question: How stable is Gentoo as a desktop OS?

If you compare it with archlinux, then way more stable. If you compare it with distributions that are widely used in server environments, then not so much. If you want to run gentoo on servers, then you need to take additional precautions and do some more work. But since you only care about desktop, go for it.

I'd advise to start with the paludis package manager though instead of portage. It'll soon be part of the installation handbook.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 2:56 pm

hasufell,

My advice to a newcomer is that thare is a lot to learn, so stick with defaults as far as you can while you get started.
There is time enough to explore optional things later, including other package managers.

To begin with, I would advise against Gnome, to avoid the switch to systemd too.

Learn to swim in the shallows. Once you learn you only swim in the top 0.5m of the water and get your confidence, swim where you like.

hasufell · Post by **hasufell** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 3:04 pm

NeddySeagoon wrote:My advice to a newcomer is that thare is a lot to learn, so stick with defaults as far as you can while you get started.
There is time enough to explore optional things later, including other package managers.

If the defaults take more time and effort to use and maintain, because you have to work around a lot of bugs, then I'd say it makes sense to recommend documented and supported alternatives.

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 3:32 pm

ct85711 wrote:I will give one warning, that is most frequently an issue that keeps coming up. Gentoo is NOT designed to be forgotten about after you install it, you need to update regularly.

I think any distribution or software needs to fall under this issue, and Gentoo isn't any worse or better.

However one thing that is definitely true is that if you don't stay up to date, the chances of "catching up" to the latest of the rolling releases becomes exponentially harder. Not to say it's impossible, but it may take guru status to fix the problems that arise. Reinstalling may be easier, but an installation that old, for other distributions, you may end up doing just that anyway.

Not to mention you'll have out of date and possibly security exploitable software installed. Not worth it.

DanielC · Post by **DanielC** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:28 pm

eccerr0r wrote:I have a few Gentoo boxes with Gnome3 installed, and the Gentoo devs have been doing a good job keeping it working. The default setup works well, though there are a few things to keep in mind when installing it like making sure your locales are set correctly. Most of the problems with Gnome3 and systemd is due to the user not wanting to use systemd, not due to Gentoo itself.

Ok. I have no problem with systemd. I might try it later then.

DanielC · Post by **DanielC** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:31 pm

mi_unixbird wrote: I like the chair analogy myself:

- Ubuntu: A deluxe office chair with every bell and whistle you could possibly need or not need, hard to move around because of this though

- Debian: A nice, practical rock solid comfy office chair, doesn't break a lot.

- Arch: A solid Ikea Chair, you have to put it together yourself but it comes with instructions and you can omit the parts you don't want easily

- Gentoo: A set of power tools with detailed instructions on how to operate them, go build a chair with it.

- LFS: A book on carpentry

- Windows: A bad chair you're tied to in an hostage situation, trying your hardest to Macgyver out of it.

davidm · Post by **davidm** » Wed Sep 09, 2015 1:44 am

krinn wrote:Most new users don't know what they are doing, because they are learning.
And any system that is handle this way can only be unstable.
So, i think it is that: "New user: how stable is gentoo" -> totally unstable because you're new.

This is true. I remember having problems early on. I didn't know anything about how to mask program versions or how to resolve blockers. So whenever I hit blockers to me it meant that Gentoo was broken and I was greatly annoyed at "not being able to upgrade". Of course as I learned more these things became far less of a problem and I became able to resolve them myself with common workarounds and procedures.

So for the best stability with Gentoo the user should endeavour to read all they can and try to pick up experience ASAP. With this Gentoo probably becomes the most stable OS because it gives you all sorts of power. You can make it what you want it to be.

alinefr · Post by **alinefr** » Wed Sep 09, 2015 2:08 am

I've started using Gentoo in 2007 or 2008. As a FreeBSD fan, Gentoo was the closest choice in the Linux world. In that time one of the things that bothered me about Gentoo was the USE flags. Because the default options was never OK. I had to spend a lot of time tweaking every kind of USE flag... while in FreeBSD you could deal in a more easy way in a single file (/etc/make.conf) and not hassle at all.

