Gentoo on amd E1-6010

[m_p_w]

I am debian user, and debian works very well on amd E1-6010 (10/10).
However, I am installing gentoo on my amd E1-6010 and "emerge" takes forever.
For example installing desktop environment (MATE) took me more than 12 hours.
am I doing something wrong? Is installing gentoo on better CPU faster?
By my understanding "emerge" compiles applications from the source, but are even small applications such as "scilab" going to take hours to install on the system? (or just the desktop environment takes that long?)

[fedeliallalinea]

There are packages that take a logn time to compile (also in a better cpu) like libreoffice, chromium, firefox, qtwebengine,...
In my i7-6700HQ_CPU_@_2.60

Code: Select all

     Wed Jul  4 11:29:22 2018 >>> dev-qt/qtwebengine-5.11.1
       merge time: 1 hour, 45 minutes and 7 seconds.
     Wed Jul 25 21:07:20 2018 >>> www-client/firefox-kde-opensuse-61.0.1-r1
       merge time: 32 minutes and 7 seconds.
     Fri Apr 27 21:20:36 2018 >>> app-office/libreoffice-6.0.3.2
       merge time: 1 hour, 10 minutes and 57 seconds.

For some of those packages there is a binary version in portage.

Is installing gentoo on better CPU faster?

Yes gentoo is source based than a better cpu means less compilation time

By my understanding "emerge" compiles applications from the source, but are even small applications such as "scilab" going to take hours to install on the system? (or just the desktop environment takes that long?)

emerge compile the package you want and his dependencies, and therefore the compilation time varies depending on how many and which dependencies it needs.
For example when you have installed mate emerge has installed also xorg and all others dependencies.

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

By my understanding "emerge" compiles applications from the source

This is somewhat a generalization that isn't always true, since there are binary packages available for some software as well

but are even small applications such as "scilab" going to take hours to install on the system?

Small packages take anywhere from 5-10 seconds to compile only...basically just long enough for portage to load the .ebuild file, and then compile the source code according to what's in it. So tiny applications should not really be a concern in terms of compile time. But it is the larger applications that can become a resource hog at times. That is what binary packages can be used for. Also you should consider looking into the many overlays which are not part of the gentoo main repository for some of those binary packages, as I am not completely sure but I believe you will find some there as well.

(or just the desktop environment takes that long?)

The good news here I think which i what your post seems to be about (to me) is that for the most part, even though there are many on this forum that stand behind the idea of things like a emerge -e which rebuilds your entire system...but for my liking and perhaps yours it is a solid point to note that once installed (12 hours give or take) you should not need to repeat that work later.

Good luck

[m_p_w]

There are packages that take a logn time to compile (also in a better cpu) like libreoffice, chromium, firefox, qtwebengine,...
In my i7-6700HQ_CPU_@_2.60

Code: Select all

     Wed Jul  4 11:29:22 2018 >>> dev-qt/qtwebengine-5.11.1
       merge time: 1 hour, 45 minutes and 7 seconds.
     Wed Jul 25 21:07:20 2018 >>> www-client/firefox-kde-opensuse-61.0.1-r1
       merge time: 32 minutes and 7 seconds.
     Fri Apr 27 21:20:36 2018 >>> app-office/libreoffice-6.0.3.2
       merge time: 1 hour, 10 minutes and 57 seconds.

For some of those packages there is a binary version in portage.

Is installing gentoo on better CPU faster?

Yes gentoo is source based than a better cpu means less compilation time

By my understanding "emerge" compiles applications from the source, but are even small applications such as "scilab" going to take hours to install on the system? (or just the desktop environment takes that long?)

emerge compile the package you want and his dependencies, and therefore the compilation time varies depending on how many and which dependencies it needs.
For example when you have installed mate emerge has installed also xorg and all others dependencies.

By my understanding "emerge" compiles applications from the source

This is somewhat a generalization that isn't always true, since there are binary packages available for some software as well

but are even small applications such as "scilab" going to take hours to install on the system?

Small packages take anywhere from 5-10 seconds to compile only...basically just long enough for portage to load the .ebuild file, and then compile the source code according to what's in it. So tiny applications should not really be a concern in terms of compile time. But it is the larger applications that can become a resource hog at times. That is what binary packages can be used for. Also you should consider looking into the many overlays which are not part of the gentoo main repository for some of those binary packages, as I am not completely sure but I believe you will find some there as well.

(or just the desktop environment takes that long?)

The good news here I think which i what your post seems to be about (to me) is that for the most part, even though there are many on this forum that stand behind the idea of things like a emerge -e which rebuilds your entire system...but for my liking and perhaps yours it is a solid point to note that once installed (12 hours give or take) you should not need to repeat that work later.

Good luck

but then I have autistic question, does gentoo have an option to use other command than "emerge" like "apt-get" to download and install binary packages like in debian?

[NeddySeagoon]

m_p_w,

The simple answer is No.

The more complex answer is that Gentoo makes some of the larger packages available as binaries.
Typically, the package names end in -bin. The emerge command is still used to install these packages but no compilation is performed.
The down side is that you don't get to choose CFLAGS, which is no big deal for most things, or USE flags, which might be a problem, if you need different settings.

There is a more complex answer still. Some users offer BINHOSTs, which are pre compiled packages, using whatever CFLAGS and USE flags they happen to use themselves.
You can point emerge to one or more of these. Portage will tell you about incompatible USE flags.

