[gentoo-user] Calm

[gentoo-user] Calm

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Gentoo.

I'm just saying hello to confirm I'm still here.

For many months now, Gentoo has simply worked for me, without problems.
I sync my system several times a week, and emerge just works.

The last bit of excitement I had was in early 2015 when I was trying to
sort out the mess in my xfce4 system after gnome-3 had been made stable.
In the end, I gave up and reinstalled Gentoo, which this time took me
only a week.

Admittedly, there's very little which is cutting edge on my system - the
box is 6½ years old, it boots with lilo on an old fashioned BIOS, my
filesystems are ext3 (or in one case, ext2) on spinning rust.  The only
remotely adventurous things I've got are RAID-1 (via the kernel) and
lvm2.

So a big thanks to all the developers who've brought about this happy
state of affairs!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[John Blinka]

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I've been meaning to write such a post for some time now.  Thanks for
prompting me to add my 2 cents.

I've been using Gentoo for perhaps 15 years.  There have been a few rough
patches along the way resolved by new reinstalls, but overall this has been
by far the best computing environment I've ever used.  (And one of the best
online communities I've ever lurked in.)  I remember feeling quite
apprehensive at my first install after giving the Handbook my first look,
but that install went well, and I've never looked back.  I've been able to
transition from using Gentoo as a professional development system for large
scale parallel numerical stuff, to using it for some personal work in
medical informatics, and lately digital photography.  In general, I've
found that Gentoo just works, given a little effort to understand how to
make it work via its truly wonderful array of well written documentation.
I really like the ease with which I've been able to venture into new
categories of software and computing. Every time I've needed something new,
it's been in portage and has been fairly easy to install, configure, and
use.

I recently had to do reinstalls on all my systems due to disk failures.
Took a few days, but I've been living in a sweet spot ever since, with
everything working perfectly on all systems.

Thanks to all who've made this possible!

On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:

> Hello, Gentoo.
>
> I'm just saying hello to confirm I'm still here.
>
> For many months now, Gentoo has simply worked for me, without problems.
> I sync my system several times a week, and emerge just works.
>
> The last bit of excitement I had was in early 2015 when I was trying to
> sort out the mess in my xfce4 system after gnome-3 had been made stable.
> In the end, I gave up and reinstalled Gentoo, which this time took me
> only a week.
>
> Admittedly, there's very little which is cutting edge on my system - the
> box is 6½ years old, it boots with lilo on an old fashioned BIOS, my
> filesystems are ext3 (or in one case, ext2) on spinning rust.  The only
> remotely adventurous things I've got are RAID-1 (via the kernel) and
> lvm2.
>
> So a big thanks to all the developers who've brought about this happy
> state of affairs!
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[Dale]

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Top posting since John started it.  lol 

Can you two explain this to Alan Grimes?  He seems to think emerge has
some very serious problems.  ;-) 

I might add, I recently went through the KDE plasma update which
involved a ton of rebuilds/upgrades.  Since I run a mix of stable and
unstable, it took some effort to get it all sorted BUT emerge did a
pretty good job of telling me what was needed.  Once I got the proper
things in the keyword and USE file, it was off to compile land for
several hours.  I might add, I had to use some of Alan McKinnion's logic
to understand emerge's output. 

I might add, I also recently did a emerge -e world.  Out of all the over
1,400 packages installed on this machine, only one failed.  I can't
recall the package name but I seem to recall keywording to a newer
version and that worked.  Still, 1 out of over 1400 packages.  That's
pretty dang good.  About 99.9% success.  Almost like 24 caret gold. 

It seems you two are not alone on being some happy Gentooers.  :-D 

Dale

:-)  :-)



