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Gentoo 2008.0 Beta LiveCD

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  • #11
    Originally posted by yoshi314 View Post
    i'm the other one. oh, but i'm already running it
    me too. the thing that i find awesome in gentoo is the amd64-multilib profile. there isn't a single distro around that runs better and faster in this arch.
    also i found out recently that compiling into ram (on gentoo wiki there's an article on how to set portage) speeds-up the update time in about 50% or more in terms of time. now i'm looking to the opensuse 10.3 init scripts and try to see if i can speed up the startup process of gentoo (on my machines the last opensuse seems faster to boot into kde of about 8-10 seconds).
    for the rest i found out gentoo having the best update and install package around, there's no versioning, the profile can be updated with ease and only in the packages that need update, the rebuild broken is also very good.

    i can say that after going with gentoo for about 3 years now, it is the best linux distro if you update frequently and stay tuned on the bleeding edge.
    on the other hand if i want to update from time to time and just use the system for little time it's better to use a precompiled distro since it's faster to install and update.

    now, speaking of this 2008.0 release, if there isn't any major profile update there isn't a need to bump another release. at most it'd be useful a new stage package once a month and portage snapshots 1 or 2 times a week.

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    • #12
      I hope this isnt as bad as the 2007.0 lived cd!

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      • #13
        There are two things that I think Gentoo has a bad reputation for.

        1. I don't think the compile process on Gentoo is quite as big a deal as most think it is. Sure some of the bigger applications like Firefox or MythTV will take a few extra minutes to compile vs just installing. But for the smaller libraries and packages that make up the majority of a system, I find that compiling the updates from source as part of a regularly weekly update process takes up no more time than updating Ubuntu or Arch for the most part. And Portage runs quite nicely in the background. You can kick off a big update and just go about your regular work and you'll never notice anything different. You can even create a distributed compile system using spare machines on your LAN with distcc which is a lot of fun if you're into that.

        2. You don't have to be a developer to run Gentoo in the same way you don't have to be a mechanic to work on your car or change the oil yourself. In fact, I'm not even sure Gentoo is particularly suited to some developers/programmers. If you're writing a Java server framework or something, you may not want to fiddle with your underlying operating systems so much. So it definitely takes a special kind of user to run Gentoo. Just someone willing and interested in getting their hands dirty from time to time. Maybe likes tinkering or experimenting with a wide variety of applications. But that's the great thing about Linux. There's always something for everyone.
        Last edited by immudium; 02 April 2008, 12:40 PM.

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        • #14
          The LiveCD is largely irrelevant since the advent of Knoppix and workalikes, but I do look forward to new stage tarballs.

          Gentoo is just the very bestest thing since sliced bread Check out http://paludis.pioto.org/ while you are at it!

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          • #15
            There is a performance difference. Gentoo is noticeably faster. However, that's not really a function of compiling everything optimized for your hardware. While that does increase speed, it's not by an appreciable margin. The real boost comes from:
            - Absolute zero bloat. You have ONLY what you need. No extraneous services or bloaty apps in the background.
            - (Assuming you didn't use genkernel) a kernel compiled just for your machine. That means no hundreds and hundreds of extra crap compiled into the kernel or hanging around as modules. This is probably where the largest performance gain is had.

            My laptop is a Thinkpad T21 (PIII 800 Mhz, 256 MB SDRAM). Ubuntu is unbearably slow on it (partially Gnome's fault, I know). Gentoo+KDE however is nice and responsive, even with all the bells and whistles enabled short of Compiz Fusion. I will say that I'm somewhat cheating, in that with Gentoo I'm running virtually zero GTK apps. Even Firefox and its extreme memory hunger were dumped for QT based Opera. I have a theory regarding GTK based apps and their propensity to (IMHO) suck and be slow.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by Fixxer_Linux View Post
              Am I the only non-developper-end-user wanting to run Gentoo ???
              Nope I tun it too. Best distro ever. Tried ubuntu, FC, and slackware. Though I do think ubuntu is a pretty close second.