The hard bit is finding compatible BINHOSTs

There is a BINHOST you can browse and use.
That particular site is run by a Gentoo developer.

For completness, its possible to write ebuilds that download and install binary packages from Debian.
Nobody does because of the dependency resolution nightmare but its possible.

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

Unfortunately you are hitting on the one true drawback when building software which is the time it takes. Still starting with the kernel and extending to most of the packages I would argue (others can help to support the fact) that software built locally or for the specs you tell it to use will perform better on your machine with significant improvements for the system, such as less application crashes and a more stable and probably faster experience if you optimize everything in that way.

does gentoo have an option to use other command than "emerge" like "apt-get" to download and install binary packages like in debian?

Still the answer is it is possible and you would want to use emerge flag —install for something like that i believe. But how you will make sure all the dependencies are met in that case is basically also why doing so could have some unexpected results such as other packages being unsble to use the software for dependency or just having to learn a bit more too about ebuilds.

There are other distros with packagd managers geared more towards working with prebuilt binaries, Debian, Slackware and Arch linux tonname a few.

hey so if you plan to stick with it in Gentoo, including:
1. Holding back certain package upgrades, with package masks will help you control when you want to rebuild a package, which can help for those longer builds like the browsers or huge gui applications which i would agree there is little parience involved in waiting for that to get done
2. Also search the tree for binary packages (qsearch -s ‘-bin’, with portageq installed first) when it looks like the package could take a while, to build
3. Use cron jobs or another way of scheduling your updates so that they do not interfere(overnight maybe
4. Lastly make sure you use —ask or —pretend flag with emerge and read over the list of changes that will happen before continuing you updates so that you can ensure that all software or changes to system software really needs to be there.

[m_p_w]

m_p_w,

The simple answer is No.

The more complex answer is that Gentoo makes some of the larger packages available as binaries.
Typically, the package names end in -bin. The emerge command is still used to install these packages but no compilation is performed.
The down side is that you don't get to choose CFLAGS, which is no big deal for most things, or USE flags, which might be a problem, if you need different settings.

There is a more complex answer still. Some users offer BINHOSTs, which are pre compiled packages, using whatever CFLAGS and USE flags they happen to use themselves.
You can point emerge to one or more of these. Portage will tell you about incompatible USE flags.

The hard bit is finding compatible BINHOSTs

There is a BINHOST you can browse and use.
That particular site is run by a Gentoo developer.

For completness, its possible to write ebuilds that download and install binary packages from Debian.
Nobody does because of the dependency resolution nightmare but its possible.

But then what is the benefit of compiling the source code?
From my experience, binary packages on debian repository are stable on all my computers.
Also when it comes to CFLAGS, does portage automatically use all the CFLAGS which my cpu uses when it compiles the source code or do I have to set it up?
Additionally, is there any real performance differences when it comes to source based distro vs binary based distro when running OS and using the applications such as firefox?

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

A quote from gentoo website:
Portage automatically builds a custom version of the package to your exact specifications, optimizing it for your hardware and ensuring that the optional features in the package that you want are enabled—and those you don't want aren't.

This is the gist of what advantages are offered but taking that one step further if you are able to optimize for hardware and do things like limit bloatware and unnecessary packages then the advantages could be many more such as a smaller footprint for the system overall, also maybe improved security, and more on the front of networking or services being run (sorry for my being vague). BUt in terms of performance the question itself may not make sense since how would performance be measured in the first place? If it hqs to do with less resource consumption and i have seen that one issue being addressed several times but seems like every distro does something to tout the fact that their linux runs on less resources.

Certainly if there was a specialized or specific enough situation such as managing configuration of multiple architectures with installations on a small to medium sized network then i think the answer is clearly yes to performance advantages if not obvious ones experienced by users then for those administering the systems. But the notion that a linux distro is somehow meant to provide improved performance in the traditional sense of the work (faster, less memory, etc..) I find to be a somewhat a misconception. Since with any distribution if you are comfortable taking time to learn how it works then you should find it pretty much impossible to do things in any of them that cant be replicated elsewhere on a similar piecebof hardware.

I think for the linux desktop user that bring already a rather progressive idea shen there are windows and mac out there with probably 99.9 percent for market share. There is no real argument therefore just know that distribution like Gentoo is more than just a package manager, although that is to a large degree what makes it so different.

[NeddySeagoon]

m_p_w,

Binary distros are built for the lowest common denominator. Their amd64 distros will run on any 64 bit Intel/AMD CPU.
The price you pay for that is that newer instructions in the CPU cannot be used.
Most of their 32 bit offerings are/were i586 compatible. That's pentium pre mmx.

In Gentoo, you set -march=native in your CFLAGS and gcc optimises the instruction set and instruction ordering for the CPU its executing on.
A few packages contain hand optimised routines for various extra instruction sets.
The CPU_FLAGS_X86= setting is used to tell the build system the extra instruction sets you have.

Lastly, USE flags let you control optional features to be included/left out of your install.

Don't think of Gentoo like a binary distro. Its a toolkit you use to build your own distro. Gentoo is really only portage and the gentoo ebuild repository.
Everything else is upstream.

You won't notice any difference with keyboard intensive applications. They all spend most of their time waiting for user input.
A faster Gentoo install will wait longer for the next key press is all.

Your Firefox example is difficult to assess. It may render faster in Gentoo if you build it yourself. Then again, you may not notice.
Try firefox-bin as that's its binary version. Its actually built by Mozilla as it uses the Red Firefox logo. That would be illegal if Gentoo built it.