Gentoo 2005.0 Released 425
mintshows writes "According to Gentoo Planet, the first gentoo release of the year, 2005.0, is out. You can download the 2005.0 ISOs from the torrents at http://torrents.gentoo.org/ . Of course, current Gentoo users can just emerge to the latest and greatest as always."
Re:compile on! (Score:3, Insightful)
And from my experience, yes, the time I spend compiling stuff is worth it for all the learning and flexibility in the end.
But others may disagree.
Re:compile on! (Score:3, Insightful)
New but better? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:compile on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Forward to now. Now, I'm building a media center-ish pc. Also acting as a fileserver. Uses wireless, with WPA encryption and all that cool stuff.
Now, I could have gone with some other distro and saved myself quite a bit of time (I'm reinstalling it for the 3rd time as I write this), but honestly, gentoo is just plain fun to set up and I've learned way too much for me to just put it down now.
There are tons of ways to get it started. I've always opted to use a minimal livecd, but bootstrapping from knoppix or another livecd works well too.
Portage is just awesome, the most package-specific setup you'll ever really need to do is edit a new config file. There's even a tool to let you easily merge old config files when new revisions come out. And while I don't know how much speed I'm getting out of compiling everything from source, I do know what's on my computer, as I compulsively check use flags just to see what I can do with my system. With portage, I've found incredibly useful software I never knew existed, and don't know how I lived without. It's all about choices, choices, choices. And the only penalty for changing your mind is a bit of your time.
My only bad experiences stem from me using insane compiler flags that mess up your system completely. I had no idea it was possible to screw up rm, but I managed to do it. My hardware is also not the best, I went for cheap and older components I had lying around. However, gentoo hasn't told me "no" yet, I've just needed to be clever about doing things, which has taught me a huge amount about how linux, and computers in general, work. I've always been the "computer guy" around here, but I just feel... closer ;)
So long story short, I think gentoo is really, really worth it if you've got some spare time and some curiosity.
And being able to use bleeding-edge everything is just cool.
Re:compile on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Compiling some software for a few hours is a drop in the bucket.
Re:compile on! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, it starts out that way, like six years ago when I was grabbing the GIMP from CVS on a regular basis just for fun. Then you discover Debian and recover your time, realizing that except for special cases, compiling yourself isn't worth it.
Re:just about through with gentoo (Score:2, Insightful)
dispatch-conf is the sensible alternative to etc-update - check it out (it's been around for a long time now).
Gentoo is, and always has been, billed as a distro for advanced users with time to maintain it.
You are using the wrong tool for the job - SuSE or Debian, or even *BSD seems more appropiate for what you require.
Re:compile on! (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole "learning" thing (Score:5, Insightful)
For a real good time, Linux From Scratch will actually give you insight into what's going on. No automated scripts there (though there are some available for LFS veterans who don't want to do it all again).
GUI installer - not this time around (Score:3, Insightful)
Although the console install process certainly teaches new users of linux new tricks it might help gain some traction into the linux market to help raise awareness of the project.
Hopefully the next build will make it
Good work guys!
Re:Fresh gentoo, old debian (Score:3, Insightful)
You know I've been running Gentoo since '92 with "~arch" in my make.conf as my main distro while keeping a Debian unstable partition around for the occasional portage borkings and I must say you are so totally wrong. Anyone who uses Sid and a handful of unofficial repositories will be almost as current as Gentoo "~arch".
That said though, I do still prefer compiling free software from scratch and Gentoo is the natural choice. As far as all the compile time jokes most smaller packages don't take much longer on a fast processor to emerge than to apt-get a binary. Large ones like KDE are another story but then again your system is still usable while they build in the background.
Re:Broken system? (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't think new releases have anything to do with things breaking or not breaking in the gentoo tree, they are just stabilized snapshots of the tree, but don't influence the tree the least.
That said, what's wrong with autoconf, any link to a bug report, forum discussion? And is it broken in the stable tree, or are you running an unstable system?
Re:compile on! (Score:3, Insightful)
With that said, the install process has several steps with no apparent purpose except for being 1337. They didn't really have to make you install cron, syslog and dhcpd, or make you deal with fstab or grub.conf.
The real problem though is configuring the kernel. Building a custom kernel is a very good idea, because you don't want your notebook to autodetect drivers for several minutes when booting, or to waste CPU cycles on compiled-in SMP support or multi-homed webserver. But Linux configuration screens are insane. Do I need an "HPET timer"? Who the hell knows?
I think the solution is to make Linux kernel modular, with drivers and subsystems that can be downloaded and compiled separately. Then we can start with a minimum kernel and emerge, say, quota support in the same way as kde.