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              • #17
                Originally posted by colo View Post
                The LiveCD is largely irrelevant since the advent of Knoppix and workalikes, but I do look forward to new stage tarballs.

                Gentoo is just the very bestest thing since sliced bread Check out http://paludis.pioto.org/ while you are at it!
                paludis is great when you have installed a lot of overlays as i do but it has the lack of portage's buildpkg option which is a great flaw. for the rest is quite great. also it has a bunch of hooks that make it even better. also reconcilio is much more faster than revdep-rebuild.

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by georgia_tech_swagger View Post
                  There is a performance difference. Gentoo is noticeably faster. However, that's not really a function of compiling everything optimized for your hardware. While that does increase speed, it's not by an appreciable margin. The real boost comes from:
                  - Absolute zero bloat. You have ONLY what you need. No extraneous services or bloaty apps in the background.
                  - (Assuming you didn't use genkernel) a kernel compiled just for your machine. That means no hundreds and hundreds of extra crap compiled into the kernel or hanging around as modules. This is probably where the largest performance gain is had.

                  My laptop is a Thinkpad T21 (PIII 800 Mhz, 256 MB SDRAM). Ubuntu is unbearably slow on it (partially Gnome's fault, I know). Gentoo+KDE however is nice and responsive, even with all the bells and whistles enabled short of Compiz Fusion. I will say that I'm somewhat cheating, in that with Gentoo I'm running virtually zero GTK apps. Even Firefox and its extreme memory hunger were dumped for QT based Opera. I have a theory regarding GTK based apps and their propensity to (IMHO) suck and be slow.
                  well, as for me i think that qt4 rocks and gtk really sucks. i only have firefox as some of its plugins are irreplaceable by other browsers, but opera is really really fast. also the new konqueror is something awesome, but it has a not so good extension handler as has firefox. also the problem with web browsing is the absence of a flash player for 64bit which makes me angry.... damn, it's a lot of time that amd64 is out there and now every new pc goes with amd64 but still no real alternative to the 32 bit flash player. this sucks.
                  if you're a kde use i'd suggest you to try out building qt with qt-copy use flag and then rebuild kdelibs (search on the forums for qt-copy and you'll find out the ebuilds to do this). the amount of ram gained is about 20%. also i'd suggest thex11 overlay and from there i'd suggest the protos (except xcb that breakes the system since there was an api change with xlib and the apps aren't really patched for it) and the git mesa, cairo, glitz. the font antialiasing is really great with them. also i's suggest the live ebuild of x264 from berkano overlay and ffmpeg from flameeyes overlay. these are great multimedia ebuilds and i found out the multimedia system to be better with them installed.

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by immudium View Post
                    There are two things that I think Gentoo has a bad reputation for.

                    1. I don't think the compile process on Gentoo is quite as big a deal as most think it is. Sure some of the bigger applications like Firefox or MythTV will take a few extra minutes to compile vs just installing. But for the smaller libraries and packages that make up the majority of a system, I find that compiling the updates from source as part of a regularly weekly update process takes up no more time than updating Ubuntu or Arch for the most part. And Portage runs quite nicely in the background. You can kick off a big update and just go about your regular work and you'll never notice anything different. You can even create a distributed compile system using spare machines on your LAN with distcc which is a lot of fun if you're into that.
                    Hmm, yeah, I suppose I should give it another shot. As I said, when I tried Gentoo, I really really liked it. Probably my favorite distribution except for some reason things were taking a very long time to compile. I'll try messing around with it tonight and check my compile flags.

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by colo View Post
                      The LiveCD is largely irrelevant since the advent of Knoppix and workalikes, but I do look forward to new stage tarballs.
                      You should check out Daniel Robbins' website at funtoo.org. He (the founder of Gentoo) is providing up-to-date stage tarballs at http://www.funtoo.org/linux. Sure saved me a lot of time last time I had to install Gentoo.

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