The "Gentoo effect"?

dArkMaGE · Apprentice Joined: 20 Apr 2002 Posts: 152

maybe vim depends on extra libs that they dont want to include?
anyways, theyll have to include nano no matter what (or some other basic editor) because even though vim is great if youve never used it before (and yes those people do exist) its really nice to use an editor like nano that lists all the important commands right on the screen for you

*lets go popular*

clee · n00b Joined: 24 Apr 2002 Posts: 14 Location: AZ

Well, they don't have to include vim. nvi is what Debian includes, and it's quite tiny. As a matter of fact, it's one third the size of nano (on my PowerPC, anyway).

masseya · Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2002 3:16 am Post subject: SuperTab Rules!

dArkMaGE · Apprentice Joined: 20 Apr 2002 Posts: 152

maybe they should include emacs too so you can talk to the psychiatrist while everything compiles

jonemi · Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2002 4:08 am Post subject:

masseya · Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2002 4:08 am Post subject: emacs..

Well, if emacs is half as good as it's users claim it is, all they would have to do is include emacs and your machine would install itself.

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Guest · Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2002 8:09 am Post subject:

can't resist...

i started with linux many years ago...one of my sisters boyfriends gave me a slackware cd (for some reason 0.9.8 rings a bell). Anyway, a few years ago i was working for a company and their red hat boxes kepted getting hacked, so i checked out openbsd and fell in love. that lead to freebsd when i needed an SMP os. Now i've found gentoo for my desktop and i absolutely love it. A BIG thank you to all who work on it. Although, i still won't abandon my BSD's for the servers...if you love gentoo, and need a nice os for your servers, check out openbsd and freebsd if you haven't already.

st0w · n00b Joined: 25 Apr 2002 Posts: 4 Location: NYC

Guest --

Well, gotta throw in my $0.02 since I'm finishing up installing Gentoo on the laptop as we speak. I started off with Slackware many years back (8 or so?), and then soon after found BSD. I liked Slack and Linux, but as a budding programmer at the time I was introduced to FreeBSD by a mentor type and it's what I started with and grew to love. I liked (and still do) that BSD is so easily tweakable -- just edit a text file and you're done. Ports collection is amazing. Fast, stable, and doesn't come with tons of things you don't need. When I found OpenBSD a year or so after that, I was completely enamored with it. OBSD 2.2 I believe. "You mean I have to manually input the sector/track/block info?!?!? COOL!" heh heh

So I've been in the BSD camp for MANY years now. I'm a sysadmin and developer, and run a large network of Solaris and RedHat (ugh... not my choice..) boxes serving up one of of the largest web sites in the world. (Dual gigabit feeds -- but I won't say which large corporation I'm talking about) And last week, along came Gentoo. One of my closest friends, another BSD head, started going nuts about it. So I started reading. And became more and more impressed. Just as others have said when converting, you guys have taken everything I loved about BSD and put it into a Linux distro that has already had everything I disliked about the other Linuxes removed -- so now I get support for all these devices BSD didn't have. Wow!

Honestly, this is just what I've been looking for in a desktop *nix -- fast, completely streamlined/built the way I want, yet still maintains the Linux advantages such as the large driver and application support base.

Kudos to the developers! You've converted yet another!
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dice · Guru Joined: 21 Apr 2002 Posts: 577

st0w, I like your sig :lol:

Brent Jackson · n00b Joined: 25 Apr 2002 Posts: 6 Location: Boone, NC

I've been running Linux since fall of 1995 (go Slackware). At first it wasn't my primary OS since some of my hardware didn't have drivers and such. I think about fall 1997 is when I went 100% Linux... running mostly slackware, but trying other distros along the way (redhat, debian, mandrake... etc). About two or three months ago I started hearing about gentoo, I downloaded one of the first pre 1.0 cds... toyed with it for about 20 minutes, then became distracted with something and didn't try it again until 1.1a.

Props to get gentoo development crew, that install was damned slick. I am still getting the hang of gentoo (different file structure and such) but I think that once I get used to it fully I will never switch (unless gentoo goes under or something).

Now back to trying to figure out how to setup my /etc/conf.d/pure-ftpd file... growl

Brent

True · Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2002 9:55 pm Post subject:

I've been using Linux for about four years now, two professionaly. I first heard about Gentoo a few months ago mainly from seeing references to it in Daniel Robbins excellent IBM documents. When it hit 1.0 I thought I'd give it a try.

I read through the documentation and it seemed so clear and well written that even though it looked like a tough install (ala Debian) I thought I'd give it a go. Two weeks later and I've installed it on my home PC, my company laptop and am currently testing it on an IBM server.

It feels like Linux just took a massive step forward with Gentoo. This really is what Linux should be - for the first time! My only issue arose with the IBM server - I wanted to setup Apache / SSL / Tomcat (a quick emerge was enough) but I found the install put stuff in places that I wasn't farmiliar with. I guess it's just a learning curve but I couldn't get apache running with SSL.

I would like to say *thanks* to all Gentoo developers. Suddenly Linux became fun again!

Respect
Andy

Guest · Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2002 10:31 am Post subject:

Gentoo is great i love it after 2 years of RedHat now

The only downside is nano

I need vi
in every file there is an i before typing and a :wq when i was done.
hate that.

If you say Unix cq Linux then you say vi not nano

But it workes great
Now i going to try to install it on a Compaq Proliant ML370 with 5i SCSI controller

static · Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2002 1:39 pm Post subject:

SubZero · n00b Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 17 Location: Brazil

Me too! All files now has a :wq, and when I use vi, it get crazy with my ^X and so on...

