Gentoo Linux 2008.0

[RobbieAB]

For the e-penis points I have a 486DX@50MHz with 16MB of ram running gentoo, and even capable of compiling a fair amount of it's software, though the initial setup was done on one of my P3 500s.

I cited the P3 500 in preference because it runs a proper desktop and remains usable for IM/Web/E-mail while compiling in the background.

[yotambien]

Well, I don't know how much--if anything--outdated the Gentoo documentation is or not, but I found myself many times going trough its wiki to do something. I got many things done thanks to it, usually some more fun or complicated stuff than the typical tasks--last thing I remember was undervolting my laptop's CPU. And, to be fair, I always thought "hey, look at these bastard geeks, they know what they're doing" and thanked them silently.

Of course, this is irrelevant to whether the documentation dealing with Gentoo especific issues is good or not, it's just a testimony that there is indeed some good documentation useful not only to Gentoo users.

[Jade]

I was seriously hoping for some comment on this:

Finally, it's not like the installer is actually supposed to work. If you need an installer, don't use gentoo. Gentoo is to be installed manually, period. The installer is broken and it should be.

Yes the Gentoo installer has always been seriously broken.

The reason is that many infiltrators at the top of the Gentoo heap, do NOT want Gentoo to become popular.

They wish it to remain an obscure, hard to use, distribution,.. that frankly, no one will use.

This sabotage of Linux is absolutely everywhere. The excuses for it differ from one instance to another, but the sabotage is clearly everywhere.

[RobbieAB]

I was seriously hoping for some comment on this:

I think people are just ignoring you, as there are limits to most peoples Adult Male Bovine Excrement tolerance...

[Gentooer]

Jade does actually have a point. Gentoo was never intended to appeal to the masses. I think most Gentoo users prefer the way things are and would not want it to get too mainstream.

[Chewi]

Yes the Gentoo installer has always been seriously broken.

The reason is that many infiltrators at the top of the Gentoo heap, do NOT want Gentoo to become popular.

They wish it to remain an obscure, hard to use, distribution,.. that frankly, no one will use.

This sabotage of Linux is absolutely everywhere. The excuses for it differ from one instance to another, but the sabotage is clearly everywhere.

Haven't you ever heard of a target audience? I'm an advanced Linux user who likes to be in control. Gentoo gives me that. If I were to write a book on Advanced C++, would that be sabotage because it wasn't suitable for beginners? What a load of crap.

[Joe Sixpack]

Haven't you ever heard of a target audience? I'm an advanced Linux user who likes to be in control. Gentoo gives me that. If I were to write a book on Advanced C++, would that be sabotage because it wasn't suitable for beginners? What a load of crap.

You missed Jade's point entirely. It's nothing wrong with having a targeted audience. However, if you claim that your user base isn't limited to said audience, then you're expected to live up to such a message. When you do release the LiveCD as a means to appeal to another audience, but release it broken and never fix it (even though the problems are minor and could have been fixed weeks ago), then you might fall victim to conspiracy theory claims such as the "sabatoge" she mentions.

To say it's a load of crap is a total load of crap, especially when you have a veteran user and former wiki maintainer admitting that he prefers the installer to stay broken.

To correct your analogy: It wouldn't be a problem if you were to write a book on Advanced C++. However, the LiveCD issue is actually writing a book on Beginning C++, and then assuming the reader knows how to define their own classes.

[duby229]

I would consider it but with only one computer (now), I would be worried about the time it would be compiling. I wouldn't have access to my computer then. Hence, my question about how long KDE would take to compile (for instance)? My friend uses Gentoo and it's his main distro. If I started earlier with Linux, I probably would have already experimented with it. But, unfortunately, I'm down to one computer and still there's lots to learn about Linux in general (for me, anyway). Perhaps, later and if I could score another computer to use when Gentoo is compiling? ;-)

I know this post is a bit old, but I just wanted to point out that there are many awesome LiveCD's and LiveDVD's floating around that allow you to easily multitask while building your system. I have a LiveDVD that I maintain for my own personal uses that I use when installing Gentoo, and it has all my favorite apps, and themes, and backgrounds, and even drivers and games already on it by default (I'd be willing to share it on a very limited basis.) In most cases provided that the kernel was built by a competent user, and xorg-server was built by that same competent user, a LiveCD or LiveDVD will work perfectly on 85% of the hardware in existence today

Being that I know how to build a LiveCD I have to admit that I am terribly disappointed by Gentoo's 2008.0 release media. There are many many many better LiveCD's to choose from. At least a dozen that I'm aware of off the top of my head.

[MetalheadGautham]

Is anyone else facing a kernel panic on hitting return in the boot menu ?

[Fixxer_Linux]

ccache just gives at most 20% of spare time to the normal users... it is very useful for devs that compile a lot some big projects (like devs who work on 5 files in xine-lib, since all the other files has remained the same) and on binaries projects that recompile, but in normal use doesn't do miracles. if you want to read a more detailed description of this go to blog.flameeyes.eu and read a description about ccache from one of gentoo's council members.
the stuff that really speeds up compilation is another one:
tmpfs compilation. this impiles to have /var/tmp/portage (or paludis or whichever package manager work directory) point to /tmp.
i personally have 4gb of ram space with a 8gb swap filesystem mounted as tmpfs on /tmp with /var/tmp/portage pointing to /tmp/portage (created by the local start at startup) so that portage compiles into ram (until it has free ram) and then into swap. the overall performance increase is more than 60% of compilation time and about 75% time in sync time. some packages, usually small ones, sometimes get more than 100% boost in compilation time (less than half time of normal disk compilation). this is the best way to speed up compilation.
i personally use -j10 on a amd mobile athlon x2 2ghz and i normally have enough ram space and processor speed to also run firefox, openoffice and play videos.

I've looked around in the Gentoo doc / Gentoo wiki and didn't find anything relevant for the trick you gave to me.
Would you take the time to write this as an Howto in the Gentoo wiki ?
Or did I see too fast as there is already something written ?

Many thanks in advance.