Back after a "short" hiatus - gentoo goes binary?!

[decuser]

Well, it's always fun to return to a site after a bit:

[superjaded]

Maybe a dumb question but have you already read the news item about the binary host? That should answer most of your questions with respect to the divergence between a "traditional" install. The binary package quickstart may be worth a skim too.

I've not used the new binary host, but I do manage several machines using my own binhost. The install process is not any different except that you need to use the --getbinpkg parameters on emerge in order for it to attempt pulling packages from the binrepos. The stage3 tarballs may come with the binrepos defined by default now, but I don't think emerge will attempt to pull from them by default.

You may want to add --getbinpkg to your EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS so it tries to pull binaries by default.

[decuser]

Well... yeah, I read 'em, but they're pretty much written to an active gentoo audience. My knowledge of gentoo is stale, at best . I was hoping for a "new to gentoo, here's how to get started down the binary road" type doc.

[mid-kid]

You might be hitting a combination of USE flags that don't have packages available also. Keep in mind that only the packages part of @system for the profiles listed in the news post are available.
Gentoo might never be useful as a purely-binary distribution, but the binrepos are supposed to make it a bit less painful at least.

[Hu]

With the caveats that I was not involved in the Gentoo binary packages project as a developer and have not personally used it, my understanding is that this is just a shortcut that, when you get lucky, will mean you do not need to build a given package. You still need to configure the system as if you will never get lucky and will always be building locally. When you get lucky, you get a speedup by downloading the binary instead of building something. This is notably different from the binary distributions, which default to not being able to self-host and rely on routinely downloading prebuilt packages.

OP: Did you make it to 300,000 miles?

[decuser]

OK. It's starting to make sense - do a basic install, configure for binary packages, sometimes it'll be sure quick, other times, it'll compile. I just may be in the mood to try it all over again!

[NeddySeagoon]

decuser,

Gentoo today is nothing like you may remember from 2003.
In case you need a remnder :)
Yep, its a real working 09-April-2003 install.

As Hu says, the official binhost is effectively a shortcut.
To maximise your 'luck' use the same profile and USE settings as were used to build the packages in the binhost.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

[decuser]

Wow! That's spectacular archaeology right there! I am warming up by the minute for the challenge of figuring it all out again, but this time with a lot better unix knowhow behind me. Thanks for the link. I was thinking the binary road would be "easy" and fun, but I think the traditional, source route will be the way I wind up going. I really would like to know more about how things work underneath all of the gui widgetry I use with Mint/MX .

[myga]

Well, this sounds kinda @$$hole-ish! source.

[sam_]

[eeckwrk99]

[NeddySeagoon]

myga,

Users with a source based install to their credit will be aware of the effects on a gentoo install of building your own packages.

For user that wanted a binary distro with all the limitation oy a binary distro, that spells out clearly.
You can have a binary distro of Gentoo but it has all the limitations of any other binary distro.
I suspect that most binary distro users are not even aware of them.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

[flysideways]

Content that belongs in the deprecated OTW seems, well, unseemly, in gentoo.org.

[mrbassie]