New user: How stable is Gentoo?

WWWW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Nov 2014 Posts: 143

I can't say anything about about gnome3 since I don't use it and it's a monster on its own and has nothing to do with the stability of the OS.

As for Gentoo linux, I have to say that over the years has become rock solid even while doing experimental and non-standard installs.

If you are starting with Gentoo it's important to understand that it's very different than any other OS out there. A great system to learn lot's of stuff.

Gentoo is not for everyone but by using it it will give you an overview of the variety of tools and packages out there to do things. After this you will adapt Gentoo to your needs and wants.

Patience is important in order to absorb many concepts of Gentoo and time to achieve results which are two things needed to learn something.

People have mentioned here USE flags, this is something unique to Gentoo but this is one detail of Gentoo. Another interesting place is make.conf. Yet another one that I often find a torture is make menuconfig. Etc... you'll have to deal with many config places something that's not an issue on binary distros as everything is pre-digested for you.

Recently, as like couple years, I've been surprised how stable is ~amd64 compared to early days even at the current trend of fast pace versioning.

So I think you at a better moment now with Gentoo than early days with crazy stage 1, etc...

I recomend you to hang out in gentoo IRC channels, the forums and bugzilla for support. Or call Gentoo customers services, I forgot the phone number though.

There's nothing unstable about Gentoo, in fact binary distros, debian, suse, arch, butuntu sometimes make it harder for you to do things the way you want it as they rely heavily on automation, auto-starts, and services restarts the moment they are killed that many times get in the way.

arrivederci.

ct85711 · Veteran Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 1791

I will give one warning, that is most frequently an issue that keeps coming up. Gentoo is NOT designed to be forgotten about after you install it, you need to update regularly. Failure to do so will run a very high chance of issues. I recommend updating about weekly to every other week, monthly at the very least. The longer of amount of time between updates, more packages needs updated increasing the chance for more issues.

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

Most new users don't know what they are doing, because they are learning.
And any system that is handle this way can only be unstable.
So, i think it is that: "New user: how stable is gentoo" -> totally unstable because you're new.

hasufell · Retired Dev Joined: 29 Oct 2011 Posts: 429

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2015 2:56 pm Post subject:

hasufell,

My advice to a newcomer is that thare is a lot to learn, so stick with defaults as far as you can while you get started.
There is time enough to explore optional things later, including other package managers.

To begin with, I would advise against Gnome, to avoid the switch to systemd too.

Learn to swim in the shallows. Once you learn you only swim in the top 0.5m of the water and get your confidence, swim where you like.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

hasufell · Retired Dev Joined: 29 Oct 2011 Posts: 429

eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2015 3:32 pm Post subject:

DanielC · n00b Joined: 07 Sep 2015 Posts: 25 Location: Sweden

DanielC · n00b Joined: 07 Sep 2015 Posts: 25 Location: Sweden

davidm · Guru Joined: 26 Apr 2009 Posts: 557 Location: US

alinefr · Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 2:08 am Post subject:

I've started using Gentoo in 2007 or 2008. As a FreeBSD fan, Gentoo was the closest choice in the Linux world. In that time one of the things that bothered me about Gentoo was the USE flags. Because the default options was never OK. I had to spend a lot of time tweaking every kind of USE flag... while in FreeBSD you could deal in a more easy way in a single file (/etc/make.conf) and not hassle at all.

Recently, after some time outside of the Gentoo world, I decided to give Gentoo another chance. And I'm very impressed! I can clearly see how much the distro improved, it sound a lot more stable than ever. The USE flags, where in the past it was a lot more painful, now it seems like "it just works!". Most of my tweaks are about things that I really don't want or that I really want to tweak! It still takes some time to build from scratch in the first time. I had some issues, but most of then is hardware related, which affects most of the distros. But as Gentoo is source based it is a lot easier to fix than it would be in a binary distro. (Patches for ex, is fantastic to be able to apply then by just dropping the diffs in /etc/portage/patches).

