Beginning of the end

fusibou · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 109

This week, I have managed to do two amazingly stupid screwups of my gentoo system. I've been using gentoo for 1.5-2 years now so I should know better. I am coming to the unhappy conclusion that I spend too much time tinkering with my machines. It it were just a matter of improvement then fine, but I never seem satisfied unless I'm upgrading this or that.

The result is my system is often a little bit broken in some way. Never anything major (until now) but just enough that I seem to spend more time getting the "latest x/y/z" to work instead of just enjoying a working system.

I am running the 2.6.6 kernel, gcc 3.4, gnome 2.7.1, glibc 2.3.3 with nptl (i think that's the right #) udev, etc. etc. But it wasn't enough. So I screwed up my /var/db/pkg then I screwed up my glibc.

This reminds me of working at home connected to the Internet vs. working in a library at a study carrel. One is far less productive than the other and the reason is the capacity for distraction. Gentoo represents a fun tinkerer's toolbox. I spend too much time tinkering. It gets a little addictive, as sick as that sounds.

Since I wrecked my laptop system so thoroughly, I'm wiping my (unused and ignored) windows partition on it and installing Debian Unstable because I need to use my laptop to get work done. Perhaps I'll find apt-get too interesting and be forced to move to pen and paper.

It's a little crazy to find myself always mucking with my system, particularly when it was working perfectly fine. Gentoo is fabulous and the community is fabulous. But it's too addictive and fixing this latest disastrous mistake will take too much time (ie. a reinstall).

I still have two Gentoo desktops but one is my wife's (I tried to upgrade a bunch of stuff for her and ended up breaking a whole bunch of other things... so I had to roll back which was easy but time-consuming) and the other is packed away for a coming move.

Thanks for reading.

asimon · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 2:21 pm Post subject:

Autosuggestion may help too ;-)

HydroSan · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 4:26 pm Post subject:

I have the same problem. It's partially the reason I keep my second strongest box on Windows, which virtually eliminates tinkering. Gentoo is fun, but it becomes obsessive with me whoring packages.gentoo.org and waiting FOR THE NEXT BLOODY XORG RELEASE OMGGGG!!!!111six I find myself going "Hmmm, lets try this... or that! OR THAT! OR THAT!!!!" I've recently put off studying for my exams because of it. :shock:

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Twitchy · n00b Joined: 06 Jun 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Indiana, USA

rittalin(sp?) could help you...

asimon · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 5:33 pm Post subject:

bobhesketh · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Scotland

I'm always tinkering and messing stuff up. Part of the fun really

Every time I get a setup I like I image the drive to a separate partition. That way, when I next screw it up, as I surely will :wink:

I know I can put it back as I wanted. I did make sure to move /usr/portage/distfiles to a separate drive though (the images were getting ridiculously large).

I use Bootit-NG to do the images, though I'm sure there's a free alternative.

Bob

P.S. after struggling for *weeks* with Debian, I've since zapped it, and shredded all the CDRs that I created from it. It's truly awful.

placeholder · Advocate Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Posts: 2500

fusibou · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 109

Well, it's mid afternoon and my notebook is now running Debian unstable with working printing and scanning. I see no performance difference (this is a PIII-700 256MB RAM) despite the fact I dropped a Gentoo 2.6 kernel with udev and nptl for a 2.4.26 Debian stock kernel and I'm quite pleased actually with how well the software was integrated automatically during installation.

It certainly is a lot faster to install software with Debian and I still get to run gnome-2.6.1 and with the power (like Gentoo) to choose what packages to install I don't waste space, Debian's aptitude and its GUI friend synaptic allow for easy browsing of available packages which is quite helpful. Adding debian servers to the configuration that include non-free software opens up dvd-css and all sorts of other stuff (like non-GPL games)

As for Gentoo USE variables, they have bitten me far more often than helped (ie. oh, fix that problem by adding YYY use variable and re-compiling!)

It was fun. So long and thanks for being a great community.

mrmodin · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 7:27 pm Post subject:

Addictive, yes. Thats one of the reasons why I have stopped using gentoo att all for now (have more important stuff to do (read school)).

asimon · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 8:44 pm Post subject:

But isn't your problem actually distribution independent? At least I don't see any reason why you can't do all those things you wrote in that first message on Debian -- or any other distribution -- too.

dmoulton · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 9:57 pm Post subject:

aethyr · Veteran Joined: 06 Apr 2003 Posts: 1085 Location: NYC

oiper · Guru Joined: 01 May 2003 Posts: 316 Location: Alabama, US

... I'm in on the "What was I thinking trying to get X(not "X" or "X.org" related) to work the night before my X exam!?!??!" I've recently overcome my addition, but only through some moderate depression coupled with a believe that all software, and thus all operating systems(somewhat excluding small portable electronics), are simple going to suck severely until a great while down the road. .... Highest level programming language = "Computer, please make me a cool op. sys. that does this:..." Now if I can just find a way to live until 2121.

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Deebster · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Nov 2003 Posts: 126

baz0 · n00b Joined: 04 Jun 2004 Posts: 6

[quote="fusibou"]Adding debian servers to the configuration that include non-free software opens up dvd-css and all sorts of other stuff (like non-GPL games).[/quote]

sure it does and then it breaks the package manager!

been there, done that...

:wink:

superjaded · l33t Joined: 05 Jul 2002 Posts: 802

Heh, kind of funny that I stumbled upon this thread whilst I was waiting for an "emerge -puDv world" to finish before I went to get some dinner.

But meh, I'm a procrastinator by nature.
If it's not gentoo distracting me from something I don't want to do but should it would be either one of my four gaming systems, my dvd player, fansubs or foobar2000 (if I ran Windows) keeping me distracted.

What's one more distraction, I figure.

* sj fires off his "emerge -uD world" and goes to dinner.

Syntaxis · Guru Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 511 Location: London, UK