[GLLUG] Gentoo

[Caleb Cushing]

I forgot to send to the group again... here's the quote from what I already
wrote

"gentoo is a lot more like FreeBSD than Ubuntu. Portage was designed to be
like Ports. Everthing in Gentoo (with few choice exceptions) is compiled
from source Gentoo gives you much more power than Ubuntu, as Ubuntu is
designed to be a desktop distribution (user and idiot friendly) and Gentoo
is designed to be a power user distribution."

my advice on the whether to overwrite a config file is this. I have a good
memory and have yet to fail to remember if I have ever hand edited a file.
If I have hand edited it I don't overwrite it, As it would remove my
changes, and going through an merging line by line is annoying. I have not
seen this cause a problem yet. If you can't remember keep a log.

On 3/13/06, Alec Joseph Warner <warnera6 at egr.msu.edu> wrote:
>
> 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
> >
> >
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