| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
MG-Cloud
Apprentice
Joined: 28 Oct 2003
Posts: 200
|
 Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 8:01 pm Post subject: No longer have time for Gentoo :( |
 |
|
Gentoo was my very first (and thus far my only) Linux distribution, and I have loved using it. The community is awesome, the flexibility of the portage system is excellent, and the speed of release is very very fast. However, lately I've been finding that I'm not able to update things as frequently any more, and that I no longer have time to fix some bugs that have been popping up lately with my installs (this has accumulated in a lot of annoying persistent bugs that I'm sure could be fixed with some tinkering but which I no longer have time to fix  ).
Therefore, I'm turning to you guys for help. Until circumstances change so that I have time to tinker around with my computer and update my OS as frequently as Gentoo requires, I need a binary-based Linux distro -
One that hopefully is as flexible as possible, with decent package management, and follows version releases quickly (eg. if gaim 1.4 comes out tomorrow, I'd like to be able to install an official version by 3 days from now or so  ). Also, performance is a big issue.
I'm looking at Ubuntu and Arch so far. Are there any other recommendations you would make?
Thanks very much in advance =) |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Earthwings
Bodhisattva
Joined: 14 Apr 2003
Posts: 7753
Location: Germany
|
| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 8:04 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Moved from Other Things Gentoo to Gentoo Chat. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gherald
Veteran
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
Posts: 1399
Location: CLUAConsole
|
| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 8:09 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Have you tried:
1) Using the stable branch (i.e. not setting ~x86 in make.conf)
2) Updating weekly using ONLY "emerge --sync && emerge -u world" ?
3) Running all emerges in the background with screen:
| Code: | emerge screen
screen
emerge --sync && nice emerge -u world
CTRL+A, then D to detach |
And whenever you want to check back on the progress of the emerge (from any terminal or console) do:
4) setting PORT_LOGDIR in make.conf as outlined in make.conf.example
If you have -- and none of that disuades from the perception that gentoo requires a lot of time to maintain -- then Ubuntu should be fine.
Last edited by Gherald on Mon May 23, 2005 8:11 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
luisfelipe
Guru
Joined: 09 Apr 2005
Posts: 377
|
| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 8:11 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Well, I used Arch before coming to Gentoo, and I think it's a pretty nice distro. They had some problems before
with too many user repositories, but that should be fixed now that they launched AUR (Arch User Repository).
Dunno if it worked, but if it did, things should be going a lot better there now.
Also, if you miss source-based installation, just try out srcpac. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
pjp
Administrator
Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 20067
|
| Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 8:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Simple solution... stop tinkering. Gentoo doesn't require that much attention.
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
zbindere
Guru
Joined: 27 May 2004
Posts: 356
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 4:56 pm Post subject: |
|
|
try an upgrade
suse 8 -> suse 9
or
fc3 -< fc 4
it just does not work.
you want be on the edge with your packages, then gentoo is the (stable) only way.
try debian sarge (you are getting crazy after 3 month, package blocks and every day 1000 updates)
ubuntu only has 2 releases a year, so you wont have the newest packages.
I sure you will come back. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Boris27
Guru
Joined: 05 Nov 2003
Posts: 562
Location: Almelo, The Netherlands
|
| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 9:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Development branch of Ubuntu.
In my experience very stable, quickly updated and binary.
Plus ubuntu's version of GNOME just rocks.
_________________
we are microsoft, lower your firewalls and surrender your pc's. we will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. your culture will adapt and service us. resistance is futile. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
asimon
l33t
Joined: 27 Jun 2002
Posts: 979
Location: Germany, Old Europe
|
| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 11:16 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Boris27 wrote: | Development branch of Ubuntu.
In my experience very stable, quickly updated and binary.
|
Breezy was in the last couple of weeks many things, but "stable" was not among them. Major breakage everywhere because of the C++ ABI change (they are switching from gcc 3.3 to gcc 4 , and many broken packages because of the change from monolithic xorg to a modularized one. "Very stable" is something completly different. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sebest
Apprentice
Joined: 03 Jul 2002
Posts: 163
Location: Paris - France
|
| Posted: Mon May 30, 2005 4:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| asimon wrote: | | Boris27 wrote: | Development branch of Ubuntu.
In my experience very stable, quickly updated and binary.
|
Breezy was in the last couple of weeks many things, but "stable" was not among them. Major breakage everywhere because of the C++ ABI change (they are switching from gcc 3.3 to gcc 4 , and many broken packages because of the change from monolithic xorg to a modularized one. "Very stable" is something completly different. |
+1
i totally agree
recommanding Ubuntu hoary + Ubuntubackports but no way ubuntu breezy, it's not bleeding edge, it's suicide (these days).
