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xanrer
n00b
Joined: 18 Nov 2024
Posts: 13
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 Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 6:24 pm Post subject: What is the update frequency with Gentoo? |
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| Hello, I'm thinking on migrating to Gentoo after extensive testing. My biggest pain point with Arch was how bleeding edge it was. How is the update cycle with Gentoo? Is it way to fast like Arch or is it like OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, which is usually tested rather well. I'm not asking this for just binaries either. I want to know about source repos too. |
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rfx
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 19 Apr 2023
Posts: 143
Location: de-by
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 6:35 pm Post subject: |
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I only use stable and compile myself and in a long period of time I've only had a problem once after updating Grub. For me it looks very good tested
I'm very curious what the unstable users say about this threat xD |
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NeddySeagoon
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Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54586
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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Welcome to Gentoo.
The ::gentoo repo is updated every 30 minuets. :)
You are not expected to keep up with that.
Therre are two 'branches'in the repo, stable and testing.
There are also a smattering af 'live' commit by commit packages too.
By default you will have stable, denoted by ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="arch"
If you want sometingthat moves a bit faster, there is testing, denoted by ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~arch"
That requires you to set that. It's also possible to mix and match.
Using 'live' packages can only be done on a package by package basis.
That's just the start, it covers what is available to you.
How often you update your Gentoo is up to you.
The longer you leave it the harder it gets.
Monthly is fine for stable. More often for testing.
If you leave it a year, it's still possible but you will learn things about Gentoo you can learn no other way
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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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szatox
Advocate
Joined: 27 Aug 2013
Posts: 3448
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 6:52 pm Post subject: |
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You can update easily on any interval between daily and monthly. After that things get increasingly more difficult, depending on the time passed and your luck. Stories of updates delayed by a year or two pop up now then then as well. Obviously, this path is pretty much for masochists only.
Both, stable and testing branch tend to work. Downloadable stage3 tarballs are stable, you can update to testing at any time with a simple change to accept_keywords.
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xanrer
n00b
Joined: 18 Nov 2024
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 8:45 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | Welcome to Gentoo.
If you leave it a year, it's still possible but you will learn things about Gentoo you can learn no other way |
 That's ominous. I'm fine by just updating every other week so this works out for me. Thank you for the kind introduction! |
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bstaletic
Guru
Joined: 05 Apr 2014
Posts: 377
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 9:14 pm Post subject: |
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| rtx wrote: | | I'm very curious what the unstable users say about this threat xD |
I have been summoned!
Stable is fine, but there are some packages in portage that are ~amd64 only. One example is x11-misc/xcape.
You will either occasionally have to file stable requests or accept ~amd64 packages.
Stable also has the added benefit of binhosts, as binhosts do not provide testing binaries.
Globally accepting testing "solves" the above problem and has been surprisingly stable in my experience.
Instead of stable requests, I do occasionally file actual bug reports, like the latest tmux version messing up xterm's terminfo (or something like that).
There's also occasional issues in the portage tree itself, but those are fixed within hours. If one really wanted to update today... just wait a bit and it will sort itself out.
Stable also takes too long to stabilize a new gcc/clang/python major version. I know there are excellent reasons for that, but I want to play with new features of compilers!
| xanrer wrote: | | NeddySeagoon wrote: |
Welcome to Gentoo.
If you leave it a year, it's still possible but you will learn things about Gentoo you can learn no other way |
That's ominous. I'm fine by just updating every other week so this works out for me. Thank you for the kind introduction! |
Maybe it sounds ominous, but it's very true. On the bright side, you have this forum as a helping hand if you do decide to tempt fate after some years of gentoo collecting dust. You wouldn't be the first!
| xanrer wrote: | | How is the update cycle with Gentoo? |
I would say Gentoo testing is comparable with non-testing Arch. Well, assuming I remember well how Arch [testing] looked.
Gentoo stable is considerably slower.
One key difference between arch and gentoo testing is that gentoo is a lot more flexible, so it's easier to fix things when something breaks. |
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wjb
l33t
Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 633
Location: Fife, Scotland
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| Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 9:34 pm Post subject: |
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it all depends how often you run
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eschwartz
Developer
Joined: 29 Oct 2023
Posts: 232
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| Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2024 12:01 am Post subject: Re: What is the update frequency with Gentoo? |
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| xanrer wrote: | | Hello, I'm thinking on migrating to Gentoo after extensive testing. My biggest pain point with Arch was how bleeding edge it was. How is the update cycle with Gentoo? Is it way to fast like Arch or is it like OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, which is usually tested rather well. I'm not asking this for just binaries either. I want to know about source repos too. |
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Arch, and Gentoo are all rolling release distros, so you will get package updates as they become available / tested for stability rather than having new OS versions once every couple of years. In a lot of ways, the experience will be somewhat similar between the three.
Considering the *stable* branches of each (if you use unstable branches, then well, you have agreed to use unstable branches, eh?):
Arch typically packages new versions as soon as they are available, and updating will get you that exact bleeding-edge new version. No getting around that, with the exception of core packages used for booting which also require being signed off by two people who have tested and verified that the package works for them on their machine, and in some cases, *if and only if* the Arch maintainer is particularly worried about that package, an undefined period of time spent with that package in testing. I'm not sure what OpenSUSE Tumbleweed's policy is. Gentoo typically requires a 30-day testing period for each package after it is updated before it gets marked as stable, and this policy is kept fairly consistently (with certain carefully tested exceptions for security stabilizations, usually of backported fixes).
Gentoo is thus, per definition, less bleeding edge and more well tested than Arch is. Issues are usually smoked out by people testing out the unstable branch long before the whole 30 days are up.
| xanrer wrote: | | NeddySeagoon wrote: | Welcome to Gentoo.
If you leave it a year, it's still possible but you will learn things about Gentoo you can learn no other way |
That's ominous. I'm fine by just updating every other week so this works out for me. Thank you for the kind introduction! |
It's a bit of a fun joke.  If you leave a linux distro for too long, you are prone to getting package transitions disappear, and updating results in unresolvable conflicts.
As a Gentoo Dev that used to fulfill the similar role in Arch, if you leave Arch for a year without updating you will learn things about Arch you cannot learn any other way too.  Expect some interesting binary repository bisection with the Arch Linux Archive, and possibly requiring to use a special pacman-static build to perform updates.
Gentoo isn't too dissimilar. You can sometimes get into hairy update situations if you leave it for over a year, then try to update, and discover that one package has been updated and replaced by another package, and another package gained/dropped a dependency on that package, and now you have no route to migrating from the original package without breaking the other package that you need. The package manager will then abort with a dependency resolution error, and say it cannot plot a path to upgrading.
Upgrading once every month or two is a fairly well-tested routine, in both distros. And I've never met or heard of a "too long without upgrading" problem in either distro, that couldn't be solved by first upgrading to the version of the repository from 3 months after your last update, then 6 months, then 9 months, then 12 months. Just update in snapshots, it takes maybe 4 steps, and then you're all better.
Gentoo's official policy is that it should always be possible to upgrade systems that are only a single year out of date. Therefore if that fails, it's surely a bug. Whether people regularly test this, is another question entirely. |
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