John Blinka wrote:
> I've been meaning to write such a post for some time now.  Thanks for
> prompting me to add my 2 cents.
>
> I've been using Gentoo for perhaps 15 years.  There have been a few
> rough patches along the way resolved by new reinstalls, but overall
> this has been by far the best computing environment I've ever used. 
> (And one of the best online communities I've ever lurked in.)  I
> remember feeling quite apprehensive at my first install after giving
> the Handbook my first look, but that install went well, and I've never
> looked back.  I've been able to transition from using Gentoo as a
> professional development system for large scale parallel numerical
> stuff, to using it for some personal work in medical informatics, and
> lately digital photography.  In general, I've found that Gentoo just
> works, given a little effort to understand how to make it work via its
> truly wonderful array of well written documentation.  I really like
> the ease with which I've been able to venture into new categories of
> software and computing. Every time I've needed something new, it's
> been in portage and has been fairly easy to install, configure, and use.
>
> I recently had to do reinstalls on all my systems due to disk
> failures.  Took a few days, but I've been living in a sweet spot ever
> since, with everything working perfectly on all systems.
>
> Thanks to all who've made this possible!
>
> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de
> <mailto:acm@muc.de>> wrote:
>
>     Hello, Gentoo.
>
>     I'm just saying hello to confirm I'm still here.
>
>     For many months now, Gentoo has simply worked for me, without
>     problems.
>     I sync my system several times a week, and emerge just works.
>
>     The last bit of excitement I had was in early 2015 when I was
>     trying to
>     sort out the mess in my xfce4 system after gnome-3 had been made
>     stable.
>     In the end, I gave up and reinstalled Gentoo, which this time took me
>     only a week.
>
>     Admittedly, there's very little which is cutting edge on my system
>     - the
>     box is 6½ years old, it boots with lilo on an old fashioned BIOS, my
>     filesystems are ext3 (or in one case, ext2) on spinning rust.  The
>     only
>     remotely adventurous things I've got are RAID-1 (via the kernel) and
>     lvm2.
>
>     So a big thanks to all the developers who've brought about this happy
>     state of affairs!
>
>     --
>     Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
>


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Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[J. Roeleveld]

On Saturday, April 16, 2016 11:25:23 AM Dale wrote:
> Top posting since John started it.  lol

Refusing to top-post, even when others do...
Makes for even more fun to trace the conversations...

> Can you two explain this to Alan Grimes?  He seems to think emerge has
> some very serious problems.  ;-)

Trying to explain it to him will be as useful as discussing science with 
members of the Westboro Baptist Church or similar....

> I might add, I recently went through the KDE plasma update which
> involved a ton of rebuilds/upgrades.  Since I run a mix of stable and
> unstable, it took some effort to get it all sorted BUT emerge did a
> pretty good job of telling me what was needed.  Once I got the proper
> things in the keyword and USE file, it was off to compile land for
> several hours.  I might add, I had to use some of Alan McKinnion's logic
> to understand emerge's output.

Aside from that, the upgrade guide was a very useful step-by-step guide to 
avoid any blockers during the upgrade.

> I might add, I also recently did a emerge -e world.  Out of all the over
> 1,400 packages installed on this machine, only one failed.  I can't
> recall the package name but I seem to recall keywording to a newer
> version and that worked.  Still, 1 out of over 1400 packages.  That's
> pretty dang good.  About 99.9% success.  Almost like 24 caret gold.

1 out of 1400 is, in my opinion, 1 too many.
But compared to the likely 400 you'd have had about 5 or 6 years ago, I am 
extremely pleased.

> It seems you two are not alone on being some happy Gentooers.  :-D

Count me there as well.
I have long passed the point where I will accept bad and unreliable systems 
when I can help it.

> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-)
> 
> John Blinka wrote:
> > I've been meaning to write such a post for some time now.  Thanks for
> > prompting me to add my 2 cents.
> > 
> > I've been using Gentoo for perhaps 15 years.  There have been a few
> > rough patches along the way resolved by new reinstalls, but overall
> > this has been by far the best computing environment I've ever used.
> > (And one of the best online communities I've ever lurked in.)  I
> > remember feeling quite apprehensive at my first install after giving
> > the Handbook my first look, but that install went well, and I've never
> > looked back.  I've been able to transition from using Gentoo as a
> > professional development system for large scale parallel numerical
> > stuff, to using it for some personal work in medical informatics, and
> > lately digital photography.  In general, I've found that Gentoo just
> > works, given a little effort to understand how to make it work via its
> > truly wonderful array of well written documentation.  I really like
> > the ease with which I've been able to venture into new categories of
> > software and computing. Every time I've needed something new, it's
> > been in portage and has been fairly easy to install, configure, and use.
> > 
> > I recently had to do reinstalls on all my systems due to disk
> > failures.  Took a few days, but I've been living in a sweet spot ever
> > since, with everything working perfectly on all systems.
> > 
> > Thanks to all who've made this possible!
> > 
> > On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de
> > 
> > <mailto:acm@muc.de>> wrote:
> >     Hello, Gentoo.
> >     
> >     I'm just saying hello to confirm I'm still here.
> >     
> >     For many months now, Gentoo has simply worked for me, without
> >     problems.
> >     I sync my system several times a week, and emerge just works.
> >     
> >     The last bit of excitement I had was in early 2015 when I was
> >     trying to
> >     sort out the mess in my xfce4 system after gnome-3 had been made
> >     stable.
> >     In the end, I gave up and reinstalled Gentoo, which this time took me
> >     only a week.
> >     
> >     Admittedly, there's very little which is cutting edge on my system
> >     - the
> >     box is 6½ years old, it boots with lilo on an old fashioned BIOS, my
> >     filesystems are ext3 (or in one case, ext2) on spinning rust.  The
> >     only
> >     remotely adventurous things I've got are RAID-1 (via the kernel) and
> >     lvm2.
> >     
> >     So a big thanks to all the developers who've brought about this happy
> >     state of affairs!
> >     
> >     --
> >     Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[Dale]