Re:compile on! (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think everybody should build LFS [linuxfromscratch.org] at least once (at least everybody who wants to learn how linux works anyway). Gentoo makes it too easy, you don't learn nothin'
Re:That's what I like about Gentoo... (Score:3, Insightful)
On Gentoo, you don't even upgrade from release to release, you just install stuff when you can be bothered and one day you find yourself on 2005.0 accidentally.
With Debian...
apt-get install packageyouwanttoupgrade
no fuss, no muss, gets what is needed no more no less.
Re:honest question (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally I'd recommend Ubuntu, or, if you prefer KDE, kubuntu. I know there's been a lot of hype around this distro and many people get annoyed by it, but it's still a great distro.
Oh, and if you give Ubuntu a try, make sure to use the new release (hoary hedgehog). It isn't officially stable yet, but it will be released in a week and it really is an improvement over the previous version.
Re:just about through with gentoo (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely, if you want to run an `unstable' system, you are going to have to expect things to constantly change.
On the apache front, for real systems (as opposed to random desktops I happen to want a web server on to run SWAT or something), I build apache myself. That way FreeBSD and RedHat servers have everything working the same way. Apache is so easy to build, and so portable, that the ports/packages/rpms/whatever of each specific system don't buy you much. A trivial shell script contianing the call to configure you decide on is effectively a cross-platform package.
Boring article (Score:3, Insightful)
Please stop reporting new installer versions! This is uninteresting to those who don't use Gentoo becasue it doesn't effect them, and uninteresting to users because they have installed it already.
Re:The whole "learning" thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Learning things I did when I failed a Linux from Scratch installtion three times.
Re:fragmented fs (Score:3, Insightful)
And thats the bigest strengths of gentoo. While other distros "can" function three years from initiall install without distribution upgrades Gentoo has this one nailed down. A three year old install function very close to a newly installed machine. For desktop use thats just wonders.
Re:fragmented fs (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt that it's easier to track down packages outside of a repository---in addition to any dependencies they may have---than it is to unmask the ~x86 Gnome builds in Gentoo and have dependencies resolved for you.
I don't know anything about Debian, so I can't comment on it. Is it possible to install only Gnome 2.10 from unstable, and have everything else from stabe/testing (I assume it is, but I thought I'd ask)?
2.) There are sometimes configuration issues with Gentoo; they are mentioned elsewhere in this discussion.
There are sometimes configuration issues with Mac OS X, and every other large software system on earth.
For instance, etc-update absolutely sucks and the Gentoo devs refuse to replace it with better solutions that have already been offered.
Portage has come with dispatch-conf for a while now, although it requires some setting up, so it's probably less used/advertised than etc-update.
3.) Gentoo's packaging system sometimes creates versioning conflicts. I've personally had to fix a broken system twice. Check the Gentoo forums for all the other issues users sometimes have.
Yes, sometimes there are version conflicts in Portage, just as there in every operating system. Perhaps the grandparent was saying that in his experience, there are fewer version conflicts than with other systems he's used. Or that he hasn't encountered any, even though some obviously exist at times, since anything else is nearly impossible. Sometimes people use hyperbole in everyday situations, and not everything they say is meant to be taken exactly literally.
compilation is so overrated
This is true.
and provides no benefits.
This is untrue. I quite enjoy my ability to install mplayer without installing directfb, gtk 1.2, esound, JACK, and other things I'll never use, while other people have an easy way to install mplayer so that it can make use of all those things.
Ubuntu is nice, and maybe when I buy my next computer, I'll use it (or, Kubuntu, rather) instead of Gentoo. However, Gentoo does have advantages over Ubuntu (and vice versa) depending on who you are.
Re:Fresh gentoo, old debian (Score:3, Insightful)
However, using unofficial repositories is not as painless as it might look.
*The repository might go offline any time
*The repository might not recompile their packages for a new library in the official repository, making it useless
*The repository probably didn't spend as much time packaging the software as they should have, which can lead to at least 2 things:
- Ugly stuff like debs who installs themselves in
- Very painful upgrades when the software from the unofficial repository eventually reaches main (mostly dependencies).
With gentoo I never had such problems with masked packages and unofficial ebuilds. Which doesn't mean that debian sid doesn't have other advantages.
Proposal for etc-update solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is my idea for a way to solve the problem.
Gentoo should always keep a backup copy of the original configuration files. When you run etc-update it should compare the current file with the backup copy and if they are identical the current file should be deleted and replaced by the new file without prompting the user. Then the list will only be the 5 or 6 files that you have actually changed, and there is much less chance of a user accidentally overwriting their own changes.
Of course the old functionality should still be available too, for those that prefer it.
