How big / stable is Gentoo community ?

Lowe · External Since: Apr 23, 2006 Posts: 2

For a person not using Gentoo, you know alot about it.

What's the point ?
Well, I like it. Thats the point.

What's the point of using debian ?

Geico Caveman · External Since: Mar 04, 2006 Posts: 312

ANC wrote:

>
> Same for a complete version upgrade. Debian bills itself as "install once,
> upgrade forever" but that is more hype than reality. If you face East and
> chant the Debian mantra

I disagree. I have been running Debian testing on two of my machines for
almost 3 years now. Never had to reinstall. This laptop has been running
Debian for about 2 months, and was running the same on another laptop (hard
disk transplant), so that was 2 years more.

Changed sources and did an apt-get dist-upgrade once on all these machines
when Sarge moved into stable. Unless something goes radically wrong with
Debian, I do not think I will ever reinstall again.

Anyways, its all OT here.

Peter · External Since: Jan 20, 2005 Posts: 237

On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 02:09:40 -0400, Geico Caveman wrote:

all snip....

Robbins left Gentoo in 2004 I believe. Not recently. Now he had left MSFT
after a little over a year there. Where he is now is anyone's guess.

I switched from Slack to Gentoo when Pat got sick. I stayed there after
Gnome got dropped (even though I don't use it. I personally did not like
the idea of having to import a third party set of libraries that I needed.).

The more I use Gentoo, the more I like it. It is a high maintenance
distro. Installation is hardly click-and-go. Learning their portage system
takes time. However, as a package building platform, I think it's
excellent. I have contributed packaged to both Slack and Gentoo and the
Gentoo model is very good IMHO.

While I am sure it makes hardly any difference in terms of speed, Gentoo
allows for excellent flexibility in compiler command switches and
processor architectures.

The user community is very stable. Most of the devs are excellent. Those
without good people skills are handled by developer relations (devrel).
Some packages are slow to make it to the stable branch. This is as
much a QA thing as it is a manpower thing. KDE 3.5.x for example is still
not marked stable since the problems with kmail, etc.

I am _NOT_ sold on the benefits of having to compile each package by hand
each time an update arrives. However, since Gentoo allows customized
compiler settings at the user-level, it is impossible to provide a
compatible compiled package to all users. A nice feature is that the
compilation of new packages can be "nice"d so it does not interfere with
ongoing work. I run a cron job each morning to see what's new, then
manually review the pending changes and determine what to do.

One nifty feature is that some meta- packages, like KDE, are broken out
into discreet components. For example, I use only a few KDE applications,
kopete, cervisia, kjots, and a few games. Aside from arts, kdelibs and
parts of kdebase, gentoo handles all the dependencies and updates only
take place for the packages I use. The parts of gnome I need for packages
like Evolution come in automatically too, although each library must be
compiled.

The installer paradigm automatically protects files in /etc, so if you're
updating samba, let's say, you will not overwrite your config files. You
will be asked to manually either merge the changes or on request, replace
each file.

All in all, I would say give it a try, peruse the user groups, forums, and
read the documentation. INSTALLATION IS A BEAR! But it does not have to be
too bad since you can install most of a running system with pre-compiled
packages.

From a security point of view, Gentoo stays very current. They even have
a secure kernel package for hardened systems.

Feel free to email me privately if you have more specific questions.
pete4abw at comcast dot net. I miss Slackware from time to time, and
recently downloaded the isos for 10.2 just to see how it's doing and what
has changed. The slack community is good too, and linuxpackages.net offers a lot.
I know since I've contributed over 50 packages to it.

As I am sure you know, distros are a funny thing. What I like, you might
hate, or vice versa. Similarly, what I think is a neat feature you could
view as an impediment.

Good Luck!
/s Peter

Peter · External Since: Jan 20, 2005 Posts: 237

On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 02:09:40 -0400, Geico Caveman wrote:

all snip....

Robbins left Gentoo in 2004 I believe. Not recently. Now he had left MSFT
after a little over a year there. Where he is now is anyone's guess.

I switched from Slack to Gentoo when Pat got sick. I stayed there after
Gnome got dropped (even though I don't use it. I personally did not like
the idea of having to import a third party set of libraries that I
needed.).

The more I use Gentoo, the more I like it. It is a high maintenance
distro. Installation is hardly click-and-go. Learning their portage system
takes time. However, as a package building platform, I think it's
excellent. I have contributed packaged to both Slack and Gentoo and the
Gentoo model is very good IMHO.

While I am sure it makes hardly any difference in terms of speed, Gentoo
allows for excellent flexibility in compiler command switches and
processor architectures.

The user community is very stable. Most of the devs are excellent. Those
without good people skills are handled by developer relations (devrel).
Some packages are slow to make it to the stable branch. This is as much a
QA thing as it is a manpower thing. KDE 3.5.x for example is still not
marked stable since the problems with kmail, etc.

I am _NOT_ sold on the benefits of having to compile each package by hand
each time an update arrives. However, since Gentoo allows customized
compiler settings at the user-level, it is impossible to provide a
compatible compiled package to all users. A nice feature is that the
compilation of new packages can be "nice"d so it does not interfere with
ongoing work. I run a cron job each morning to see what's new, then
manually review the pending changes and determine what to do.

One nifty feature is that some meta- packages, like KDE, are broken out
into discreet components. For example, I use only a few KDE applications,
kopete, cervisia, kjots, and a few games. Aside from arts, kdelibs and
parts of kdebase, gentoo handles all the dependencies and updates only
take place for the packages I use. The parts of gnome I need for packages
like Evolution come in automatically too, although each library must be
compiled.

The installer paradigm automatically protects files in /etc, so if you're
updating samba, let's say, you will not overwrite your config files. You
will be asked to manually either merge the changes or on request, replace
each file.

All in all, I would say give it a try, peruse the user groups, forums, and
read the documentation. INSTALLATION IS A BEAR! But it does not have to be
too bad since you can install most of a running system with pre-compiled
packages.

From a security point of view, Gentoo stays very current. They even have a
secure kernel package for hardened systems.

Feel free to email me privately if you have more specific questions.
pete4abw at comcast dot net. I miss Slackware from time to time, and
recently downloaded the isos for 10.2 just to see how it's doing and what
has changed. The slack community is good too, and linuxpackages.net offers
a lot. I know since I've contributed over 50 packages to it.

As I am sure you know, distros are a funny thing. What I like, you might
hate, or vice versa. Similarly, what I think is a neat feature you could
view as an impediment.

Good Luck!
/s Peter

Lowe Schmidt · External Since: May 08, 2006 Posts: 1

People like you make me sick.
You're a disgrace.

Dan C · External Since: Jan 08, 2005 Posts: 1094

On Mon, 08 May 2006 04:28:00 -0700, Lowe Schmidt wrote:

> People like you make me sick.

Too bad, Win-droid.

> You're a disgrace.

No, that would be you:
> User-Agent: G2/0.2
> X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1

Bugger off, dickweed.

--
If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
Linux Registered User #327951

Robert Hull · External Since: Oct 31, 2004 Posts: 1219

In comp.os.linux.misc, on Mon 08 May 2006 12:28, Lowe Schmidt
<lowe.schmidt.TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote:

> People like you make me sick.

WTF are you on about? People like *who*?

Learn to quote

> You're a disgrace.
So are you for not quoting. Now WTF are you on about?
--
Robert HULL

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