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photomaskman
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Joined: 25 May 2006
Posts: 32
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 Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 3:15 pm Post subject: |
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| fangorn wrote: | | If learning is your goal - directly or indirectly - Gentoo is all you will ever need. |
I think Fangorn finally hit it on the head what I like so much about Gentoo. I've been using Gentoo for 3 years now and have tried other distros, but I don't like any of them nearly as much. What it comes down to, is that in addition to being a tool to get certain tasks done, tinkering with my computer for the pure joy of tinkering is one of my favorite pastimes. Reading docs and learning how to accomplish something is enjoyable to me and therefore I thing Gentoo will always be my preferred distro. Also, in my experience, doing something non-standard is much easier in Gentoo than in other distros. |
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c0d3g33k
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Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 43
Location: S.E. Connecticut
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| Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 5:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Genone wrote: | | You assume that it's only about performance, which IMO is rarely the case ... In reality it's about managing complexity (each additional piece of software is a potential risk for stability and security). |
 Haha! That's very funny. The complexity of setting up and managing my Gentoo system is significantly higher than most other distributions I use or have used. There seems to be tradeoff involved. Reducing the complexity of the end product (installed binaries) requires a corresponding increase in the complexity of the system setup and management steps (and probably the management of the package tree as well). Blaise Pascal comes to mind: "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."
The question is: Is it worth it?
What is more valuable? The time you lose to achieve the perfectly simplified system, or the time you lose dealing with stability and security issues resulting from an overly complex (or better stated: insufficiently simplified) system? I would like to see the statistics comparing the stability and/or security issues that have to be dealt with for a typical Gentoo system versus systems based on other distributions. I have no idea, but anecdotal evidence would suggest that there won't be a significant difference.
Probably the best reasons for wanting to do things the "Gentoo way" can be reduced to: "because that's the way I like it", "because I can", "Because I learn more", "Because I feel better about myself" and "Because it's more fun". By most objective measures, I'm not sure the extra overhead in terms of hands-on complexity and system resource usage (incurred by compilation times) is met by an justifiable increase in system stability or security. Particularly when all the duplicated effort spread across every Gentoo user is taken into account. |
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fangorn
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Joined: 31 Jul 2004
Posts: 1886
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| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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I think what Genone wanted to say is that you can reduce complexity of a Gentoo system massively by only installing the needed applications and only the really necessary dependencies.
Sure, if you setup a system that most distributors see as a standard desktop system with a integrated desktop and all the bells and whistles, it is harder to achieve and more time consuming to maintain than most binary distributions.
But I for my part do not need/want a integrated desktop (FVWM user), I use a graphical filemanager once a month (if at all) and I prefer to mount my devices myself. To achieve this, and a system with only the minimal set of applications I tried a minimal installation of Debian Etch once. My tip, don't try!
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rafo
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Joined: 18 Nov 2003
Posts: 161
Location: Sollentuna, Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 8:49 pm Post subject: |
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"The ease of use of Ubuntu" may mean different things. One thing that has been mentioned in this thread is the availability of binary packages.
I think most Gentoo users sometime have thought "this sure takes long to compile" and maybe also "this compilation running on my machine must have been done somewhere else already".
Over the years I have read many threads stating that there is no reasonable way to produce binaries for Gentoo, because there would be a huge number of different binaries from each package. Every binary would depend on the target architecture and the set of USE flags so clearly there would be many of them around.
Still .. downloading binaries over the net would be a cool feature. What if it were possible to create a hybrid between the Gentoo way (compile from source locally) and the Binary way (download binaries), without giving up any of the Gentoo flexibility?
This is my vision of such a compromise:
1. Binaries are produced in a Gentoo Binaries Factory (GBF). We assume that GBF is operated by a trusted part so that issues of malicious code do not arise.
2. GBF is demand-driven. A binary is only produced if it is requested by a Gentoo user.
3. A request for a binary is issued by an "emerge" command on some Gentoo box with a network connection (assuming for now that "emerge" has been suitably extended). The request specifies the package name and version, the architecture, and the local values of those USE flags that affect the build process, plus any other relevant parameters. If a matching binary is available off the factory shelf then it is offered for download. Else the factory offers to compile it and estimates when it will be available (the requesting side can then choose to wait for the binary or go for local compilation).
