How do you get the most out of gentoo?

Phlogiston

We all know that gentoo has changed over the last years. There are a lot of external ressources like the overlays that we can use to improve the gentoo experience.

So I wondered what of all these tools and tricks out there you are using to get the best experience with gentoo? What overlays do you use for example? Are you using offical portage? What about kernel sources?
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gentoo_dude · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:17 am Post subject:

I use the gentoo-sources for my kernel (with genkernel --menuconfig) and desktop-effects overlay and I love it on my laptop, Dell Latitude D810.

d2_racing · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:29 am Post subject:

Hi, if you want to go very hardcore, you should try the Funtoo git Tree

NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

Personally, I use the gentoo-sources, and the standard Portage tree. I don't use any overlays, but that might change because of Tint2 not being in the tree (and I really want to use it in my Openbox setup).
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djdunn · l33t Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 810

i think the best thing you can do is use a good set of use flags.
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Phlogiston · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 10:41 am Post subject:

spupy · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 11:05 am Post subject:

I think I'm not using any overlays. Gentoo-sources is installed but I use a vanilla kernel.

Right now I'm looking around on how to make my own overlay, since I have a dozen programs that I've modified the sources of, and I want to make it easier to manage these.
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d2_racing · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:52 pm Post subject:

Phlogiston · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:56 pm Post subject:

I switched to that funtoo git tree too. Furthermore I installed baselayout2 and its working

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d2_racing · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:58 pm Post subject:

And you should install portage 2.2 release 20, there' s an extra feature for Funtoo.

You will see a big difference on speed with emerge

Phlogiston · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 4:58 pm Post subject:

Old School · Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:38 am Post subject:

An x86 stable, plus portage and gentoo-sources with a few (mostly multimedia) unstable packages work fine for me.
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desultory · Bodhisattva Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 9410

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8956

You can safely unmask 2.2, it got the same bugfixes as 2.1.6.x after all and won't have any annoying surprises up its sleeve as its hardmasked state might falsely suggest.

d2_racing · Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 11:01 pm Post subject:

When I talked about the speed of emerge, it was with the Funtoo tree only.

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway

desultory · Bodhisattva Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 9410

If they had expected the 2.2 series to be considered stable soon, the 2.1.6 series would likely never have been created. Note that the reason given for the masking was recently updated.

Martux · Veteran Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 1917

Maybe a bit OT here but yesterday i tried the funtoo git tree too and was astonished to see that huge amounts of my ~amd64 box, daily synced, ought to be downgraded... :roll:

How can that be? Wasn't that supposed to be a exact copy of the ~arch portage tree & additions?
Maybe i grabbed the wrong tree? It was the funtoo-2009.01.06.tar.bz2.
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Old School

d2_racing · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 8:39 pm Post subject:

Veldrin · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 9:18 pm Post subject:

conservative progressiveness!

What I've learned in my years a gentoo (power) user, is that cutting edge (bleeding edge or whatever you want to call it) is fun, but an aweful lot of work to keep your system running. by just lagging a few step behind you get a lot for not to much work: "Let the peasants go first..."

Selective upgrades of key systems, allows you to get more from you system. 2 Examples here are openrc and gcc-4.3.
I tried out openrc just for the fun of it... but as I was really impressed by the imrpovements made, I decided to install it on my other system without much hesitation. and it worked out.
gcc-4.3 was more sort of a relief of finally being able to "use" the full capacity of my CPU. (IIRC the system felt faster afterward - bit this might have been an imagination...)

As for overlays, there goes the same thing as above: select those which include the - for yourself - interesting packages, and do selective installations.
Just a few overlays that I've been using lately: desktop-effects (compiz beryl and co), java-experimental (java-1.6.12_beta with plugin-support for 64-bit), zen-overlay (zen-kernel) and kde-testing (latest kde-4.2 snapshots)

One more thing: gentoo ~arch is not as unstable as it used to be. yes there are still some breakages, but there a far fewer that in the early days.

cheers
V.

PS. I hope it is clear what I mean - this post was sort of a braindump.

d2_racing · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 9:22 pm Post subject:

Martux · Veteran Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 1917