why Gentoo sucks, and why it will ultimately die

StarDragon · Guru Joined: 19 Jun 2005 Posts: 390 Location: tEXas

Stay patient. Read the documentation before upgrading. Follow directions.

Do those three things and you are good to go.
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mikl · Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 9:57 pm Post subject:

Well, I've been using gentoo on and off for more than two years now, and I've come to the conclusion that gentoo.org is at least right on one thing. gentoo is a metadistribution.

I think it would be fair to say that gentoo is not a distribution at all. It's more like a set of tools to make your own distribution, the way you want it.

So I think you should give it a rest. Don't say something sucks, even if you think it does. That's just plain rude.
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Mgiese · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1628 Location: indiana

at240 · l33t Joined: 12 Aug 2005 Posts: 603 Location: UK

Mgiese · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1628 Location: indiana

we should start a survey to prohibit those threads! so the technical stuff has more space... why dont they use windoz(or whatever) and stfu ? sometimes i think by myself those threads are started by professional Mxcrxsxft marketing employes

this must be a new mxcrxsxft virus created to destroy linux

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Saint1911 · Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 10:59 pm Post subject:

Some valid points, but it seems to me alot of people update their system too often, well of course it's cool and all to stay bleeding edge

but then again if you want to do that then you should expect some system maintenance here and there.
Alot of 'new' gentoo users simply rush into emerge x package the moment someone creates an overlay or it gets in portage, then when it don't immediatly work it's Gentoo's fault

Always do emerge -p first and wait for people to post their experiences on forums before emerging system critical stuff :wink:

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slonocode · Apprentice Joined: 03 Jun 2002 Posts: 273

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

In a few cases I agree, but I don't know many of the problems you seem to have had. Since when is 15 minutes or repair time serious breakage? If you are that stessed for time, you need to start reschedualing...

In all my updats (granted I havn't been using Gentoo very long (since the 2.6.16-genntoo-r9 kernel)), I've never had a serious problem minus sound not working, and that I don't consider serious breakage. Nothing kept me from moving forward, so I was good.

The update to Xorg 7.0/7.1 was well documented (never check anouncements on the boards, do you?), and on x86 worked like a breeze. AMD64 I know had problems, but I think alot of them have been resolved, but I use x86, so I may be wrong on that.

The modular KDE was great IMHO, but I still don't like alot of it (I use IceWM. Something I wanted out of KDE required kwin. Why?), but its a step in the right direction.

If you want to keep a system truely lean, and you think Gentoo is bloated, try SuSe or another package-based distro. Alot of the bloat in Gentoo I know about is basically the src files that you keep around. The compiles aren't too bad. I did an emerge -e world once, and kept going with the only slowdown being with loading Opera (this is on a 512 MB RAM 2.53GHz P4).

Gentoo does have problems, and I think the devs don't pay attention as much to the users as they should, but when it comes down to it, everyone wants something diffrent, and if they try to please everyone, nothing will ever get done.

You can have one or the other right now: Flexability, speed, and bleeding-edge, or bloated, stable, and dated. I have seen few cases of both.
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Genone · Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 3:37 am Post subject:

slonocode · Apprentice Joined: 03 Jun 2002 Posts: 273

cosmic665 · n00b Joined: 30 Oct 2003 Posts: 34

Zork;

Please forgive my last posting.. I get a little upset when people talk about why a distro will *ultimately die*... but maybe you should get more involved with the development process of gentoo and try to impliment your ideas, rather than complain about whats wrong with the os? Yeah gentoo is growing somewhat outta hands in some areas... and believe me I should probably be complaining as much as you are. But then again, I'm running ~x86 and out of all the distros out there, gentoo is still my favorite! I'm sure you will have lots of fun installing fedora core 5 or debian!

Thanks
-cosmic

legine · Guru Joined: 27 May 2004 Posts: 555 Location: Germany

To keep things short.