J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Saturday, April 16, 2016 11:25:23 AM Dale wrote:
>> Top posting since John started it.  lol
> Refusing to top-post, even when others do...
> Makes for even more fun to trace the conversations...
>
>> Can you two explain this to Alan Grimes?  He seems to think emerge has
>> some very serious problems.  ;-)
> Trying to explain it to him will be as useful as discussing science with 
> members of the Westboro Baptist Church or similar....
>

I was thinking fence post but we have the same idea.  ;-) 


>> I might add, I recently went through the KDE plasma update which
>> involved a ton of rebuilds/upgrades.  Since I run a mix of stable and
>> unstable, it took some effort to get it all sorted BUT emerge did a
>> pretty good job of telling me what was needed.  Once I got the proper
>> things in the keyword and USE file, it was off to compile land for
>> several hours.  I might add, I had to use some of Alan McKinnion's logic
>> to understand emerge's output.
> Aside from that, the upgrade guide was a very useful step-by-step guide to 
> avoid any blockers during the upgrade.
>


Actually, I think the only info I got from it was that I had to switch
to sddm and emerge the plasma package.  Since I have a mix of stable and
unstable here, it went down a whole new path after that.  I had hard
blockers, other packages that had to be keyworded and to change some USE
flags as well.  If I was running stable only, then the guide would
likely have worked step by step.  It did give the basic info that I
needed even tho I was running a install that was different. 

The big point tho, emerge did a pretty darn good job of dropping bread
crumbs on what needed changing.  On a couple occasions, it took me a few
reads to grasp what it was saying but it was there and I was able to
figure it out.  So, unlike Alan G and his problems, emerge did a good job. 


>> I might add, I also recently did a emerge -e world.  Out of all the over
>> 1,400 packages installed on this machine, only one failed.  I can't
>> recall the package name but I seem to recall keywording to a newer
>> version and that worked.  Still, 1 out of over 1400 packages.  That's
>> pretty dang good.  About 99.9% success.  Almost like 24 caret gold.
> 1 out of 1400 is, in my opinion, 1 too many.
> But compared to the likely 400 you'd have had about 5 or 6 years ago, I am 
> extremely pleased.


That is what I was talking about.  Many years ago, even thinking you
could do a emerge -e world of that many packages without at least a
dozen failures of some kind would be nuts.  I'm talking rooms with
rubber walls nuts too.  Actually, if I had not forgot to keyword that
new version, it would have worked.  That version had already failed and
I should have done the keyword change first.  So really, it was my fault. 


>> It seems you two are not alone on being some happy Gentooers.  :-D
> Count me there as well.
> I have long passed the point where I will accept bad and unreliable systems 
> when I can help it.
>
>

The longest uptime I have ever had was running Gentoo.  If it wasn't for
power failures, I may not ever reboot this thing.  lol 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[J. Roeleveld]

On Saturday, April 16, 2016 07:07:16 PM Dale wrote:
> J. Roeleveld wrote:
> > On Saturday, April 16, 2016 11:25:23 AM Dale wrote:
> >> Top posting since John started it.  lol
> > 
> > Refusing to top-post, even when others do...
> > Makes for even more fun to trace the conversations...
> > 
> >> Can you two explain this to Alan Grimes?  He seems to think emerge has
> >> some very serious problems.  ;-)
> > 
> > Trying to explain it to him will be as useful as discussing science with
> > members of the Westboro Baptist Church or similar....
> 
> I was thinking fence post but we have the same idea.  ;-)

You're referring to a LART?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=LART