So, it may take some effort to build your system. My Gentoo installations, from scratch can takes weeks, but that also because I run awesome wm, but Gnome should work out of the box, with minimal tweaks at all. Just keep yourself outside ~amd64 as much as you can and you should have a rock solid stable Linux system.

ct85711 · Veteran Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 1791

I remembered when I first started using Gentoo, in that it easily took me 2-3 days just to get my base system setup. Now days, the general installation has significantly improved to bypass some of the common pitfalls. For me, I chose to use ~amd64 straight off from the get go, and I admit I ran into issues. The one thing that is available, is numerous postings of similar problems in the forums. For example, some of the most common issue you will see in over half the issues, is a blocked package or a slot conflict. Most times you can easily solve your issue yourself by looking at similar postings and doing something similar on actions (I know, that means you have to do some work...)

WWWW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Nov 2014 Posts: 143

Gentoo is not unstable, the question is not properly formulated to begin with.

Here's a list of things that will help you know better the inner workings of Gentoo.

To have the system working properly there are a series of concepts and utilities that you will need to get aquiented with.

*GENTOO IS A SOURCE BASED DISTRO, NOT BINARY*

* Gentoo handbook.

* Associated and extra documentation.

https://www.gentoo.org/support/documentation/

An important skill is to be able to search the right guide for a specific step. An example are the GPU adapters:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Category:Graphics_Adapters

But the GPU is not the only place where there's specialized documentation, you will gain much from reading on all your hardware related docus.

* GCC and make.conf

* GCC toolchain, get to know what is it.

* CFLAGS in make.conf. ( -march=native is ok but there are some other interesting ones). This deals with CPU's instructions capabilities.

* make menuconfig: the kernel configuration interface. Which leads to the following point.

* KNOW YOUR HARDWARE. Very important for configuring the kernel and understand other things. For this there a few helpful tools:

* lspci, lsusb, dmesg commands. Specifically helpfuls is: lspci -k. This leads to the following point.

* Get to know and use the right linux and gentoo utilities/tools: emerge, eix (very important and powerful package that's not default), euse, ls, cd.

* Sub section, learn linux commands.

* Again more documentation, this time for each tool/utility with man pages. I don't know how proficient you are with linux, but Gentoo relies exclusively in command line.

* Understand the difference Gentoo's emerge system and emerge world.

* Learn ALL associated files and directories associated with portage.

* GENTOO IS BIG ON SOFTWARE OPTIMIZATION. An example is eix. This one can be installed with default USE flags but then it has more USE flags options associated with optimization sometimes they are tricky and need special attention to what they do.

* What's optimization? This is tightly related to GCC and you CPU instructions set. Broadly means that adapts the binary to your CPU instructions. Meaning that a binary/program might run better an a i7 than a on an Atom. By optimization means that GCC has make the program to run only on i7 cpu and will not run on an Atom. Normaly the solution to run accross cpu types and generations is for GCC to make a binary with generic CFLAG. Most if not all the distros ship with such an option.

* GENTOO IS BIG ON OPTIONS: shells options, window managers options, boot options. So you will have always to think which one pleases the most to use. A few typical ones:

screen / tmux
vim / emacs
bash / zsh
filesystems (important file here to know /etc/fstab)

And as someone stated above start with:

openrc
eudev

Start with Windows Managers then jump to a full blown DE. To be hones I see no reason to use a bloated DE. DE is not really a solution but an effort to copy m$$ and o$$x bloats.

Finally just hang out in irc #gentoo and the forums.

enjoy the journey, cheers!

WWWW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Nov 2014 Posts: 143

DanielC · n00b Joined: 07 Sep 2015 Posts: 25 Location: Sweden

Wallsandfences · Guru Joined: 29 Mar 2010 Posts: 378

For me, it's a trade between stability and customizing everything to my workflow.

While other distros might be more stable (but what apart from debian and its ecosystem would that be?) the picture changes when you try to tweak your programs and (gnome) desktop to your needs. This tweaking is inherently supported in gentoo, but not in ubuntu and the likes.

And it's lean in comparison too...

Rüdiger

Wallsandfences · Guru Joined: 29 Mar 2010 Posts: 378

On a second thought, it's also a trade between saving time due to customized workflow against having to hassle once a week with a potentially 'emerge update' going bork...

