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What is the update frequency with Gentoo?
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xanrer
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 6:24 pm    Post subject: What is the update frequency with Gentoo? Reply with quote

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
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 6:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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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PostPosted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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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szatox
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 6:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 8:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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

:lol: 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
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 24, 2024 9:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
:lol: 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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