Reflecting on 2+ years of gentoo/linux

[DrWoland]

Gentoo has been the only distribution I've used seriously and actually bothered to learn stuff with, so basically my linux esperienced so far can be summed up by my gentoo experience. Here's what I've learned:

1. These forums = best thing since that time Jesus split one loaf of bread to feed a crapload of people. That was one bad ass magic trick though.
2. If you're nice to people, they'll randomly help you. It's crazy stuff.
3. If it ain't broke, DONT effin FIX IT. Seriously.
4. ~x86 is ~ for a reason. Any time you install ANYTHING from ~x86, something somewhere along the way is going to break.
5. Reiser4 sucks, unless you really enjoy reinstalling.
6. The time spent trying to get a performance increase (i.e. messing with different sources) is not worth the performance increase usually attained. Experimental sources also fall under #4. Except for love. Those tended to work pretty well, at least when I used them almost a year ago.
7. The time taken to properly configure the kernel right away more than makes up for the time you'll end up wasting configuring it later.
8. Always have a working backup kernel. ALWAYS.
9. Bob P is the messiah, even if I've pretty much renounced using advanced install methods. I learned so much in those Stage 1/3 threads!
10. ATI sucks. Seriously.

That's all I've got off the top of my head. There isn't really a purpose to this thread. Just thought I'd post something that isn't a stupid question that I end up answering myself for a change.

[AaronPPC]

11. Do NOT do the following:

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# emerge -C python

[DrWoland]

11. Do NOT do the following:

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# emerge -C python

Haha are you adding from yourself, or did you see my thread when I did that? Man that was a trip. I think I ended up copying the python folder from another install (luckily I had one on the same PC) and that got python working long enough for me to remerge it. Good addition!

I got another one:

12. Do not confuse * with /*, ie

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sudo chmod 666 /*

Had fun restoring THAT server

[AaronPPC]

Haha are you adding from yourself, or did you see my thread when I did that?

Yup, I did that one. It took me all night to fix it.

[SirYes]

13. Keep a spare partition with another Linux installation (preferably Gentoo). It's way faster than running a LiveCD if the things go wrong.

This way it's also possible to create anohter (better! of course ) Gentoo installation, or just try some new stuff. For the latter a working chroot environment may be also useful.

[Reikinio]

14) Don't forget to '/etc/init.d/gentoo32 stop' before 'rm -rf /mnt/gentoo32'

[omp]

4. ~x86 is ~ for a reason. Any time you install ANYTHING from ~x86, something somewhere along the way is going to break.

You're making it sound like something is guaranteed to break if you install a packge from ~arch.

10. ATI sucks. Seriously.

It matters. If you aren't going to do any serious gaming or that sort of stuff, it works just fine. It is also a breeze to set up.

[luisfelipe]

10. ATI sucks. Seriously.

It matters. If you aren't going to do any serious gaming or that sort of stuff, it works just fine. It is also a breeze to set up.

Actually, I do alot of gaming and I find ATI to be alot better than nvidia. Also, it was quite alot easier
to setup also, and it offers some pretty nifty apps to do configuration.

[Q-collective]

Ati is cool, since there are serious opensource drivers for it

[cosmic665]

Ati is cool, since there are serious opensource drivers for it

ATI SUCKS!

ATI == Another Terrible Interface or Average Terrible Interface

Nvidia may not have opensource drivers, but at least it's not buggy as hell!

[slycordinator]

Ati is cool, since there are serious opensource drivers for it

Why do you think there isn't a major open source driver for nvidia cards? Because nvidia sucks and hates linux?!

Or could it be because nvidia supports linux by making decent drivers all by themselves?

[Q-collective]

Ati is cool, since there are serious opensource drivers for it

Why do you think there isn't a major open source driver for nvidia cards? Because nvidia sucks and hates linux?!

No, because the nv driver really sucks

Or could it be because nvidia supports linux by making decent drivers all by themselves?

Good for them. You may want to go to fsf.org and read a little why I think opensource software is important, I'm not going to repeat that here.

[Q-collective]

Ati is cool, since there are serious opensource drivers for it

ATI SUCKS!

ATI == Another Terrible Interface or Average Terrible Interface

Very mature

Nvidia may not have opensource drivers, but at least it's not buggy as hell!

Oh? Afaik, the 7xxx series was quite buggy. And the nv driver is just not worth mentioning to be honest.
On the other hand, Ati might produce sucky drivers themselves, but the DRI r300 driver is just great

Offtopic: woohoo, my 1200th post!

[Parasietje]

We're not going to hijack this nice thread with a flamewar about ATI vs Nvidia now, are we. Be nice, children
(Ok, it 's not really flaming. The arguments are constructive. But you're still hijacking IMHO)

I have learned a lot about linux in the 3 to 4 years I have used gentoo. I come from 1.4RC4, so that's like 3 years?