_________________
--
Seb aka "Mr Est" |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
30726
Veteran
Joined: 24 Sep 2003
Posts: 1501
|
| Posted: Mon May 30, 2005 7:40 pm Post subject: Re: No longer have time for Gentoo :( |
|
|
| MG-Cloud wrote: | | snip... and update my OS as frequently as Gentoo requires, I need a binary-based Linux distro |
Why would Gentoo require more updates than any other distro? It totally depends on how often you sync. In the beginning, I used to sync efter few days, but now I only sync when there's security updates available that affects installed software on my system (which is very rarely). |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kensai
Guru
Joined: 09 Mar 2004
Posts: 569
Location: Puerto Rico
|
| Posted: Mon May 30, 2005 8:06 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| pjp wrote: | | Simple solution... stop tinkering. Gentoo doesn't require that much attention. |
This ^^^ I find to be the only and true solution. I mean I don't need more than a couple of minutes a week to administer gentoo. People that talk about the lot of time gentoo consumes make me wonder if they are really using gentoo.
_________________
Gentoo: Gigabyte: nFORCE 2: nVIDIA GeForce 6600: AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Leaving the above specs to immortalize the first system I Installed Gentoo on! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
oldan
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 11 Dec 2003
Posts: 137
Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
|
| Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 1:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Kensai wrote: | | pjp wrote: | | Simple solution... stop tinkering. Gentoo doesn't require that much attention. |
This ^^^ I find to be the only and true solution. I mean I don't need more than a couple of minutes a week to administer gentoo. People that talk about the lot of time gentoo consumes make me wonder if they are really using gentoo. |
I quite agree. My father has a habit of taking a perfectly good working computer apart just to make sure the screws at the bottom of the case are in tight enought. Sure enough, when he puts it back together, something is bound to break. I can't count the number of times I've told him to just leave the thing alone and write e-mails with it!
--Oldan |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kensai
Guru
Joined: 09 Mar 2004
Posts: 569
Location: Puerto Rico
|
| Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 1:54 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| oldan wrote: |
I quite agree. My father has a habit of taking a perfectly good working computer apart just to make sure the screws at the bottom of the case are in tight enought. Sure enough, when he puts it back together, something is bound to break. I can't count the number of times I've told him to just leave the thing alone and write e-mails with it!
--Oldan |
LOL, well that also is a serious problem we shall make another threrad to help your father in his issue.
_________________
Gentoo: Gigabyte: nFORCE 2: nVIDIA GeForce 6600: AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Leaving the above specs to immortalize the first system I Installed Gentoo on! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
96140
Retired Dev
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
Posts: 1324
|
| Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 2:12 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| pjp wrote: | | Simple solution... stop tinkering. Gentoo doesn't require that much attention. |
Agreed. I once read somewhere that Gentoo is potential fritterware--what happens when the user doesn't manage his or her time and is sucked in by endless micromanaging, editing, ricing, etc. that are possible with Gentoo.
Really, that's more of a PEBKAC than any fault of Gentoo itself. The distro simply doesn't need frequent maintenance; at least, not for typical desktop usage. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
depontius
Advocate
Joined: 05 May 2004
Posts: 3509
|
| Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 2:37 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| nightmorph wrote: | | pjp wrote: | | Simple solution... stop tinkering. Gentoo doesn't require that much attention. |
Agreed. I once read somewhere that Gentoo is potential fritterware--what happens when the user doesn't manage his or her time and is sucked in by endless micromanaging, editing, ricing, etc. that are possible with Gentoo.
Really, that's more of a PEBKAC than any fault of Gentoo itself. The distro simply doesn't need frequent maintenance; at least, not for typical desktop usage. |
I run my home systems as fritterware. But Mom's system, 600+ miles away, is run completely differently. In cron.weekly I have it "emerge sync" and on cron.daily I have it "glsa-check -l", and email me with the results. (actually, I pipe glsa-check through 'grep -v -e "\[N\]"' to things down to something I can manage easily.) My systems are on the bleeding edge, her system is "secure". The difference in maintenance is startling. In the months I've had her set up this way, I've only had to update a few packages, nothing at all like keeping my home systems up to date on "x86".
Whenever I visit, I'll do an "emerge -uDp world" to get it as up to date as possible, but only when I'm physically present. I do have a little fear about when glsa requires a kernel change, but I'll cope with that when I get to it. When I'm back sometime I should reallly get a rescue partition onto her machine. Getting the machine into a non-ssh-able state is my big fear.
_________________
.sigs waste space and bandwidth |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Veldrin
Veteran
Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 1945
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
|
| Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 2:38 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: | | Quote: | | Simple solution... stop tinkering. Gentoo doesn't require that much attention. |
Agreed. I once read somewhere that Gentoo is potential fritterware--what happens when the user doesn't manage his or her time and is sucked in by endless micromanaging, editing, ricing, etc. that are possible with Gentoo. |
I guess that sums it up.
I do have a fileserver at my parent's home. So far I have enough time to spend almost week-end there, so I can update the server. The onlyh time I need is 1 minute to start 'emerge sync', - wait half an hour - another to start 'emerge -aDu world' - wait a couple of hours depending on the upgrades - and about 5 minutes to do 'etc-update' if nescessary. So form my point of view this is no time at all, BUT the computer needs to be running. And if that is a problem, I cannot help.
