I can't believe it....(Gentoo)

[Marcelo Giles]

On Wednesday, May 5, 2004, at 05:02  PM, Robert Lyons wrote:

> I was hoping I would hear about someone that was using Gentoo. I have 
> downloaded the iso, can you tell me what the pro's and con's are 
> verses YDL?

Robert,

I'm going to quote some other members of the list here on a previous 
discussion on the issue "YDL vs Gentoo".

Good luck!
Marcelo

Here is what they had to say about Gentoo (quoted):

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From: "Longman, Bill" <longman@sharplabs.com>
Date: Mon Mar 22, 2004

Gentoo, IMNSHO, is best if you've had a distro or two under your belt 
and
you've got a good internet connection! And especially on an OldWorld, 
you're
in for some frustrating times. You've basically got to score >8 on the 
geek
scale, >9 on the frustration resistance scale and you'll need a fridge 
full
of highly caffeinated cola capsules.

If the above are true and you also score <5 on the spousal "Call to 
Duty"
scale, you should plan your time according to this basic schedule:

1 - 1 day - screwing with your emerge stages. If you have a tiny little 
wire
between you and the internet, and still feel you *have* to try gentoo, 
use
the pre-compiled version for PPC. It will save you lots and they are 
good
compile settings.

2 - 2 weeks - emerging the stuff you didn't install but you use lots.

3 - emerging more stuff that is nice to have. You find these over the 
course
of a month or two.

Also, figure on several days a quarter for recompiles if you want to 
stay up
to date. I did "emerge world" on my dual Xeon after three months of not
doing it and it compiled for most of a day.

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From: "Larry Autry" <larry.autry@charter.net>
Date: Tue Mar 23, 2004

It only took a glance at the Gentoo install doc to help me decide not to
install Gentoo. The document does not read like an install guide as 
does the
YDL install doc. It reads more like a reference book than a how-to.  If 
I
need a reference book, I'll download it. As an install document, the
document attempts to cover way too much territory. That's about as kind 
as I
can be.

===================================================

From: Simon Slaytor <sslaytor@talk21.com>
Date: Tue Mar 23, 2004

I wouldn't call myself a Geek, but I'm currently running Gentoo on my
Dual G4 Gigabit.

No Gentoo dosn't have an installer like Yellow Dog so it takes a little
more work to install and get running, but it's not difficult and the
instruction are actually very good.

So why run Gentoo? well two reasons for me first it's way way way more
up-to-date than YD. I'm writing this e-mail on Ximian 1.4 running on
Gnome 2.4.2, Mozilla is 1.5 (popup blocking yeah!) and my kernel is
2.4.24 The second reason for installing Gentoo over YD was portage.

If your familiar with FreeBSD / NetBSD etc you'll know all about the
ports collection. If not let me give a brief example.

On Gentoo if I wanted to install OGLE (DVD Video Player, requires DeCSS
etc), I simply call up a shell do a CD to /usr/portage/media-video/ogle
I then type emerge ogle. The Gentoo emerge system then takes care of
downloading OGLE and all dependencies, builds each one from source and
finally installs OGLE onto my Gnome menu.

No RPM's no missing / outdated libs etc it just works. You can update
your entire system as easily as emerge sync (get's the latest portage
collection) emerge --update --upgradeonly world (upgrades everthing to
the latest version included in the portage list)

All I can say is Gentoo is worth the little extra effort needed to get
it installed and running, plus you'll have a much better understanding
of Linux after it's done.

===================================================

From: Nathan <nathan@incirlik.net>
Date: Tue Mar 23, 2004

I would have to agree here.. Gentoo did take a bit more to get up and
running, but it is defiantly worth it.. That said, though, it depends 
on the
platform you are wanting to run it on.
  Being stationed in Turkey with dail-up I had my brother in the states 
send
me the PPC ISO on cd ( 8cds ) as well as any other stuff I would like 
to add
to my kernel..
  The initial emerge on both G3/300's took about 75mins from start to
finish.. Not to bad.. However on my 8600/300 with 1.5 gig of ram on 
board it
took 30+hrs.. Now I know some of that can be attributed to cd-rom access
speed, however, that is still ALOT of time. Something to keep in mind..

  But I would also agree that I would not go back to YDL now after 
running
Gentoo. I still have 3.0.1 on my 8600/300 for refrence and to poke 
around
with once in awhile.. But I don't miss the headache of RPM's that only
partially complied, if they even d/l'ed correctly in the first place...

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