4. GBF has a large but limited storage area for binaries. Those binaries that are least demanded are purged at a suitable rate. As a result GBF will tend to contain those binaries that are useful to a large number of users. The tuning of the purging algorithm, as well as the algorithm for when to go ahead and produce a binary (perhaps wait until there has been several requests) might be fun to figure out.
5. Of course the use of GBF should be controlled by some variable in make.conf or such. Users that don't configure GBF will not be affected in any way whatsoever.
6. As for economics, operating GBF will require some electricity and hardware. In an altruistic world it could be financed by donations: many users will save a little on their electricity bills so they could donate a little to the operation of GBF.
7. GBF could be started out as a project run by enthusiasts (setting up a GBF, providing a modified "emerge" command for pilot users, etc). Such a project would offer a lower level of trust, just like other Gentoo-based binary initiatives. To attain the Gentoo level of trust the GBF would have to be adopted and run by Gentoo itself of course.
8. Besides public GBFs there is also a potential for locally operated GBFs within organizations that want to deploy Gentoo on a large number of boxes (schools, companies etc). Just set up a GBF and configure all boxes to use it; the average compile time will be greatly reduced, yet everyone will enjoy the full flexibility of classical Gentoo.
(I should add that I have thrown a similar idea into the forum before. It may have been two years ago and there was a P2P side to it, but P2P is really just an optimization that may or may not prove worthwhile. It is the demand-driven binaries factory that is the essential piece of machinery that can defeat compile time for us.) |
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keenblade
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Joined: 03 Oct 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 9:46 pm Post subject: |
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| slonocode wrote: | | M wrote: | | Well, I would be concerned about use flags even if I had a cpu with 10 cores, I want to have control over my system because it is my system, as simple as that. |
I understand. You and a dwindling number of people feel it's important to get rid of that pesky postgres support in their binaries on systems fast enough that you would never see any difference. If there is one thing that's hugely important on a dual core desktop system its a leaner binary with no performance difference. |
You are right if all you are doing is surfing web with a browser, writing some text with office suits and watching a dvd or some pictures. But if you do something that is really demanding like music production, audio recording, editing, than I guarantee you will see (hear) the difference. A dual core desktop system, even sometimes I feel 10 cores cpu would not be sufficient. And the useflags are incredibly important for me. I think the idea of useflags is a kind of miracle. It is like evolution; minimum energy maximum performance 
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slonocode
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Joined: 03 Jun 2002
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| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:23 pm Post subject: |
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| keenblade wrote: | | slonocode wrote: | | M wrote: | | Well, I would be concerned about use flags even if I had a cpu with 10 cores, I want to have control over my system because it is my system, as simple as that. |
I understand. You and a dwindling number of people feel it's important to get rid of that pesky postgres support in their binaries on systems fast enough that you would never see any difference. If there is one thing that's hugely important on a dual core desktop system its a leaner binary with no performance difference. |
You are right if all you are doing is surfing web with a browser, writing some text with office suits and watching a dvd or some pictures. But if you do something that is really demanding like music production, audio recording, editing, than I guarantee you will see (hear) the difference. A dual core desktop system, even sometimes I feel 10 cores cpu would not be sufficient. And the useflags are incredibly important for me. I think the idea of useflags is a kind of miracle. It is like evolution; minimum energy maximum performance |
Can you give a specific example? |
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aidanjt
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Joined: 20 Feb 2005
Posts: 1118
Location: Rep. of Ireland
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| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 11:18 pm Post subject: |
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| slonocode wrote: | | keenblade wrote: | | slonocode wrote: | | M wrote: | | Well, I would be concerned about use flags even if I had a cpu with 10 cores, I want to have control over my system because it is my system, as simple as that. |
I understand. You and a dwindling number of people feel it's important to get rid of that pesky postgres support in their binaries on systems fast enough that you would never see any difference. If there is one thing that's hugely important on a dual core desktop system its a leaner binary with no performance difference. |
You are right if all you are doing is surfing web with a browser, writing some text with office suits and watching a dvd or some pictures. But if you do something that is really demanding like music production, audio recording, editing, than I guarantee you will see (hear) the difference. A dual core desktop system, even sometimes I feel 10 cores cpu would not be sufficient. And the useflags are incredibly important for me. I think the idea of useflags is a kind of miracle. It is like evolution; minimum energy maximum performance |
Can you give a specific example? |
64.1 audio @ 2Ghz? :/
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keenblade
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Joined: 03 Oct 2004
Posts: 1087
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| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 11:49 pm Post subject: |
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| slonocode wrote: |
Can you give a specific example? |
Using rosegarden, record lots of midi and audio tracks with full of plugins. (You need lots of tracks for a song; drums (hydrogen), guitars, keyboard, piano vs.) You'll need plugins like delays, chorus, distortions vs. At some point you see all your cpu usage is very high. Then try playing a gitar part and recording it with rosegarden. Then listen what you have just recorded. Your gitar sounds like crap, not because you played bad, but because computer couldn't capture it preciously. Synths, pianos vs everything cracks.