Recently, after some time outside of the Gentoo world, I decided to give Gentoo another chance. And I'm very impressed! I can clearly see how much the distro improved, it sound a lot more stable than ever. The USE flags, where in the past it was a lot more painful, now it seems like "it just works!". Most of my tweaks are about things that I really don't want or that I really want to tweak! It still takes some time to build from scratch in the first time. I had some issues, but most of then is hardware related, which affects most of the distros. But as Gentoo is source based it is a lot easier to fix than it would be in a binary distro. (Patches for ex, is fantastic to be able to apply then by just dropping the diffs in /etc/portage/patches).

So, it may take some effort to build your system. My Gentoo installations, from scratch can takes weeks, but that also because I run awesome wm, but Gnome should work out of the box, with minimal tweaks at all. Just keep yourself outside ~amd64 as much as you can and you should have a rock solid stable Linux system.

ct85711 · Post by **ct85711** » Wed Sep 09, 2015 3:52 am

I remembered when I first started using Gentoo, in that it easily took me 2-3 days just to get my base system setup. Now days, the general installation has significantly improved to bypass some of the common pitfalls. For me, I chose to use ~amd64 straight off from the get go, and I admit I ran into issues. The one thing that is available, is numerous postings of similar problems in the forums. For example, some of the most common issue you will see in over half the issues, is a blocked package or a slot conflict. Most times you can easily solve your issue yourself by looking at similar postings and doing something similar on actions (I know, that means you have to do some work...)

WWWW · Post by **WWWW** » Fri Sep 11, 2015 10:37 am

Gentoo is not unstable, the question is not properly formulated to begin with.

Here's a list of things that will help you know better the inner workings of Gentoo.

To have the system working properly there are a series of concepts and utilities that you will need to get aquiented with.

*GENTOO IS A SOURCE BASED DISTRO, NOT BINARY*

* Gentoo handbook.

* Associated and extra documentation.

https://www.gentoo.org/support/documentation/

An important skill is to be able to search the right guide for a specific step. An example are the GPU adapters:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Category:Graphics_Adapters

But the GPU is not the only place where there's specialized documentation, you will gain much from reading on all your hardware related docus.

* GCC and make.conf

* GCC toolchain, get to know what is it.

* CFLAGS in make.conf. ( -march=native is ok but there are some other interesting ones). This deals with CPU's instructions capabilities.

* make menuconfig: the kernel configuration interface. Which leads to the following point.

* KNOW YOUR HARDWARE. Very important for configuring the kernel and understand other things. For this there a few helpful tools:

* lspci, lsusb, dmesg commands. Specifically helpfuls is: lspci -k. This leads to the following point.

* Get to know and use the right linux and gentoo utilities/tools: emerge, eix (very important and powerful package that's not default), euse, ls, cd.

* Sub section, learn linux commands.

* Again more documentation, this time for each tool/utility with man pages. I don't know how proficient you are with linux, but Gentoo relies exclusively in command line.

* Understand the difference Gentoo's emerge system and emerge world.

* Learn ALL associated files and directories associated with portage.

* GENTOO IS BIG ON SOFTWARE OPTIMIZATION. An example is eix. This one can be installed with default USE flags but then it has more USE flags options associated with optimization sometimes they are tricky and need special attention to what they do.

* What's optimization? This is tightly related to GCC and you CPU instructions set. Broadly means that adapts the binary to your CPU instructions. Meaning that a binary/program might run better an a i7 than a on an Atom. By optimization means that GCC has make the program to run only on i7 cpu and will not run on an Atom. Normaly the solution to run accross cpu types and generations is for GCC to make a binary with generic CFLAG. Most if not all the distros ship with such an option.

* GENTOO IS BIG ON OPTIONS: shells options, window managers options, boot options. So you will have always to think which one pleases the most to use. A few typical ones:

screen / tmux
vim / emacs
bash / zsh
filesystems (important file here to know /etc/fstab)

And as someone stated above start with:

openrc
eudev

Start with Windows Managers then jump to a full blown DE. To be hones I see no reason to use a bloated DE. DE is not really a solution but an effort to copy m$$ and o$$x bloats.

Finally just hang out in irc #gentoo and the forums.

enjoy the journey, cheers!

WWWW · Post by **WWWW** » Fri Sep 11, 2015 10:40 am

alinefr wrote:So, it may take some effort to build your system. My Gentoo installations, from scratch can takes weeks, but that also because I run awesome wm, but Gnome should work out of the box, with minimal tweaks at all. Just keep yourself outside ~amd64 as much as you can and you should have a rock solid stable Linux system.

