How was it using Gentoo in the early 2000s?

dmpogo · Advocate Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 3468 Location: Canada

Strange, nothing X related depends on rust on my machines

Nicom · Guru Joined: 30 Jan 2003 Posts: 380

It was fun reading over this thread! First ran Gentoo on my Pentium 3 450Mhz.

eccerr0r · Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2022 4:36 am Post subject:

Rust problem summary:

Rust is a huge program that takes as long as gcc to build.

Problems with rust:
- dev-lang/spidermonkey uses rust and is a dependency of polkit, which is subsequently used by systemd and optionally used by elogind. Polkit will use duktape instead, soon...
- gnome-base/librsvg is used by gtk+, and an older version of librsvg (mask all versions >=2.42 I believe) is available to allow some software to build without rust. Most desktop environments from mate to xfce4 use gtk+
- dev-util/cbindgen has rust but is used by....
- www-client/firefox uses rust.

With distcc help over the internet (only for the llvm portion), was able to build rust-1.58.1 on a Celeron-M 1.5GHz:
2022-01-29T09:14:14 >>> dev-lang/rust-1.58.1: 11:52:46
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lyallp · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2022 4:28 am Post subject:

I have been using Gentoo since around 2004 after moving from Mandrake Linux, and previously, Red Hat.

I have been using Gentoo ever since.

I have only done about 4 cold installs in total, generally because of new hardware or in a VM. Gentoo is such a long lived system.

One thing I do recall was the regular posts, 'Portage has xxxx ebuilds...' and the excitement when it various milestones.

Don't get them anymore...

I forget the hardware I ran it on then, maybe if I searched through the posts on this forum, I could find out

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Zucca · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2022 12:08 pm Post subject:

cjubon · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:10 pm Post subject:

1.) PIII 700 MHz

- I remember that I purchased one of the rare dual processor boards of that time (a second hand dual PIII), and that I was very proud that I could enable the "smp" use flag for the GIMP (now gone).

pandoraxero · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 10:59 pm Post subject:

My first Gentoo rig... as with all my test rigs I have ever used, was a repurposed older machine.
Specifically, it was a bunch of old parts my father, um... "acquired" from the "computer guys" at his job.
I got a Pentium II 250MHz and a board for it, as well as a new monitor which, oddly, had 5 BNC connectors and a VGA-to-5BNC cable.
After getting a budget Graphics Card (or maybe I used one I "acquired" from my high school a year or 2 prior) and a cheap HDD, I equipped the board with some older RAM modules I had lying around.
Then I installed Gentoo on it. I'm also fairly certain I equipped it with an rtl8139 network card.

Was it difficult? ...yes, but I suppose the difficulty would have been less extreme on a faster machine with more RAM. Being a broke college student sucks.
Gentoo has changed in many ways over the years - as trends change in Linux, Gentoo must eventually evolve.
I think most notably, the move from portage in /usr/portage to /var/db/repos/portage was the most confusing one for me.
I eventually got an Socket754 Athlon64. I believe it was a 3200+, though my memory is unclear - and that machine is long gone.
I did something a bit foolish and set ~amd64 globally. This eventually led to inability to update certain things, and that's why I don't use '~amd64' or '**' except where I absolutely need it.
If it weren't for that decision, I'd say gentoo is one of the easiest distros to use - you just have to not go about changing settings when you don't know what they'll do.

Other distros I had used to that point - Mandrake, Debian, Fedora, SuSE... they all had issues with dependency resolution.
While I'm sure that's less of an issue for Binary Distros today, I'd rather have options when it is a problem. Gentoo gives me those options.
That and the most popular distros seem to be pushing stuff like snaps and flatpaks and appimages way too hard. No thanks, I'll stick with Gentoo.

(EDIT:)
I think the other major change from back then is that Stage1 is no longer in the Handbook. My first install was a Stage1. It's still possible to do a Stage1 install, but supported? Not really.
If you want to do a Stage1 install, there's nothing stopping you, but my research suggests it's more of a "Developer" thing. I dunno. Any devs wanna comment on that one?

lyallp · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2023 12:58 am Post subject:

I still use Gentoo.

The only issue I have had is a VM in which I did no updates for a couple of years.

This resulted in a system that was 'un-updatable' as there where more than one circular dependencies required to bring the machine back to current. (could not update python because portage had to be updated and portage could not be updated without a python update, or something like that)

As a result, I found and have mirrored https://lyalls-pc.at.the-pearces.com/olde-distfiles, which can be used as a source of old builds that are no longer accessible elsewhere.
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sublogic · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2023 3:31 am Post subject:

Let's see, I have here an old decomissioned Averatec laptop. I think it has a flaky power connector ? Anyway... IT BOOTS !

