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linuxhippy
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Joined: 20 Sep 2005
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Location: Philadelphia, PA-USA
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 Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 6:53 pm Post subject: What's the source advantage for nonprogrammers? |
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I'm not a programmer-is Gentoo for me? Is it more secure than an RPM built distro?
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Dlareh
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Joined: 06 Aug 2005
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 6:58 pm Post subject: Re: What's the source advantage for nonprogrammers? |
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| linuxhippy wrote: | | I'm not a programmer-is Gentoo for me? |
If you like "emerge", sure. Many do once they try it.
| Quote: | | Is it more secure than an RPM built distro? |
Not particularly. But those of us here find it nicer.
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eniac
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Joined: 11 Aug 2003
Posts: 233
Location: Belgium, Brussels
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 10:07 pm Post subject: Re: What's the source advantage for nonprogrammers? |
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| linuxhippy wrote: | | I'm not a programmer-is Gentoo for me? Is it more secure than an RPM built distro? |
Why does someone who loves to work with debian dislikes gentoo or why does a particular slackware users also loves mandriva but can't work with fedora ?
It's a matter of taste and experience, so just try it out man!
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linuxhippy
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Joined: 20 Sep 2005
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Location: Philadelphia, PA-USA
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 11:24 pm Post subject: |
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I boot through 5 OSs and don't plan on scrapping Gentoo....my pc seems to like FC4 which is very snappy on my box and using yum to get needed rpms is fast too...along with the install. Compiling everything takes too long and eats up my system resources with emerge-it is a nice tool, though!
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Q-collective
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Joined: 22 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 2:41 am Post subject: |
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| linuxhippy wrote: | | I boot through 5 OSs and don't plan on scrapping Gentoo....my pc seems to like FC4 which is very snappy on my box and using yum to get needed rpms is fast too...along with the install. Compiling everything takes too long and eats up my system resources with emerge-it is a nice tool, though! |
Well, if you have an older machine (read: below 1GHz) you'll get a performance increase when you compile it all. On newer machines you'll lose this advantages but you remain the super-flexibility no binary distro can even dream to come close to.
Have fun choosing your distro. |
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Shadow Skill
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Joined: 04 Dec 2004
Posts: 1023
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:00 am Post subject: |
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| Q-collective wrote: | | linuxhippy wrote: | | I boot through 5 OSs and don't plan on scrapping Gentoo....my pc seems to like FC4 which is very snappy on my box and using yum to get needed rpms is fast too...along with the install. Compiling everything takes too long and eats up my system resources with emerge-it is a nice tool, though! |
Well, if you have an older machine (read: below 1GHz) you'll get a performance increase when you compile it all. On newer machines you'll lose this advantages but you remain the super-flexibility no binary distro can even dream to come close to.
Have fun choosing your distro. |
Isn't that speed increase [if there even is one at all.] totally negated by the high likelyhood that getting up and running will probably take two days on such a machine? I'm still installing Gentoo on my 2ghz pentium4 thinkpad and its five am here! I started around five pm and I am just now getting into the home stretch..I just need to install a xine frontend and a decent terminal and gdm and I should be done..but my eyes are burning and my head hurts so I wont even bother trying to hold out for the extra hour or two it will take me to install those programs. Then I have to setup my wireless and switch everything to Udev if it isn't already like that with the current profile... (PLEASE let it already be Udev and I just dont know..) This experience with this laptop makes me not want to bother with Gentoo on the new one I want to get in a few months, even if that machine is actually more powerful than my current desktop!
All of that aside Gentoo is something you should consider if you want "consistency" by consistency I mean that one is able to pickup any source package and install it without having to dance around weirdo binary dependencies that would require you to essentially rebuild the entire system because you wanted to install a particular app from source for whatever reason, or go through the "devel package dance." If that is something you want I say go through the pain at least once to see if Gentoo has the right stuff.
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linuxhippy
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Joined: 20 Sep 2005
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Location: Philadelphia, PA-USA
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:54 pm Post subject: |
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My pc is a brand new 2.2 GHz Athlon64-question, as hardware gets recognized and more programs are compiled onto this machine in Gentoo does that mean the machine will get faster and faster. My pc seems rather slow right now after a week with Gentoo, but I'm thinking all the hardware may not be setup correctly and now that a GUI is on it and a lot of other programs that it should be more responsive than it is.
Oh, setting up Gentoo did take a couple days (emerging KDE and GNOME took a good day with DSL).
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Shadow Skill
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 8:19 pm Post subject: |
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Probably not, I have had a simillar setup for a while now [2ghz 3200+] and I have noticed the same thing, particularly with my boot time, I figure its because I have alot of processes starting up on boot that I really should take out but I haven't had the energy to go hunt down every stray process and figure out which ones I don't really need.
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Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.
