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crocket
Guru
Joined: 29 Apr 2017
Posts: 558
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 Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 3:46 am Post subject: Gentoo is one of the last few sane OSes. |
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- It avoided forcing users to use systemd. Systemd is merely an option on Gentoo. I didn't like systemd because it often froze during reboot and shutdown. It probably still does.
- It has an OK package system that allows users to customize packages without much hassle. // user patches, local/global USE flags, ...
- Gentoo's package system allows users to create local repositories. On other distros, it's very difficult to create local repositories in a sane way.
- Installing packages from third party repositories on Gentoo is a lot saner than on ArchLinux and other OSes.
- It is free of the kind of political battles going on in FreeBSD community // The new FreeBSD Code of Conduct written by Geek Feminism
- Since it has linux kernel, it has support for a lot of hardwares, unlike BSD distros.
- ZFS support is ok on Gentoo. It was a pain in the ass to maintain ZFS packages on ArchLinux.
- I prefer runit to OpenRC, but OpenRC is better than sysvinit and systemd.
Thus, it is saner than most other OSes. Gentoo's biggest disadvantage is the amount of time it takes to compile packages and to configure kernel and packages. Weekly upgrade could take days on slow laptops. Gentoo's advantages outweigh its disadvantages when a computer is fast and has complicated needs. On slow laptops, Gentoo doesn't seem profitable. |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54666
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 9:31 am Post subject: |
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crocket,
You don't have to build on slow hardware, just run there.
Gentoo is good on embedded systems.
I still irregularly maintain an Acer One netbook from 2008 with the aid of distcc.
You can have runit on Gentoo too.
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NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 9320
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 9:37 am Post subject: |
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| Or use a binhost which does the building for the weak hardware. That is what I did in the last days of using my old X200s from 2009. |
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Jaglover
Watchman
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 8291
Location: Saint Amant, Acadiana
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Dr.Willy
Guru
Joined: 15 Jul 2007
Posts: 547
Location: NRW, Germany
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| Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2018 8:45 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo is one of the last few sane OSes. |
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| crocket wrote: | | On slow laptops, Gentoo doesn't seem profitable. |
Depends. I think compile time is very fast for about 90% of the packages.
… and then there's the fat browsers (Firefox, Chromium), office suites (Libreoffice) and compilers (gcc, clang) that take ages. |
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pun_guin
Apprentice
Joined: 06 Feb 2018
Posts: 204
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| Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2018 11:37 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo is one of the last few sane OSes. |
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| crocket wrote: |
- Since it has linux kernel, it has support for a lot of hardwares, unlike BSD distros.
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I disagree with the perception that "BSD distros" had bad hardware support. In fact, (at least) FreeBSD and, per FreeBSD, Solaris (illumos) regularly imports Linux drivers rather quickly, with license-related exceptions, that is; e.g. the ath10k WiFi driver was the reason why I had to install Linux on one of my newer laptops after years of BSD...
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I already use the new Genthree. |
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crocket
Guru
Joined: 29 Apr 2017
Posts: 558
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| Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 2:27 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo is one of the last few sane OSes. |
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| pun_guin wrote: | | I disagree with the perception that "BSD distros" had bad hardware support. In fact, (at least) FreeBSD and, per FreeBSD, Solaris (illumos) regularly imports Linux drivers rather quickly, with license-related exceptions, that is; e.g. the ath10k WiFi driver was the reason why I had to install Linux on one of my newer laptops after years of BSD... |
FreeBSD drivers lag far behind linux drivers. For example, RX Vega 11 is still not supported by FreeBSD, but it is by linux. Other BSDs are worse. I wouldn't use BSD for new hardwares. |
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doalwa
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Posts: 142
Location: Old Europe
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| Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 3:11 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo is one of the last few sane OSes. |
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| Dr.Willy wrote: | | crocket wrote: | | On slow laptops, Gentoo doesn't seem profitable. |
Depends. I think compile time is very fast for about 90% of the packages.
… and then there's the fat browsers (Firefox, Chromium), office suites (Libreoffice) and compilers (gcc, clang) that take ages. |
I found that out the hard way last weekend.
Decided to return to Gentoo after a few year long hiatus and installed Gentoo on my trusty, old Lenovo Thinkpad X200 laptop. Equipped with a Core2Duo CPU, 8 gigs of RAM and a 250GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD.
Installing the base system didn't take that long. Even getting X and Windowsmaker running was bearable.
But then I decided to install Chromium....that step alone took almost 24 hours...
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Keepin' the Funk alive since 1983! |
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Juippisi
Developer
Joined: 30 Sep 2005
Posts: 757
Location: /home
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| Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2018 4:35 am Post subject: |
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I ran stable Gentoo and used firefox-bin & libreoffice-bin on my Gentoo laptop.
However, in the end grew tired of compiling updates and installed Fedora.
There are lighter DE's that dont require qtwebkit or webkit-gtk, and really compile in few minutes. |
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steveL
Watchman
Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 5153
Location: The Peanut Gallery
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| Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2018 7:08 am Post subject: |
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| Jaglover wrote: | | Not everything can be distributed with distcc, I used to build in NFS chroot, zero load on weak PC and it's fast. |
Damn, that's a lovely idea.
Would love to see a write-up on the forums, when you have some downtime, headspace, and if you can be bothered. |
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