And about the slash used to search? I have some files with / too.

billatq · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 96

I'd hopped from a couple of bad linux distros, (Red Hat Comes to mind) which were even more bloated than windows before I hit FreeBSD. I was pretty happy with that, but my only problems involved support for all of my hardware and fast releases of software through ports. Then a FreeBSD guy told me about gentoo and I haven't gone back running it on my desktop since. Given, the server stuff is definitely FreeBSD, but gentoo is awesome otherwise. I love the portage system for handling my software fix and my brothers like it because they can easily install software on their linux machines without having to know how to do it the old way.

Kilian · n00b Joined: 24 Jun 2002 Posts: 74 Location: Canada

I've definately got to say, having tried pretty much every distro under the sun (and possibly a few over it), I have never seen a better linux system then the one gentoo provides. Perhaps not the most newbie friendly, but he who tries to keep everyone happy quickly learns to appreciate failure ;p

Great job guys, keep up the excellent work.

karl11 · Guru Joined: 25 Jun 2002 Posts: 469 Location: Raleigh, NC

I have been using SuSE Linux for the last 8 months and Mandrake for 4 months before that. SuSE, to me, defined what a great linux distro should be, but it still had a lot of broken stuff. They hadn't taken care of dependency issues and several things like NASM were not included. Two weeks ago I felt that urge to change distros. SuSE just wasn't as configurable or cooperative as I wanted. I began to read about Gentoo and was just absolutely amazed by what I was reading but slightly intimidated by the long install instructions. Nevertheless, having the desire to learn everything about Linux that I can, I completely wiped my system and started with Gentoo. Wow! Everything has been great ever since! I can't imagine using another distro of linux at this point, and if I ever do change it won't be to an RPM based distro. RPM is great if you have enough free time to work out dependencies on your own....lol....ie...you have no life. Gentoo has truly been a turning point in my linux usage and is serving well as the ONLY OS on my computer. I can't wait until they fix everything for GCC 3.1!!

Karl Abbott
"Once a penguin, always a penguin."

dmcaul · n00b Joined: 14 Apr 2002 Posts: 16 Location: Ireland

Hi there.
I'd just like to add my own high praise for Gentoo. I've been a keen Debian user for 2 years now, (after some experiments with RedHat, SuSE and OpenBSD) running a LAN server and workstation on it. I really liked debian, and still do, but over time I've felt it's really unsuited to being used on a high-performance desktop box (even woody is looking old and it's not even released yet). Casting around for alternatives was not easy though, as the other distros I looked at seemed to lack the kind of thoroughness, ease of package management, and general design quality I liked with Debian. And then I found gentoo.

I was impressed by its package management system, the thoroughness and depth of its capabilities which appear much better than apt, and decided to give it was worth a try (even over a modem connection - I was impressed enough to sit downloading for days).

And I started installing it on my desktop 3 days ago, and every single thing has installed perfectly on the first attempt - even sound, the kernel build, the whole shebang. Now to have fun, and to finally set up a decent non-windows desktop box. Thank you Gentoo.

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dmason · n00b Joined: 13 Jul 2002 Posts: 14

I would also like to throw my experience with gentoo into this discussion, I have been attempting to use linux for about 8 months now in earnest. Starting mainly with redhat, then going to mandrake, suse, slackware, an attempt at debian, and a few trips back to redhat inbetween, and when I heard about this particular one, and I am now glad that I did, even though I did struggle though the install process, I did print out all of the install guides that I would need to create a workstation. This has also been the most intense learning experience so far with linux, actually having to set config files was actually good for me because I really don't know too much about how this system works. But, after 3 days of struggle, I have built this system, it now works for the most part, and I am actually very impressed with how portage works. It kicks rpm's ass in every possible category of a package management system. Now if only I would have learned the flags for optimizing for athlon XP processors earlier..
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Shak · Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 9:14 am Post subject:

Again, Ive become a gentoo freak in a matter of days, I nearly know the install process off by heart, and am trying to help out in #gentoo on openprojects.net

Its interesting to know about the j switch as I will need to edit it in my SMP gentoo installer

Shak

tyreth · Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 11:08 am Post subject: Re: gentoo is awesome

tyreth · Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 11:09 am Post subject:

tyreth · Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2002 11:29 am Post subject:

It's great reading all these stories.

I found RPM's a pain in the arse...but like black and white before color, I didn't really notice too much - it's just the way it was. Now, I don't think I could ever handle rpm's again

Either manually compile sources or use gentoo from now on...

I love how much faster apps start up now - who needs preloaded applications?? well...actually they would still help more for a desktop machine, but hey!

So with all this talk, you can probably guess I've come from a Mandrake/RedHat background (shame).

otulp · n00b Joined: 22 Apr 2002 Posts: 31 Location: Norway

I'll add another reply to Praise the Mighty Gentoo...

I think I maxed out the enjoyment of switching to Gentoo. You see, my previous distro was Mandrake (I was just checking at it out a bit, OK?). Inserting the Gentoo CD made me feel just as good as the first time I ventured into GNU/Linux via Slackware. Nay, better.

There is something special about a distro that has a truly bare bones installation shell, an amazing package management system, tons of packages, and pretty much leaves it up to you from there on. Thank you, Portage, and thank you, Gentoo developers

And the speed...

lowbatt · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Jul 2002 Posts: 83

I have to go with the boatload on this one

I don't forsee myself ever using another linux distro again. I love how I get what I want and can leave the rest behind and how fast everything is. I've used mandrake on this same box and bleh is all I have to say.

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