"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it." |
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Dlareh
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Joined: 06 Aug 2005
Posts: 2102
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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| linuxhippy wrote: | My pc is a brand new 2.2 GHz Athlon64-question, as hardware gets recognized and more programs are compiled onto this machine in Gentoo does that mean the machine will get faster and faster. My pc seems rather slow right now after a week with Gentoo, but I'm thinking all the hardware may not be setup correctly and now that a GUI is on it and a lot of other programs that it should be more responsive than it is.
Oh, setting up Gentoo did take a couple days (emerging KDE and GNOME took a good day with DSL). |
Things might feel a little snappier if you try fluxbox: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/fluxbox-config.xml
This is purely a matter of taste though; there are many other window managers...
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"Mr Thomas Edison has been up on the two previous nights discovering 'a bug' in his phonograph." --Pall Mall Gazette (1889)
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darkwire
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Joined: 19 Sep 2005
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 9:13 pm Post subject: |
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I like it just for the emerge system, and I was tired of all the binary packages from other distros. Gentoo only takes longer on the initial deployment, but even that is what... 8-9hrs? from nothing to gnome. And I'm sure as hell not going to stare at it for 8-9hrs during the day, thats what downtime(sleep) is for  . You can also use distcc, ccache, rsync to get the whole song and dance going faster. Once its in place, its pretty automated and quick. |
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Q-collective
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Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 2071
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 9:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Shadow Skill wrote: | | Isn't that speed increase [if there even is one at all.] totally negated by the high likelyhood that getting up and running will probably take two days on such a machine? |
No, it may take some time (2, 3 days) to setup the system, but then you'll use it for the years after that. |
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Ma3oxuct
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Joined: 18 Apr 2003
Posts: 523
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:49 pm Post subject: |
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Main advantage of source based (from my experience, I may be wrong):
The ability to compile thing with different USE flags. The first few times that I build my Gentoo system, it was fast, but not as fast as it became when I recompiled the system with NPTL support.
The fact is that with Gentoo and its use flags you are the master of making the system work for your needs. You can choose to make it as bloated or minimalistic as you want.
It takes time to build a gentoo system, but when you are done, you have the latest and greatest customized system (note that I am on ~x86). |
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Goalie_Ca
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Joined: 13 Jan 2003
Posts: 156
Location: Vancouver,B.C
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| Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 3:17 am Post subject: |
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Ignore gentoo...
So there's a piece of posix compliant code that you want to use. You may be on solaris. There may not be binaries built for solaris. You are luckily able to compile it and use the program. Solaris may have different core utilities and libraries. Luckily configure detects them.
Source is really a good way to ship a program if the code is "clean".
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loki99
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Joined: 10 Oct 2003
Posts: 2056
Location: Vienna, €urope
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| Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 9:33 am Post subject: |
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| Shadow Skill wrote: | | Isn't that speed increase [if there even is one at all.] totally negated by the high likelyhood that getting up and running will probably take two days on such a machine? |
I am sitting at my pIII@600 which really makes a nice desktop using the "Jackass Project!". It took me about four hours to set it up, ready to reboot. I started in the late afternoon and let it compile xorg, xfce4 and a couple of apps (ff, tb, xmms, rox) during night. the next morning all was set! 
The only thing that makes me notice that I'm sitting infront of an old box is my lousy 20gig hd, which is loud and quite slow (Timing buffered disk reads:18.94 MB/sec) . |
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linuxhippy
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Joined: 20 Sep 2005
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Location: Philadelphia, PA-USA
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| Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:44 pm Post subject: |
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Window manager definitely make a big speed difference. I use fluxbox on my laptop (350 MHz) and xfce4 here (2.2 GHz). I use firefox as a browser and installed it with emerge mozilla-firefox. It takes a bit longer to open firefox each time now (probably 6 secs when it takes 2 secs on another distro). Can firefox be loaded into the memory on boot?
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Shadow Skill
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| Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 8:23 am Post subject: |
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| loki99 wrote: | | Shadow Skill wrote: | | Isn't that speed increase [if there even is one at all.] totally negated by the high likelyhood that getting up and running will probably take two days on such a machine? |
I am sitting at my pIII@600 which really makes a nice desktop using the "Jackass Project!". It took me about four hours to set it up, ready to reboot. I started in the late afternoon and let it compile xorg, xfce4 and a couple of apps (ff, tb, xmms, rox) during night. the next morning all was set!
The only thing that makes me notice that I'm sitting infront of an old box is my lousy 20gig hd, which is loud and quite slow (Timing buffered disk reads:18.94 MB/sec) . |
Perhaps the compiler made things faster for you I built most of my system with 3.3.5, Mplayer has decided that it doesn't like one of my h264 encodes and im getting tempted to just go ~arch and install 3.4.4. Right now about 2 days after I'm just doing some final tweaks [I apparently am too stupid to configure my wireless properly since I can't seem to edit the config file to get things to behave on boot.] my openbox theme is almost done too just a few more tweaks and things should be ready to go on that front, so its not all pain and suffering.
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Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.
"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it." |
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