I think Zork the Almighty, you are doing something wrong. I have similar habits then you do and never was annoyed by broken packages.
I simply put tem on a todo list and mask the package when it fails. So what?
I do not need the latest rubbish today. For example I havent updated Xorg yet. I will have to soon. But hmm it can wait for now.
I just managed to update the real pain package my Kernel, since I fail to use genkernel

. (it is always broke then.) So i keep doing Kernel updates by hand. But thats my wrong doing and my lazyness not to fix things.

Maybe you should get somewhat lazy too

For Portage I like the moduls. They save compiletime, place and other stuff so I am happy. Okey Emerge needs moretime. yes. but thats all. And time is something emerge can have from my idleing cpu...

So basicly I am happy with Gentoo as is. Well you can always improve things you know.

I hope I find time for my new portage playyard project to enhance the compiletimes beyond sane. But that wont work I believe

The only thing that I miss to is the dependencie stuff.
I would be happy if a dependend package could itselve register within another packadge that it is there.

Exampl.
Package a is dependend on package B. When package a gets installed it tries to register at package B. When Package b gets updated it outomaticly knows it may be a good Idea to reemerge package a after its finished. So after it was successfully emerge it throws an event and Package A gets happly emerged.
That would hopefully make revdep rebuild obsolete. But since we have revdep rebuild it is nothing with high priority. And the Idea is only an idea of me. And I am to lazy to try my Idea out.
sight.

Now that are real problems. So I think I go and stop beeing lazy for today.
cya on some other thread

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Headrush · Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 4:08 pm Post subject:

Complaints about Gentoo are totally valid, but if your argument is that the change from a monolithic system to a modular system creates a bloated system, you don't understand the important of modularization. (This applies to packages, software coding, business, anything)

People can't have it both ways and argue that developers are too slow to fix things, yet we want to keep an monolithic structure that makes it even harder to work with and longer to users to compile. Hmm, yes lets take hours to recompile all of Xorg, when we could have a single modular package that only takes minutes. Imagine as a developer needing longer compile times just to test patches.

Additionally, more packages does not equal more work and more bloat. You have the exact same software, (or less), and it is still all updated with the same single command.

This argument is about as valid as all the Window users who call for service because they think the "bloat" of software on their hard drives is what is slowing their machines down. 99% of the time it has nothing with hard drive capacity.

Gentoo does have issues and ways it can be improved, but we need to stop worrying about the perceived problems/issues and concentrate on the real issues.

Edit: Fixed spelling mistakes

Zork the Almighty · n00b Joined: 29 May 2003 Posts: 10

Phenax · l33t Joined: 10 Mar 2006 Posts: 972

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=~x86 emerge kde

Curious, what operating system are you moving to?

Headrush · Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2006 12:57 am Post subject:

Mgiese · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1628 Location: indiana

Mgiese · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1628 Location: indiana

paul.marsh · n00b Joined: 09 Feb 2006 Posts: 35 Location: Sydney

Well...

As I see it you pay a price in time for the benefit of configurability; you take on the role of quality assurance for the binaries on your system.

I must admit I have been extremely frustrated at times by gentoo because I am impatient and want things to work now!

But you can't have your cake and eat it too

It takes time to assure quality and limited resources are going to cater to the majority - which results in a less flexible (but more stable) distribution.

I have been using Gentoo as my primary system for almost six months now and before that I had quite limited experience (not using day to day) with debian and redhat. I really like Gentoo. I have not been around long enough to get a feel for management admittedly, but I my expectations are not very high - people give up their time and that must be appreciated.

Once I figured out how to use portage properly I have not had a problem. Make changes methodically and be patient. If stability is a concern use Debian.

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1932

Just something in noticed about the "bye-bye threads"...

Almost all of the people who started these threads were users who started in 2003, and most of those who bashed them were newer users. Having been a Gentoo user for just more than a year, I can't say anything, but perhaps when these people started, Gentoo was quite a different distro than it is now. I think they might actually see some bad changes that we don't see. I think their disappointment in the current state of Gentoo might actually be completely valid.

Just an observation.
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bakaohki · Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 7:31 pm Post subject:

Deeply agree with the original post, too bad that eight out of ten Gentooists are a "bit" sensitive to criticism. Now bash me with clubs please.

MethodGuy · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 08 Apr 2005 Posts: 88

ok
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