[GLLUG] Gentoo

Alec Joseph Warner warnera6 at egr.msu.edu
Mon Mar 13 14:23:35 EST 2006


Gentoo was the first linux I ever tried, I primarily enjoy the 
community.  The distro certainly needs work ( heck I became a developer 
for that reason :) ).  Gentoo has a very large package database, 
packages are almost always simple to install ( there are a few that take 
some work, usually complicated packages ).

I would suggest learning a lot about how the package management works, 
I'm the developer who primarily manages the portage docs at this point, 
and I've been looking to revamp them as they generally assume knowledge 
that normal users don't have.  However it's difficult for me to critique 
them as I already know how it all works.

Configuration file management is one of those things that almost any 
Gentoo user will complain about ( myself included ); when you install a 
new app do you over-write the old config files or not, and when is it ok 
to over-write them and when isn't it...It's definately a fun arguement 
to have :)  However it really isn't entirely solved, and a better system 
than etc-update/dispatch-conf and friends is probably necessary.

Java apps are weak on Gentoo right now, as 1.5 still isn't stable yet 
due to tons of issues, most notably in that portage is designed for 
C-type apps and Java doesn't fit that model well.

Many people complain about the compilation times, I don't find them 
particularly bothersome, unless I'm at work and I need an app RIGHT NOW 
and I get to sit and wait for it to compile instead :)  But not much 
takes longer than 20 minutes ( at least on my machines ;) ).  Distcc and 
ccache are a boon here, as they can shorten the compile times by quite a 
bit.  Also confcache and parallel-fetch are both features of the 2.1.X 
portage ( currently pre6-r2 ).  A lot of changes are still happening in 
the ~arch portage, so I wouldn't go near it with regards to a production 
machine.

For a quicker install Gentoo can build binary packages 
(FEATURES='buildpkg' or 'quickpkg <foo>') although this area too could 
use some work.  Binaries are fickle especially when moved to systems 
with different USE flags, fine if you are running a computer lab or a 
set of similarly configured servers, bad if configurations vary widely.

Ah, I didn't mention USE flags.  Gentoo uses USE flags to set specific 
settings in a package, the easiest example is PHP, which has a metric 
ton of flags for all the configure options for PHP.  Gentoo has two 
types of USE flags, 'global' and 'local'.  Global flags generally affect 
more than 5 packages, as in the 'ssl' or 'ipv6' flags that turn on ssl 
or ipv6 in applications that support those things.  Local flags 
generally affect only 1 package, such as 'softmmu' for QEMU.  These 
flags are the real power of Gentoo, allowing you to find tune your 
system to your exact specifications.  The Portage team is working on 
ways to better this system ( we have about 150 feature requests "open" 
at present ), a bunch of these are fixed in the ~arch portage, more are 
coming, such as excluded all the documentation, excluded static libs, 
only have static libs, keeping debug info in a separate location, etc..

If you need to roll your own packages, ebuilds are easy to write, and 
fit snugly in a portage overlay for your emerging convenience.  This 
certainly takes some time to learn ( I am no ebuild master myself ) but 
is worth it if you do a lot of ebuild modifications.

I could go on, but you didn't mention what you were using it for, and I 
think most of the above was quite generic ;)

-Alec Warner
antarus at gentoo.org

Jeremy Gransden wrote:
> I know that this list is heavy with the gentoo users...  What are the
> benefits to using gentoo over another distro? I currently use FreeBSD /
> Ubuntu. 
> 
> thanks, 
> Jeremy
>  
> 
> _______________________________________________
> linux-user mailing list
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