Thoughts on Gentoo

[Alexander Henry]

Kurt Granroth wrote:
> Why?  HORRIBLE quality assurance on the packages.  We grew to dread every 
> update because we knew that something else was going to completely break... 
> since *something* always did.  

Did you do an etc-update after every update world?  Did you re-link gcc 
if a new version compiled itself?

I completely disagree with the "never upgrade your system" camp which 
you declared.  I've never had that kind of trouble with Gentoo, I've 
found it equals apt-get for keeping your system up to date in speed and 
convenience. 

I always recommend Gentoo over Debian and Slackware as a person's first 
"advanced" operating system, as the documentation in Gentoo is the most 
gentle one out there, and after learning it, I'm comfortable with rpm, 
rpm-source, or raw ./configure && make && make install with custom 
configure flags in many other distros, and I would know how to approach 
rolling my own distro if given the time and need.

You don't have 9 hours of "free time" to compile Gnome?  You sleep, 
don't you?  Let it run overnight.  Regardless, I'm starting to prefer 
fluxbox after seeing DSL's application of it.

DO NOT put ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" in your make.conf.  It's not the 
equivalent of Debian's unstable, it's far worse. Put it in 
packages.keywords WITH the specific version number of a package only if 
you really really really need the unstable version.  Gentoo doesn't 
operate like Debian, stable Gentoo is far more hip than Debian's stable, 
and when Gentoo masks packages as unstable, it's really really unstable.

I agree with the idea that Gentoo works best on a LAMP or similar 
setup.  If you have a server which has a razor-sharp task, like doing 
nothing but SAMBA share, doing nothing but PostgreSQL or doing nothing 
but MySQL, then Gentoo really shines, whereas a desktop kinda has 
"everything" in it anyway, so the benefit over an all-binary repository 
is lost.

I think the personal achievement benefit really comes through, though, 
not in a masochistic way, you do learn how Linux works deep inside.  
Once my work required me to screen-scrape some site, so I needed 
PERL::LWP, but my workplace was being obstructionist, I only had a 
Windows box.  I installed Cygwin on my box, and when I came across 
problems I knew exactly how to beat it.  Namely, OpenSSL 0.9.8 wasn't 
compatible with PERL::SSLeay, which is required to access an https: 
website.  Cygwin only comes with 0.9.8.  I compiled openSSL 0.9.7 into 
its own directory within Cygwin into /usr/local/openssl097, and when 
CPAN configured SSLeay I told it where openSSL was.  Took me an hour to 
come up with and finish the solution, and I thank my knowing Gentoo for it.

Use emerge -atvuDN world, you'll really see everything as it happens 
this way, and intercept problems before the upgrade if any.



-- 
Alexander