Disappointed with gentoo

violentgreen · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 2:24 pm Post subject: Disappointed with gentoo

I just want to put my voice out there and say that I am very disappointed with gentoo. The main reason that I paid for the cd set is because I do not have a broadband connection and don't have the time to download individual packages with portage when emerging. Openoffice will not run after emerging and while I have tried the methods I have found on this board I still have had no luck. That was a major reason for trying gentoo, to have a fully optomized OS and office suit. On top of that, I cannot seem emerge xfree-drm without a network connection. It seems that should be an integral part of any distro.

A lot of people seem really happy with gentoo. I am not.

carbon · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2003 Posts: 455 Location: New York

what happen tho
what does it say when you try to run openoffice?
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Carbon

TheWart · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 2:28 pm Post subject:

That sucks.

Although I would say the blame partly lies with you....as you should have checked whether xfree-drm was on the cd (if there is no package listing, then it is not your fault I guess).

And for me personally, I am not a big fan of compiling OO anyway, as I don't think it gives much of an increase, and new versions seem to come out too often.
_________________
Face it, we are all noobs.

On the box it said it was designed for Win XP or better, so why won't it work with Linux?

Cossins · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 2:32 pm Post subject:

Gentoo without network = a disappointment! That is because one of the major advantages of Gentoo, Portage, relies heavily on networking. Gentoo simply isn't a CD distribution, it's a net distro.
Put differently, buying the CD's won't buy you a full, running Gentoo system.

I am sorry if you feel you've wasted your money...

Oh, and how can someone not have a broadband connection?

- Simon

Lycander · Guru Joined: 10 Apr 2003 Posts: 468

violentgreen · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 3:07 pm Post subject:

Cossins · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 3:09 pm Post subject:

Cossins · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 3:24 pm Post subject:

PowerFactor · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 3:38 pm Post subject:

raid517 · l33t Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 946

Here's my 2Cs worth... Gentoo is cool for the advanced user who doesn't mind (and knows how to) spend endless hours fixing things. If fixing things is your hobby then Gentoo is for you. It has the potential to teach you an awful lot in a short space of time.

Unfortunately though, the thing that breaks Gentoo most is Gentoo... Portage is certainly a neat idea... What better than a way to add updates and new features without having to worry about the old school Linux dependency nightmare? But the pace of updates is sometimes frantic, so frantic indeed that a package installed perhaps less than an hour ago rapidly becomes old. The amount of time for testing of many of these packages is at best often minimal, thereby neccessitating that at various points in time various parts of your system will swing wildly between alpha and beta stages of development, with the interplay between these various components being largely unpredicable and poorly tested.

Now before a whole load of people start jumping on my case, this is no criticism. I have always viewed the primary purpose of Gentoo to be a learning tool. By the time you are done with Gentoo (if you ever are)) you will know so much about Linux that you will find it easy to fix virtually any problem. However, as a general usuage OS, I think (or i am comming to the conclusion) that it's usefulness is almost certainly limited.

I enjoy Gentoo - and I am grateful for all it has taught me and portage is a good idea (although I think a lot more thought needs to be given as to which packages are considered suiatble for general release). But ultimately it is a hobbiest's OS. It's computing for the sake of computing - and in that regard it is an end in itself.

I don't know if Gentoo was ever meant to be practical... But as I said, what the hey, I couldn't have learned as much as i did without it. If you chose it as a main office production suite, well sadly there is some here who might think, 'more fool you...'

Gentoo serves it's purpose well, no matter how frustrating that might seem for the average user. It requires that you use your brain on an almost constant basis, and in that regard it is quite unlike any other distribution I have yet experienced.

Wether that is good or bad is for you alone to decide.

Q

raid517 · l33t Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 946

PS

What does piss me off though is packages that won't compile... There are far too many of them... Lol sorry, I'm only human too...

Q

jonnevers · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 4:10 pm Post subject:

what packages won't compile? "far too many" is a little vague.

oh and i'd agrue that gentoo is the BEST development platform.
and well, it actually makes a good desktop but its not for just anyone, but isn't that the point...

what confuses me is why people complain about compiling from source when they are using a distrobution that is geared HEAVILY towards source installations... its like complaining that there is pepperoni on your pizza when you ordered a pepperonri pizza... (just in general, not pointed at anyone)

gentoo isn't just a hobbists OS, it is production worthy but only if you have the patients/care/will and ability/knowledge to leverage its advantages. (which really isn't that much)

and you don't *need* to constantly update your software just because there is a newer release! i mean think about, using another distro say redhat... their up2date has an many updates as portage. there is something to be said about using stable software, if a program you use heavily has an update with new features/bug fixes that you can utilize or want to use, then update them if the update seems frivilous then just forget it until a significant update comes along... the only updates that you may be required to get are the security updates (but that is just to be safe)

raid317 is right though, gentoo does take a tremendous amount of brain power, but think about how good it felt when you were finally able to complete that one task that kept tripping you up.

raid517 · l33t Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 946

It's swings and roundabouts dude, when is an update a good or a bad idea? Unless your a devlloper, just how are you supposed to know? As many things as portage has fixed for me in the past, it has broken just as many again.

