Gentoo

Khannie

So...it makes sense to me that gentoo would be faster than your average distro, since it's all compiled for your exact system (not just the kernel). What I'd like to know is: How much faster are we actually talking here?

What other advantages does it have? I hear that emerge is fantastical, and that you can get bleeding edge software with it. What if you just want stable software?

Basically, if you run it, why?

Jim_No.6

Just a quick answer since I'm running short on time -

portage/emerge - Yes, it's wonderful. It has it's flaws (such as emerge --sync taking too long) but it's the best package manager I've used. (Yes, that does include apt). Be warned, you will get impatient on your first install (emergeing X, KDE, etc etc takes a while) but once the system's up and running, you won't have to wait for it all that often. You will have problems compiling at some stage, but gentoo is famed for it's community (forums.gentoo.org will almost always already have your problem, and if not, replies usually come in pretty fast)

bleeding edge - Well, my current version of vlc was released ~a week ago, and they've fixed the h264 streaming problem... bleeding edge doesn't always mean non-working! Bear in mind that you have a few previous stable versions, and one or two testing versions on offer at the same time, and portage can version-control quite easily. If it doesn't work, just roll back! (So far, running a set of all-testing media apps, I haven't run into any problems that rolling-back would have solved). Oh, and I'm running x86_64 (Core 2 Duo), and the support is as good as you'll get anywhere in the linux world (... if only there was a 64-bit Flash binary )

ricer speed boost - No, your computer is never going to fly. The 'massive boost' that you could have gotten in early Pentium/486 days isn't all that it's cracked up to be with modern hardware (note: stage 1/2 installs aren't even supported any more - they're not worth it). Yes, a custom kernel is a good idea - the speed difference over a genkernel is pretty dramatic if you strip it down. (The boot times on my friend's Ubuntu laptop make me cringe). Don't expect the world though.

learning - The gentoo install is pretty hard-coer. You'll learn a lot about config files, and quite a fair bit about how a linux system operates as you work through the handbook. (Provided that you take a peek at the man pages while you're doing it!). In general though, the install is a good way to force you to adopt a linux mindset - rather than "reboot/reinstall", actually reading logs, and fixing the problem. This is invaluable for the new linux user (in my opinion - I welcome flames)

Hmm - those are my thoughts for the minute. If I think of anything in the future, I'll post a follow-up.

Khannie

Nice post. Cheers.

Zombrex

The speed aspect of Gentoo isn't really as important as the customisation aspect. You have far more control over how your gentoo system is set up than a distrubution like Fedora or Ubuntu.

Of course that is a double edged sword. You have to spend far more time setting up your system than you would have to do with something like Fedora. And there is always the chance you will do something silly and break your entire system.

Gentoo is really for hardcore Linux users who know what they are doing, or for people who want to learn more about how their system is set up, rather than just relying on how Redhat or Suse set their system up.

If the only attraction of Gentoo is that you think you might squeeze a bit more speed out of your system then it is not worth the hassle. Any of the modern distros with i686 packages would be grand.

I run a Gentoo distrubition along side my main Fedora, on a partition on my linux drive. It is always there to mess around with, but I've broken it too many times to use it as my main working linux distro. That is nothing against Gentoo, I broke it by being an idiot or doing something I shouldn't have

PhantomBeaker

I'm probably a bit late on this. But basically, all of the above points are true. Very true. I.e. you're not going to see an absolutely blistering speed boost etc etc.

Where it DOES come in handy, is that it forces you to cut the bloat. You need to know your system, and that forces you to learn what options you compile your kernel with. In that sense, you'll get a kernel that fits just what you need. If you don't need some magical unicorn controller support because you don't have either a magical unicorn or a controller for it, then you don't compile it in. Whereas most distros will do a "one size fits all" approach. They WILL include the magical unicorn controller on the off-chance that some people have magical unicorns and the appropriate controllers attached to their computer.

The other way it forces you to cut bloat is, you'll actually stop and ask yourself "Ok, do I really want to wait for this to compile? Do I want PHP with support for all the databases in existence? If I do, I'll have to compile a lot more bits of databases just so PHP knows how to talk to them. Meh, I'll only be using it with postgres. I'll just compile that."

As a result, you have less software unless you need it, and you'll probably have less stuff automatically loaded, taking up less room on your system, meaning you have more room to play with on your machine. It's easier to take a bare system and add the bits you want rather than taking a big system and trying to cut the fat.

So, like most other OSs/distros, it affects the way you think about your system. I can look around my system and I'll probably be able to tell you how a lot of things fit together (although I can't figure out what depends on ruby - I still don't know why that's on my system) - I'll be able to explain the existance of more of the programs on my gentoo install, than on my SuSE install. So, in that sense, there's efficiency.

Otherwise, it's just like any other linux distro, except you use your compiler more.

Aoife

Fenster

Yes and no, I recently went back and installed Gentoo on my MBP for the sake of having some Unix tools available and I gave up after two days as so much needed tweaking.

FC7 promises full native MBP support without an insane amount of time setting everything up, I'll try that out when it's released.

EDIT: I ran Gentoo for near to two years. It's still by far my favouritest distro.

Khannie

Well....I just bought a raptor *drool* and I'm in the process of downloading the gentoo i686 dvd. I have to say, if it takes any more than a few hours to get up and running, I'll probably just give up the ghost and go back to ubuntu. I spent time stripping out the crap on my work installation of ubuntu and it boots very quickly already.

newgargamel

Check Arch Linux(www.archlinux.org) It's almost as fast as gentoo but it takes less time to install.

Khannie

I was under time pressure so installed xubuntu over the weekend to test that out. It is pretty nippy. Fast boot times and a fast interface...but...xfce does have its limitations (ofc I was expecting some as it's a lightweight frontend) and I've had some buggy behaviour with it (disappearing launchers for example) so I'm probably gonna give gentoo a lash with gnome over the christmas holidays.

I'll check out archlinux too, thanks garg (and welcome to boards).

Khannie

Well....I bit the bullet and installed gentoo. I have to say, it's very very nippy. Very lightweight. You really feel like there's absolutely NO fat.

So someone can learn from my mistakes: Do NOT use the graphical installer on the live cd. I did this initially and it's absolutely TERRIBLE. Left a really bad taste in my mouth. Just follow the "by hand" instructions on the gentoo website and it's pretty straightforward. I did have some trouble with grub, then with emerging gnome, but everything seems fine now.