• I have tried LFS and learned nothing. I learned everything when compiling gentoo, with the plus of having a working system afterwards.
• I have compiled several software myself and thought it was really easy.
• I thought about package management and about software. How magical it is that thousands of people created the software I now use.
• I learned to look under the hood if something isn't working the way you want it. I learned how to do things MY WAY! *evil*
• Recently, I wrote my own ebuild! *proud*
• I learned that windows is intolerant against other OS's
• I learned that overheating your cpu causes filesystem errors. NOT GOOD!
• I learned the importance of standardisation. Code-wise (autotools, Makefiles); desktop-wise (system tray not working in kahakai); document-wise (HATE .DOC!)

All in all, one word: I LEARNED!

Gentoo is for people who want to look under the hood and change everything they don't like.[/b][/list][/list]

[HydroSan]

I have learned after about two years of Gentoo Linux:

- Building things staticly is stupid.
- Updating every week as opposed to every few months = better.
- How to use BASH effectively.
- The workings of DHCP, NFS and PXE (massive LTSP project for school).
- How to fix any Linux distribution without reinstalling.

[Enlight]

...

Or could it be because nvidia supports linux by making decent drivers all by themselves?

Good for them. You may want to go to fsf.org and read a little why I think opensource software is important, I'm not going to repeat that here.

They _can't_!!!

[AaronPPC]

- Updating every week as opposed to every few months = better.

And somethimes twice a week during periods of intense development activity.

- How to use BASH effectively.

I'm still working on this one. It's not like I have GUI front ends for everything. I won't consider my self an effective BASH user until I get proficient with scripting.

[Karsten from Berlin]

11. Do NOT do the following:

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# emerge -C python

12. Do NOT do the following:

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emerge -C gcc glibc

[diilbert]

11. Do NOT do the following:

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# emerge -C python

or

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emerge -C ssh

Then try to reinstall ssh. "What is that sir? What ? wget needs what? ssh to work... "

[yoshi314]

It (ati-drivers) is also a breeze to set up.

well it takes a while for a new-to-ati user to compile kernel properly for those awful drivers the first time. (finding the proper DRM/MTRR/AGP settings combination was a real pain. nvidia is less annoying in that matter)

i learned this when i tried arch linux for a change:
1. modprobe always works in gentoo (at least it looks like "always" when you compare to arch and the breakage in their stock kernels)
2. use flags are the best thing in gentoo. seriously.
3. -march=i686 -O2 seem to be the best cflags ever - at least for typical not-mutimedia-dedicated software, like WM's or text editors, browsers etc. - arch seriously beats gentoo, especially in responsibility almost every time. probably partially because of those cflags.

and from gentoo
- i would add archck sources into point 6. they're also very good (i discovered them under arch linux)
- you need to upgrade somewhat often or your installer might get obsolete
(try installing from 2005.0 or 2004.3 stage and you'll get my point. i hoped i could simply upgrade portage and rebuild everything to the newest versions - i wanted to try uclibc-stage, but there were no new stages for this :/)

[Parasietje]

Something I learned: compiling takes time. A lot of time. Especially on a 486 box.

2 WEEKS to get it from stage1 to stage3. The ultimate stability test .

[StarDragon]

one thing I learned: non-gui tools rock da' house!!!

I have nothing against the gui counter-partners but things can get done alot quicker in the console.

[jonfr]

Don't confuse this commands,

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mkfs.ext3

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fsck.ext3

I just had to reinstall my system becose of that little confusion.

[/dev/random]

- Updating every week as opposed to every few months = better.

I came from the opposite extreme. I learned that updating every week is better than every day. Now I only update when pgo shows there are updates to software I actually care about.

I've also learned that:
- Tweaking CFLAGS is a waste of time
- Every problem I've ever had has already been answered on these forums. I've only had to start I think one support thread in the past 1.5 years I've been using Gentoo.
- Bugzilla is useful for non-developers
- bash is the best thing since sliced bread
- Always run equery b on a file before you move/remove it. It might turn out that glibc owns it.
- A text editor doesn't need a GUI or menus to be user friendly. All hail vim.
- Compiling isn't so bad, run it overnight if you aren't patient

I've actually acquired a ridiculous amount of knowledge using Gentoo. I forced myself to stop listing stuff off because I didn't feel like writing a very long list.

[andrewd18]

This is a great thread.

I've been using Gentoo for almost a year now, and it's my favorite distro ever. Here's some things I learned - first I'm gonna mirror what yoshi314 said...

1. modprobe always works in gentoo

Well, not always, but a heck of a lot more often. I'm so sick of having to deal with stock kernels it's not even funny. I updated my SuSE kernel the other day, and something went crazy, and it now looks for my / partition in a completely wrong spot, EVEN THOUGH my fstab and menu.lst files are accurate. Stupid kernels.

2. >, <, and = are an AMD64 user's new best friends.
3. People actually try to fix things when you post them in the Gentoo bugzilla. What an amazing concept.
4. Binaries have their place (especially in AMD64), but static linkage sucks in general
5. codergeek42 and BobP >= demigods.

~~ Andrew D.