Then you realize you need to tweak the computer for this hard work. You emerge jack, a reatime kernel and of course tweak the use flags. Remove lots of flags (arts portaudio vs), add flags (jack jack-tmps dssi). And change the DE (kde vs) to xfce or fluxbox. Even use no DE at all. (use ~x86_64 arch ) Then wow! everything works like charm. No sound cracking, no unwanted delay, nice performance. After that you even think you have deserved to play tremulous. lol.
Of course use flags is not just for performance but also creating a nice gear (distro of your own) for your purpose. You can do it easily with gentoo. But try that with ubuntu. You need to be a wizard. Even compiling a kernel is a nightmare. Because you don't supposed to do that. (But there are some very nice music distros that use ubuntu as base. I may be a comp nerd but not that much to achieve it )
That does not mean ubuntu is bad. It is very good and has it's goals done well.
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slonocode
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Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:20 am Post subject: |
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| keenblade wrote: |
Using rosegarden, record lots of midi and audio tracks with full of plugins. (You need lots of tracks for a song; drums (hydrogen), guitars, keyboard, piano vs.) You'll need plugins like delays, chorus, distortions vs. At some point you see all your cpu usage is very high. Then try playing a gitar part and recording it with rosegarden. Then listen what you have just recorded. Your gitar sounds like crap, not because you played bad, but because computer couldn't capture it preciously. Synths, pianos vs everything cracks.
Then you realize you need to tweak the computer for this hard work. You emerge jack, a reatime kernel and of course tweak the use flags. Remove lots of flags (arts portaudio vs), add flags (jack jack-tmps dssi). And change the DE (kde vs) to xfce or fluxbox. Even use no DE at all. (use ~x86_64 arch ) Then wow! everything works like charm. No sound cracking, no unwanted delay, nice performance. After that you even think you have deserved to play tremulous. lol. |
Ah I see. I thought we were talking about desktop systems here. |
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monsm
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Joined: 26 Sep 2007
Posts: 467
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 11:24 am Post subject: |
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Personally I have never understood the problem people have with compile times. If I want to run "emerge DNu world" or emergeing openoffice I set it off over night. Next morning its sorted. I guess if you have a noisy machine in your bedroom, you might not want it on during night, so might be investment in silent fans are in order.
In a different thread someone said they usually had some error or dependency problem that made over night compiles rarely work. Have I been particularly lucky in that case? Are some people so eager they sit by the computer 24 hours a day, so don't want to leave it for a few hours?
I can install everything I had on my old Fedora installation, except with Gentoo it all runs much better.