Spanik · Veteran Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 1014 Location: Belgium

Don't think it was that different from what it is now. It just took a lot longer because of the stage 1. Think I first ran it on my dual Athlon.
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pandoraxero · Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 1:21 am Post subject:

Spanik · Veteran Joined: 12 Dec 2003 Posts: 1014 Location: Belgium

ValerieVonck · Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 7:13 am Post subject:

Tried to install way back in 2001 / 2002, in vmware (which was free at that time).
Never made it to through stage1 install due to limitations in hardware (hdd, 1GB ram, ...) and no patience
Forward to 2016-2017, when I discovered the videos of dasgregor on youtube.
Installed it on a Virtual Box, went without a problem.
Then I did a setup of KDE on that VM, build times of qtwebengine were ok at that time.
Bought a Hp Omen i7 6700 in May 17, I ran KDE on it until the buildtimes of qtwebengine spun out of control. (Vbox)
Then in 2018, bought a NUC, did a graphics install on it.
....
Recently, I did an LFS install in Virtualbox, this gave me a good idea of a Stage1 install.

My remarks:
- build times are ballooning (qtwebengine + 5hours :?:

on an i7 with 16GB of RAM)
- Introduction of Rust (plain & bindist)
- the tree is really becoming big
- dep graph is way more complex, and some libraries are soft blocked, without a way to resolve them (libffi)
- profile migrations (remember the 17 migration that was rollbacked)
- forced rebuilds due to Python migrations, migrated from 3.8 -> 3.9, then 3.9 -> 3.10 and now 3.11 which are taking a lot of time
- perl upgrades without triggering a pearl-cleaner --reallyall
- also, when a new GCC was introduced, the install / upgrade process was really good explained, now nothing is mentioned on the forums
-> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Upgrading_GCC still mentions gcc 5 and 4.1

- the earliest builds, IIRC, were much like LFS
- introduction of virtuals, build times are also getting much more longer
- IIRC, emerge went much smoother, now revdep-rebuild caused to much a rebuild of the webengine

Also, build times then an now, are much the same due to more complexity of the ebuilds and more dependencies...

You have to with what you have I guess ...

Kind regards,
V
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 9:42 am Post subject:

ValerieVonck,

Its been possible to mix and match output code from various versions of gcc, since gcc-6 or there abouts.
The update process has not been more than

ValerieVonck · Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 9:49 am Post subject:

flysideways · Guru Joined: 29 Jan 2005 Posts: 501

Don't forget to punch the code into your phone to disable call waiting before logging on. Call waiting crashed the fetch. Oh, and the lamp in the other room with a rheostat dimmer, it makes too much noise on the power line for the serial modem. That took a while to figure out.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20583

teika · Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:22 pm Post subject:

@pjp: Isn't it better to ask it at an appropriate forum? (Portage & programming?)
...on second thought, in EAPI=9 it may be possible to force rebuild of libtool after gcc upgrading.

Ha, ha, this thread is fun. In particular, it revealed that considerable number of us have been using Gentoo about 20 years!
This is another proof that Daniel Robbins did incredibly well, preparing so much of what's essential.

My first Gentoo was in 2005, on Celeron 466, 192Mb ram, and 20G HDD. :)
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ChrisJumper · Advocate Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 2403 Location: Germany

The Hardware changed a lot. And the Time was different. I was a early user of 56k Modems Internet and in Germany it takes some years to have Flatrates. I used Windows Systems on my first Computer and XP later, soon after 2003 i learn how to use Linux and Shell.. i love a Terminal.

Because it explain so much, every error clearly show you what went wrong or you could ask the Internet about the error. In 2003 google had was the first big search engine and had in that time a special code searching. It closed it some years later. Google was very different from what it is today. Now the whole Internet is mostly commercial.

Edward Snowden describe the Internet/Sociaty feeling perfect in his Book. It was a scum-bag but you get another free chance by change your alias. Now the internet and every computer is snitching on you and an A.I. try to identify and predict your future behavior. So on some art, Gentoo is free open source Math. But inside gnome and firefox you find snitching telemetry selling Datapoints too. Because its convenient and special security services sleep well if they know everyone.

I set up a Pentium Computer from 2000 to 2010th the last time, placed here, to update it on Windows XP to install a vintage software to flash the firmware of a Smartphone which is no longer available. Still it did not work! And it was hard to activate Windows Vista by Phone, without a Microsoft driver for the Microsoft Xbox-HD-DVD Device, but ok the device was from the future. Linux and Gentoo compared to that is like alien-technology from another Dimension.

Still it is today. If you choose your Code well you can be free, like with a book and reading or doing math. You can life and build your experience, placed on a solid ground.

I compiled some packages for tow or three days on my slow computer. But everything was running fine, more stable and quicker then every other computer system i had access too. This is why i still use gentoo.

The next big thing is a pinephone or a Librem. But stay with command line, ssh scripts and tmux/screen!