The fastest fully usable WM to install right after rebooting is fluxbox. I've never made the step further to install a DE bloat.

DanielC · Post by **DanielC** » Fri Sep 11, 2015 2:32 pm

WWWW wrote: To have the system working properly there are a series of concepts and utilities that you will need to get aquiented with.

Thanks. That is a handy list of utilities/concepts. I have it bookmarked for future reference. A little about me: I have been using Linux since 1998, starting with Slackware, but in the last decade I have grown used to Ubuntu and I feel that I am forgetting how things work under the hood. I am learning Gentoo now to help me re-learn how things work. So far my experience with Gentoo has been very positive. The documentation is really excellent, and I feel that I'm learning or re-learning a lot.

* Again more documentation, this time for each tool/utility with man pages. I don't know how proficient you are with linux, but Gentoo relies exclusively in command line.

I consider myself reasonably proficient. I have done admin duties in the past (mostly Apache, MySQL, PHP) but it is not something I like to do. On my own desktop, I perform all admin tasks on a virtual console, and I dislike GUIs.

* GENTOO IS BIG ON OPTIONS: shells options, window managers options, boot options. So you will have always to think which one pleases the most to use. A few typical ones:

screen / tmux
vim / emacs
bash / zsh
filesystems (important file here to know /etc/fstab)

My picks: screen, zsh, ext4 and XFS (but keeping an eye on btrfs). I don't like vim or emacs. I haven't found any console editor that I truly like.

Start with Windows Managers then jump to a full blown DE. To be hones I see no reason to use a bloated DE. DE is not really a solution but an effort to copy m$$ and o$$x bloats.

I think I'll have to disappoint you. I actually like Gnome Shell. I have used a few window managers in the past (fvwm2, fvwm95, afterstep) and DEs. Besides Gnome Shell, I kind of like xfce.

Finally just hang out in irc #gentoo and the forums.

enjoy the journey, cheers!

Thank you for the warm welcome.

Wallsandfences · Post by **Wallsandfences** » Sun Sep 20, 2015 12:01 pm

For me, it's a trade between stability and customizing everything to my workflow.

While other distros might be more stable (but what apart from debian and its ecosystem would that be?) the picture changes when you try to tweak your programs and (gnome) desktop to your needs. This tweaking is inherently supported in gentoo, but not in ubuntu and the likes.

And it's lean in comparison too...

Rüdiger

Wallsandfences · Post by **Wallsandfences** » Sun Sep 20, 2015 7:22 pm

On a second thought, it's also a trade between saving time due to customized workflow against having to hassle once a week with a potentially 'emerge update' going bork...

Roman_Gruber · Post by **Roman_Gruber** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 9:11 am

On a second thought, gentoo used to be rock stable on ~amd64.

REcently I encountered many issues regarding ebuilds / missing dependencies / unconfirmable bugs.

nvidia-drivers are a mess regarding ebuilds and newest kernel branch. Unconfirmed, not fixed ebuilds. Portage complaining about errors which do not exists, because of poor coding style, untesting push to offical portage

ncurses crashed two of my boxes. sadly ncurses is basically needed for bash, which is needed to fix a box. weird behaviour.
considering i run in this issue on two of my boxes on different update shedule.
one box is updated regularly, the other every 3-6 weeks. the second box should have not been affected by this. means the developers did not test very well this bug / behaviour or did not knew what they did. Also first only slot 0 was pulled in than both slots and than only one slot. the ebuild also did not build on any of my boxes with different gccs and similar penyrn cpus and different use-flags settings. so any claims that it is make.conf fault or gcc fault is rather irrelevant.

circular dependencies of packages => especially when you try to emerge k3b. => kdelibs fails because of kate, and other junk... (Talking about stable 4 branch, kde 4 type, not kde 5)

Bugs stay unconfirmed for ages on gentoo bugzilla. really not worht bothering and as this also reflects why we have so many issues recenlty because old stuff is hardly fixed. it just stays unconfirmed for anything.

I will change soon my hardware and therefore also drives. If i really keep on gentoo, i doubt.
Too much hassle, unmaintained packages. too much duct tape recently. the developers used to reply to bugs on gentoo bugzilla in the past or at least gave a nastry response, nothing recently...

I also expect when i emerge kde4 on gcc 4.9.3 or gcc 5.2 that it builds. it does not even built on gcc 4.7 slot...

i doubt calculate or any other gentoo distro can be worser as recenlty bugs i encountered.