But as i said, this isn't a direct criticism, merely an observation similar to your own that it takes patience determination and skill to use Gentoo effectively - and if all you want to do is type up your office accounts, it might not be quite what you are looking for.

Q

violentgreen · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 7:40 pm Post subject:

bssteph · l33t Joined: 26 Feb 2003 Posts: 652 Location: Wisconsin

This is only vaguely related to the conversation, but unless you have some strange adversion to it, may I suggest koffice? I find it faster to load, more responsive, better-looking (interface and formatting), and with a bit better file support than OpenOffice.

raid517 · l33t Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 946

Mmm... yes... I started an instance of Open Office about 4 months ago - and I'm still waiting for it to load...

Q

violentgreen · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 8:18 pm Post subject:

bssteph · l33t Joined: 26 Feb 2003 Posts: 652 Location: Wisconsin

I don't know. (said Homer Simpson style if you so desire)

Do you have unlimited dialup? That's what I've got going on (I'm connected more than my broadband friends) and for big downloads I usually just start one at night before I go to sleep.

Or have someone else download it for you if you can.

Or just do it in parts, but I'd imagine that'd suck. :\

PowerFactor · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 8:39 pm Post subject:

raid517 · l33t Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 946

Like I said, it's a matter of perspective. If 2 or 3 hours at a stretch to compile each new major application is 'practical' for daily use. in work or whatever, well hey whatever floats your boat.... That's fine by me.

But for me Gentoo is just a hobby, who's purpose is to teach me about Linux. Like all hobbies it may not always be practical, but it is often fun.

As for your condecending comment about 'a broken record', I have installed Gentoo in no less than 5 machines in the last 6 months, all the machines were made by different manufacturers, both Intel and AMD. So unless pretty much every brand, make and model of hardware out there is faulty, I would say your conclusion is at best itself somewhat faulty.

I know what hardware failures look like. they are generally random lockups with no particular pattern or reason to them. But when software always fails with a seegfault at the same point, with utter predicatability - and as you say I am not using a lot of pre beta software or exotic CFlags settings (which I certainly am not) and if those faults are often resolved some days later with an emerge sync, then I would have to say that the strongest suspect for a culprit would have to be the software itself.

Anyway, whatever, as I said I use gentoo as an educational tool - and in that regard it fulfils that particular purpose very well for me.

I know there are guys who like to take the three little monkeys approach to whatever distro they might be using at that time; i.e. hear no evil, say no evil and see no evil... But what the hey that isn't me. If I see a flaw I will call it for what it is. As much as I enjoy Gentoo, II still haven't quite managed to reach that level of obssesiveness yet.

Q

mmealman · Guru Joined: 02 Nov 2002 Posts: 348 Location: Florida

raid517 · l33t Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 946

Mmm, it's a rapid learning tool, I'll say that... However I'm not sure I will ever attain the same level of skill or knowlegde that some folks here have. To be honest I'm not sure I want to. For me Gentoo - and Linux in general was/is a challenge... I wanted to learn because I wanted to know what all these... ahem... geeks were going on about. Was Linux really superior, and if so how would i be able to tell or make any fair comparrisons until i learned how to use it effectively?

Maybe when I knew everything there was to know about how to fix problems and achive various tasks with linux, in pretty much the same way i knew how to fix and do pretty much anything on Windows I could make a good comparrision. And having got there, having learned everything that a competant Linux user should know, if I then decided linux was garbage, mabe then I could kick it into the dustbin. But not until then - and i am not yet at that stage of competance where if something goes wrong I do not need to rely on others advice in order to be able to routinely fix all of my linux problems.

There are I think two ways to learn Gentoo and Linux... One is inspired intelligence laced with a moderate amount of genious, the other is sheer bloody minded determination. Success as they say is not always mesured by intelligence, but by determination certainly.

I'm afraid I fall into the second school, where it is only sheer motivation not to be outdone by anyone, no matter how smart they might think they are, that keeps me motivated and interested in Linux. Sooner or later it has to become like riding a bike, eventually undoubtedly it will become second nature. Right now though i'm at the stage of riding the bike and falling off, riding the bike and falling off, riding the bike and... Well you get the picture... When I'm not falling off anymore then i might feel I have achieved something...

Q

PowerFactor · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2003 4:27 pm Post subject:

raid517 · l33t Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 946

I don't expect you to say anything, but particularly I don't expect you to say anything about me...

I'm sorry you appear to have taken my comment on board personally, it wasn't meant as such. If you spend some time on the Slackware mailing lists, youl'll quickly come to know what 'hear no evil' really means. In my experience there are far more elitists and obsessive types in the Slackware community than I have ever found among Gentoo users.

Indeed on the whole gentoo users have been pretty much a breed apart; always welcoming, always helpful, never critical of n00bs, ready to answer questions that others often might feel were trivial and generally enthusiastic towards the goal of popularising Linux to the masses.

That has been my experience - and is why, despite having strayed once or twice in this last year, I keep comming back to Gentoo. There isn't a community quite like it anywhere else in the Linux world.

Now if you want to cause a fuss about some passing comment that's up to you, but there was certainly no direct offense intended.

Q

PowerFactor · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2003 5:11 pm Post subject:

Ok, so maybe I overreacted a litttle, sorry. I wasn't really trying to cause a fuss though, just a little irritated is all.