Comments?
Mark Byers.
Re:Gentoo and upgrades (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only that but I've come back from a month abroad and had no trouble updating a gentoo box.
Maybe if the person neglected the box for a couple years there would be deprecated packages but at that point you're probably better off... that's how all these worms/viruses spread anyways...
Ideally Gentoo should have an installer and ideally it should have a "put emerge in my crontab please" mode for the newbs that don't want to toy with it.
But really, to use gentoo you're gonna need to know how to use emerge/etc-update and a couple other tools.
Oh for shame, a free OS that works well, is reliable and decently supported and all you have todo is burn a 50MB CD to start and read a manual!!!
WE'RE ASKING TOO MUCH!!!
Tom
Re:Bye bye Gentoo users! (Score:4, Insightful)
Bye bye Gentoo users? Sheesh, we don't even need stop using things while they upgrade. Just emerge and forget about it while carrying on as normal.
All this hot air about learning stuff from Gentoo is partly true, but the main reason I use it is because it's stupidly easy to maintain and keep up to date. Compiling certain things takes a while, and I don't bother to compile OpenOffice because it's not worth it. Still, it's not like I even have to stop using the computer while it's going on - I just fire, forget, and get on with my work.
Re:compile on! (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, to install kde 3.2, just type "emerge kde"
I'm not sure what you're saying: how is that different from:
Re:just about through with gentoo (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? I will never undertand why Gentoo users persist in running an 'emerge -up world' to upgrade all their packages in one go, then wonder why they've got a nightmare of configuration changes to work through.
The only reason to upgrade a package should be that there is something wrong with it such as a security vulnerability or you need functionality from the new version.
If you want to upgrade Apache, then you should do just that, upgrade Apache. It will pull in any updated dependancies it needs, usually just a few or none, then upgrade Apache. This gives you the chance to read through any messages regarding the configuration files and a chance to make these changes, restart the webserver and check everything is working okay, before moving on an upgrading anything else.
Updating 70 odd packages just because there are newer versions out is just asking for trouble.
Re:The whole "learning" thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:compile on! (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes a relatively low admin (person) time and a high computer time to keep it up to date which is much better than systems that need a medium part of my own time.
From what I understand, though, the low marginal costs of maintaining a Gentoo system are offset by the high initial cost in learning how things work, setting things up, etc. compared to other distributions.
I'm inclined to try Gentoo one of these days when I get several days free to do this, till then I'll limp along with Fedora Core and yum.
Re:For those of you who want ease of install (Score:2, Insightful)
How to watch endless output from gcc?
If you want to learn *nix read a few books, including the Stevens programming books.
Installing gentoo isn't going to make you any more knowledgable about *nix.
Re:The whole "learning" thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, everything's handled by automated scripts, but there's still a lot of learning that's going on. You manually set a lot of information that's not there by default (hostname, dnsdomainname, etc) and manually set your internet settings in config files. I know in some X-based distros, there's GUI wizards for all that stuff.
Also, installing gentoo gives you a feel for all the things in the kernel. You can see "holy crap, I can compile in support for this Wacom tablet?!" where as if you install RedHat or whatever, you may not be able to even get the thing working.
also, the thing I like most about Gentoo isn't that everything's compiled for my machine specifically, even though that is nice, but rather the fact that a base Gentoo install is barebones. There's nothing. No ftp command, no hostx. Just the essentials. If I'm putting together a machine that's just going to be an FTP/rsync server, why do I need all that other crap that comes in a standard install?
I've never used Debian. Just Mandrake, Gentoo, Yellowdog, LinuxPPC, and RedHat, and yeah, I know you can tell it to do a minimal install, but Gentoo's installation handbook is taylored to people installing a minimal base system and just gets them started.
Gentoo's learning experience is 'learning by immersion.' Much like moving to Japan to learn japanese, you learn simply by being up to yer neck in the whole thing.
Re:just about through with gentoo (Score:2, Insightful)
They don't run gentoo, but run FreeBSD (close enough).
Actually I think you sort of get off track there. Gentoo and FreeBSD are similar but very different in the way they operate. The FreeBSD base (for most people) operates on a tested release schedule. FreeBSD CURRENT lets you live closer to the edge than any other Linux distro ever does, which is why it's sort of crazy to use IMO. But FreeBSD has the base system, and allows you access to software with ports. They are too separate entities. Gentoo being Linux uses portage to update everything including the kernel. FreeBSD doesn't have an unstable version of ports, although you can use bleeding edge versions of some of them.
To me Free/Net BSD is sort of like having your cake and eating it too. A stable base operating system, and software that is kept up to date.
Re:compile on! (Score:3, Insightful)