Just my 2 cents
V. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kensai
Guru
Joined: 09 Mar 2004
Posts: 569
Location: Puerto Rico
|
| Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 4:29 pm Post subject: |
|
|
And the person who wrote this thread is either scared of replying or he doesn't visit Gentoo forums anymore. Maybe this was a thread made out of desperation.
_________________
Gentoo: Gigabyte: nFORCE 2: nVIDIA GeForce 6600: AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Leaving the above specs to immortalize the first system I Installed Gentoo on! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sceptreofjudah
n00b
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 24
Location: Longview, WA, USA
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 8:55 pm Post subject: Linspire and Gentoo |
|
|
I use Linspire as my main desktop now. It is rock-solid, nimble, and responsive (lightweight though).
I use a Gentoo box as a server on the LAN for apache, MySQL, LISA, and NFS. It is a powerhouse but akward, clumbsy, and slow at times (compiling and etc-update, etc.).
This is the best of both worlds, a rock solid desktop which runs remote X applications from a server and also runs local executables with access to the files on the server (which has cron backing up its files to the client). I'm NEVER down now! HA HA HA. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
depontius
Advocate
Joined: 05 May 2004
Posts: 3509
|
| Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:19 am Post subject: Re: Linspire and Gentoo |
|
|
| sceptreofjudah wrote: | | I use Linspire as my main desktop now. It is rock-solid, nimble, and responsive (lightweight though). |
Does Linspire still run normally as root? At first it did, though I've heard since that they dropped that practice. Running as root by default scares the living daylights out of me. IMHO it makes Linux into an even worse virus/spyware trap than Windows.
_________________
.sigs waste space and bandwidth |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kensai
Guru
Joined: 09 Mar 2004
Posts: 569
Location: Puerto Rico
|
| Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 1:57 am Post subject: Re: Linspire and Gentoo |
|
|
| depontius wrote: |
Does Linspire still run normally as root? At first it did, though I've heard since that they dropped that practice. Running as root by default scares the living daylights out of me. IMHO it makes Linux into an even worse virus/spyware trap than Windows. |
LOL. Not even running as root always makes a computer worse than windows, it makes it vulnerable but not worse.
_________________
Gentoo: Gigabyte: nFORCE 2: nVIDIA GeForce 6600: AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Leaving the above specs to immortalize the first system I Installed Gentoo on! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sceptreofjudah
n00b
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 24
Location: Longview, WA, USA
|
| Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 4:33 am Post subject: linspire does not run as root |
|
|
| Linspire has user management and security features like any other Linux system. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kensai
Guru
Joined: 09 Mar 2004
Posts: 569
Location: Puerto Rico
|
| Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 4:46 am Post subject: Re: linspire does not run as root |
|
|
| sceptreofjudah wrote: | | Linspire has user management and security features like any other Linux system. |
True Linspire is a linux like any other linux. In fact all Linux distros are the same, I can take a Ubuntu install and make it the same as a Linspire install and I can take a Linspire install and make it as unusable as Windows like any other Linux you can do the same. So telling my distro is the best is pointless since you can make all distros look similar. Only tha Linspire take the good things from the open (free) source world and charge you for something you can do with gentoo for free. And they don't give nothing back to the community.
_________________
Gentoo: Gigabyte: nFORCE 2: nVIDIA GeForce 6600: AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Leaving the above specs to immortalize the first system I Installed Gentoo on! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
depontius
Advocate
Joined: 05 May 2004
Posts: 3509
|
| Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 11:12 am Post subject: Re: Linspire and Gentoo |
|
|
| Kensai wrote: | | depontius wrote: |
Does Linspire still run normally as root? At first it did, though I've heard since that they dropped that practice. Running as root by default scares the living daylights out of me. IMHO it makes Linux into an even worse virus/spyware trap than Windows. |
LOL. Not even running as root always makes a computer worse than windows, it makes it vulnerable but not worse. |
Let's phrase it this way... fun stuff like access to raw packets, servers, and such are much closer to the surface - much more kiddie-friendly in Linux than in Windows. I know that under Windows kiddies normally just use a kit of some sort to play mischief, but Linux pretty much comes with a kit, standard. (Kit for full network access, that is, not a root kit.)
But I still haven't heard, does Linspire still run the user as root, by default?
_________________
.sigs waste space and bandwidth |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Q-collective
Advocate
Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 2071
|
| Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 1:12 pm Post subject: Re: Linspire and Gentoo |
|
|
| depontius wrote: | | But I still haven't heard, does Linspire still run the user as root, by default? |
No, only version 1 had that, they are at 5.0 these days. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
depontius
Advocate
Joined: 05 May 2004
Posts: 3509
|
| Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 1:52 pm Post subject: Re: Linspire and Gentoo |
|
|
| Q-collective wrote: | | depontius wrote: | | But I still haven't heard, does Linspire still run the user as root, by default? |
No, only version 1 had that, they are at 5.0 these days. |
Whew! I'll cease my distaste for Linspire, though I'll keep using Gentoo.
_________________
.sigs waste space and bandwidth |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Gentoo Chat