A slight side issue. The UK postoffice have this facility where you can print your own stamps at home using their website and a credit card. The stamp comes back as a pdf file. Trouble was that epdf viewer didn't print it correctly (some spoil thing over it didn't get removed as it should). I found that Adobe Reader is available for Linux, only that the .rpm file is about 42Mb. I then discovered the latest version is already in portage. Don't know what was in the .rpm, cause the emerge was done in a couple of minutes (AMD Athlon 2.2 GHz) so must have been much lighter. Printing the stamp was then successfull |
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fangorn
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Joined: 31 Jul 2004
Posts: 1886
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| Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 11:48 am Post subject: |
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| monsm wrote: | In a different thread someone said they usually had some error or dependency problem that made over night compiles rarely work.
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Depends how often you update. If you update every second day, such occasions rarely ever happen. I have some machines I update once every two or three months. There I have to usually start a world update three or four times, because it breaks. OK, those instalations are quite old and quite large, I just am too lazy to make a fresh install with only the needed software.
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cokey
Advocate
Joined: 23 Apr 2004
Posts: 3355
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| Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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damn, this is an oollllllllllllllllllllllldddd argument.
In 2004 I argued for a binary tree where secondary packages (no core or libs) went so people could choose whether they wanted their apps pre-compiled or not. I guessed that it would save 60%-70% of the compile time.
In those days people were more harsh, even mention binary and you'd get shot down (ask Genone) as I did
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Genone
Retired Dev
Joined: 14 Mar 2003
Posts: 9555
Location: beyond the rim
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| Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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| cokehabit wrote: | | In those days people were more harsh, even mention binary and you'd get shot down (ask Genone) as I did |
Not quite sure what you're referring to (as my memory doesn't reach that far back). When talking about a general binary package repository, you have to separate the different aspects: Creation, configuration, distribution, deployment and support. The support issues are outlined in http://dev.gentoo.org/~dsd/misc/binaries.html (the situation has changed a bit during the last few years, but it's still valid)
For distribution, an often suggested idea that was always shot down pretty quickly was P2P-distribution using locally generated packages, maybe that's what you're referring to. It was shot down because it's a security nightmare, like most ideas involving user-provided binary packages. Which raises the question who should create the packages. To have a reasonable level of security and to ensure that packages are built in a consistent environment this has to be done by a central authority, not on systems of individual persons (developers). Central authority == central servers, which means non-trivial costs (hardware, bandwidth, hosting).
Next question is configuration. Generate packages only for a given baseline, or build packages on-demand for any requested configuration. Mind that there are tons of things that can affect the build process (see link above), not just the obvious stuff like USE flags, active profile or gcc version for the requested package.
Mind that I'm not against binary packages in general, I just know that if you want to treat them as first-class citizens there is a lot of stuff to consider. And knowing that we can barely support the source tree I just don't see us (Gentoo) doing the work to implement it. |
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rafo
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Joined: 18 Nov 2003
Posts: 161
Location: Sollentuna, Sweden
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| Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 7:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Genone wrote: |
Mind that I'm not against binary packages in general, I just know that if you want to treat them as first-class citizens there is a lot of stuff to consider. And knowing that we can barely support the source tree I just don't see us (Gentoo) doing the work to implement it. |
I fully appreciate your point of view. Gentoo is a source distribution and that has to be the focus. A binaries factory is a wishlist thing that might be appreciated by some but considered waste of resources by others. With the openness of Gentoo some enthusiasts could however go ahead and try out the idea, just like other binaries initiatives have happened in the past.
I have no idea if Gentoo is used a lot in closed communities (schools, companies etc). However, if I were to administer a network of Gentoo boxes (including slowish legacy boxes perhaps) I would really appreciate a box that stands unattended in a corner and bakes trustable binaries for my users. This could be the answer to one of the well-known arguments against deploying Gentoo. |
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cokey
Advocate
Joined: 23 Apr 2004
Posts: 3355
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| Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Genone wrote: | | cokehabit wrote: | | In those days people were more harsh, even mention binary and you'd get shot down (ask Genone) as I did |
Not quite sure what you're referring to (as my memory doesn't reach that far back). |
well if you mentioned binaries in the tree you got "fuck off to RH".
My proposition 4 years ago was to just have things like gaim, OO.o, samba and apache available as binaries in a different tree - all the libs and core packages could only be gotten from the main tree because that is the only way to guarantee consistency
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