Dr.Willy · Post by **Dr.Willy** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 11:34 am

tw04l124 wrote:ncurses crashed two of my boxes. sadly ncurses is basically needed for bash, which is needed to fix a box. weird behaviour.

To be fair I ran into the same issue on my arch-linux box…

ct85711 · Post by **ct85711** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 2:34 pm

I do agree, I've been noticing that Gentoo's bugzilla has been going down hill lately. The last few times, I submitted a bug report, one took over 6-8 months before anything happen to fix a run-time error, and I even attached a patch to fix it (which was already approved by upstream). It is also like, I've try to submit a bug report for new version bumps for packages in the tree with an updated ebuild attached, and even those take way too long to go through the chain (I have one of those open, which I am soon going to close it myself because of inactivity). I'm not even going to get into how some of the devs (at least one for sure) are responding to bug reports for nothing.

While I won't leave Gentoo (because it is one of few that straight out supports openrc), I am beginning to think again about helping out by submitting patches and updated ebuilds.

Roman_Gruber · Post by **Roman_Gruber** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 9:45 pm

Recently i found lint in /usr/include/boost_xxx_xxx which was lint from obsolete sloting of boost.

The workaround was rm -r /usr/include/boost_xxx_xxx => Because only /usr/include/boost is allowed !

hasufell gave me the right answer after I asked in bugs.gentoo.org regarding an ebuild where i saw boost linked to a non existing version which was lint for the package boost.

Happened 2 days ago. So my claim that i find every 2 week something which is a showstopper is sadly true.
only running ~amd64. and that happened long time before i switched to newest glibc + gcc

revdep rebuild did also not complain but i was unable to build mkvtoolnix. The only solution which i found after weeks, today, was to rebuild wxwidgets, and some other libaries, and after that mkvtoolnix built finally.

My box is really screwed up recently, for the branch ~amd64.

Post by **asturm** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 9:49 pm

tw04l124 wrote:My box is really screwed up recently, for the branch ~amd64.

If you don't want to run into such problems, use amd64.

You are supposed to run into problems with ~amd64, report and/or fix them, so that it is in shape when it is amd64 keyworded. In fact, it is entirely possible that your ~amd64 box will not start after a random update - slim chance, but it's there - and you are supposed to be able to cope with it. You should, because you managed to install Gentoo in the first place.

tw04l124 wrote:circular dependencies of packages => especially when you try to emerge k3b. => kdelibs fails because of kate, and other junk... (Talking about stable 4 branch, kde 4 type, not kde 5)

Highly unlikely. Especially since I find no mention of it in bugs.gentoo.org, I tend to think the errors you describe do not exist - at least not in the way you describe them.

ct85711 · Post by **ct85711** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 10:34 pm

tw04, from what you are talking about sound like it can very well happen on the stable branch too. The reason that it can happen on stable branch too, is specifically because slotting is on stable branch too. The one main reason why it hasn't happened on stable yet, is mostly because of how infrequent the slot changes. Once more versions/slots show up, the same issue will pop up once again.

The same on circular dependencies, it happens on stable branch too; especially when dealing with gnome/kde with everything depending on each other so much.

Post by **asturm** » Wed Sep 30, 2015 10:53 pm

ct85711 wrote:The same on circular dependencies

Do you say 'circular dependency' when you really mean a block? Because a circular dependency is something I haven't seen in a very, very, very long time. Not as a stable kde4 user, not while using the overlay. I know you are one of those advertising ~arch as 'more stable' than arch - a statement I utterly disagree with and I regard as harmful especially to new users.

ct85711 wrote:The one main reason why it hasn't happened on stable yet, is mostly because of how infrequent the slot changes.

No, the main reason being that ~arch users pave the way for arch.

khumba · Post by **khumba** » Thu Oct 01, 2015 3:23 am

genstorm wrote:Because a circular dependency is something I haven't seen in a very, very, very long time.

Then there is (was?) one when you try to set USE="cups emacs java" (IIRC) all at once doing a new desktop install. Also you can't set USE="doc hscolour" on all Haskell packages initially. The cycles are definitely around. Portage helps you solve them well enough.

Anyway, Gentoo is far too stable these days. I need to get me some ~arch or whatever Gentoo it is that Buffoon's running

.

New user: How stable is Gentoo?

rock solid

Re: New user: How stable is Gentoo?