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2015 9:11 am Post subject:

On a second thought, gentoo used to be rock stable on ~amd64.

REcently I encountered many issues regarding ebuilds / missing dependencies / unconfirmable bugs.

nvidia-drivers are a mess regarding ebuilds and newest kernel branch. Unconfirmed, not fixed ebuilds. Portage complaining about errors which do not exists, because of poor coding style, untesting push to offical portage

ncurses crashed two of my boxes. sadly ncurses is basically needed for bash, which is needed to fix a box. weird behaviour.
considering i run in this issue on two of my boxes on different update shedule.
one box is updated regularly, the other every 3-6 weeks. the second box should have not been affected by this. means the developers did not test very well this bug / behaviour or did not knew what they did. Also first only slot 0 was pulled in than both slots and than only one slot. the ebuild also did not build on any of my boxes with different gccs and similar penyrn cpus and different use-flags settings. so any claims that it is make.conf fault or gcc fault is rather irrelevant.

circular dependencies of packages => especially when you try to emerge k3b. => kdelibs fails because of kate, and other junk... (Talking about stable 4 branch, kde 4 type, not kde 5)

Bugs stay unconfirmed for ages on gentoo bugzilla. really not worht bothering and as this also reflects why we have so many issues recenlty because old stuff is hardly fixed. it just stays unconfirmed for anything.

I will change soon my hardware and therefore also drives. If i really keep on gentoo, i doubt.
Too much hassle, unmaintained packages. too much duct tape recently. the developers used to reply to bugs on gentoo bugzilla in the past or at least gave a nastry response, nothing recently...

I also expect when i emerge kde4 on gcc 4.9.3 or gcc 5.2 that it builds. it does not even built on gcc 4.7 slot...

i doubt calculate or any other gentoo distro can be worser as recenlty bugs i encountered.

Dr.Willy · Guru Joined: 15 Jul 2007 Posts: 547 Location: NRW, Germany

ct85711 · Veteran Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 1791

I do agree, I've been noticing that Gentoo's bugzilla has been going down hill lately. The last few times, I submitted a bug report, one took over 6-8 months before anything happen to fix a run-time error, and I even attached a patch to fix it (which was already approved by upstream). It is also like, I've try to submit a bug report for new version bumps for packages in the tree with an updated ebuild attached, and even those take way too long to go through the chain (I have one of those open, which I am soon going to close it myself because of inactivity). I'm not even going to get into how some of the devs (at least one for sure) are responding to bug reports for nothing.

While I won't leave Gentoo (because it is one of few that straight out supports openrc), I am beginning to think again about helping out by submitting patches and updated ebuilds.

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2015 9:45 pm Post subject:

Recently i found lint in /usr/include/boost_xxx_xxx which was lint from obsolete sloting of boost.

The workaround was rm -r /usr/include/boost_xxx_xxx => Because only /usr/include/boost is allowed !

hasufell gave me the right answer after I asked in bugs.gentoo.org regarding an ebuild where i saw boost linked to a non existing version which was lint for the package boost.

Happened 2 days ago. So my claim that i find every 2 week something which is a showstopper is sadly true.
only running ~amd64. and that happened long time before i switched to newest glibc + gcc

revdep rebuild did also not complain but i was unable to build mkvtoolnix. The only solution which i found after weeks, today, was to rebuild wxwidgets, and some other libaries, and after that mkvtoolnix built finally.

My box is really screwed up recently, for the branch ~amd64.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8938

ct85711 · Veteran Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 1791

tw04, from what you are talking about sound like it can very well happen on the stable branch too. The reason that it can happen on stable branch too, is specifically because slotting is on stable branch too. The one main reason why it hasn't happened on stable yet, is mostly because of how infrequent the slot changes. Once more versions/slots show up, the same issue will pop up once again.

The same on circular dependencies, it happens on stable branch too; especially when dealing with gnome/kde with everything depending on each other so much.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8938

khumba · n00b Joined: 16 Jun 2011 Posts: 51