> >> I might add, I recently went through the KDE plasma update which
> >> involved a ton of rebuilds/upgrades.  Since I run a mix of stable and
> >> unstable, it took some effort to get it all sorted BUT emerge did a
> >> pretty good job of telling me what was needed.  Once I got the proper
> >> things in the keyword and USE file, it was off to compile land for
> >> several hours.  I might add, I had to use some of Alan McKinnion's logic
> >> to understand emerge's output.
> > 
> > Aside from that, the upgrade guide was a very useful step-by-step guide to
> > avoid any blockers during the upgrade.
> 
> Actually, I think the only info I got from it was that I had to switch
> to sddm and emerge the plasma package.  Since I have a mix of stable and
> unstable here, it went down a whole new path after that.  I had hard
> blockers, other packages that had to be keyworded and to change some USE
> flags as well.  If I was running stable only, then the guide would
> likely have worked step by step.  It did give the basic info that I
> needed even tho I was running a install that was different.

It also gave some commands on how to find packages you'd need to temporarily 
remove from the world-file.

> The big point tho, emerge did a pretty darn good job of dropping bread
> crumbs on what needed changing.  On a couple occasions, it took me a few
> reads to grasp what it was saying but it was there and I was able to
> figure it out.  So, unlike Alan G and his problems, emerge did a good job.
> 
> >> I might add, I also recently did a emerge -e world.  Out of all the over
> >> 1,400 packages installed on this machine, only one failed.  I can't
> >> recall the package name but I seem to recall keywording to a newer
> >> version and that worked.  Still, 1 out of over 1400 packages.  That's
> >> pretty dang good.  About 99.9% success.  Almost like 24 caret gold.
> > 
> > 1 out of 1400 is, in my opinion, 1 too many.
> > But compared to the likely 400 you'd have had about 5 or 6 years ago, I am
> > extremely pleased.
> 
> That is what I was talking about.  Many years ago, even thinking you
> could do a emerge -e world of that many packages without at least a
> dozen failures of some kind would be nuts.  I'm talking rooms with
> rubber walls nuts too.  Actually, if I had not forgot to keyword that
> new version, it would have worked.  That version had already failed and
> I should have done the keyword change first.  So really, it was my fault.

Not removing failing versions.... Like to life dangerously?

> >> It seems you two are not alone on being some happy Gentooers.  :-D
> > 
> > Count me there as well.
> > I have long passed the point where I will accept bad and unreliable
> > systems
> > when I can help it.
> 
> The longest uptime I have ever had was running Gentoo.  If it wasn't for
> power failures, I may not ever reboot this thing.  lol

Same here, but I tend to reboot only for kernel upgrades. Power failures don't 
happen that much here.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[Dale]

J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Saturday, April 16, 2016 07:07:16 PM Dale wrote:
>
>> I was thinking fence post but we have the same idea.  ;-)
> You're referring to a LART?
> http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=LART


That's the one.  ROFL 


> Actually, I think the only info I got from it was that I had to switch
> to sddm and emerge the plasma package.  Since I have a mix of stable and
> unstable here, it went down a whole new path after that.  I had hard
> blockers, other packages that had to be keyworded and to change some USE
> flags as well.  If I was running stable only, then the guide would
> likely have worked step by step.  It did give the basic info that I
> needed even tho I was running a install that was different.
> It also gave some commands on how to find packages you'd need to temporarily 
> remove from the world-file.

Hmmm, I didn't have to do that.  The biggest blocker I had was because
of a entry in one of the package.* files.  I can't recall what it was
now tho.  I think I just commented it out completely and then emerge was
much happier. 

As we know, running a mixed system is sometimes harder than running
either all stable or all unstable.  I'm sure it ticks off emerge too.  ;-) 


>> That is what I was talking about.  Many years ago, even thinking you
>> could do a emerge -e world of that many packages without at least a
>> dozen failures of some kind would be nuts.  I'm talking rooms with
>> rubber walls nuts too.  Actually, if I had not forgot to keyword that
>> new version, it would have worked.  That version had already failed and
>> I should have done the keyword change first.  So really, it was my fault.
> Not removing failing versions.... Like to life dangerously?

Well, I think it wouldn't build because another package was at a version
that package didn't like and it tried to build on that.  Basically,
there was a couple packages in sort of a mismatch. 

>> The longest uptime I have ever had was running Gentoo. If it wasn't
>> for power failures, I may not ever reboot this thing. lol 
> Same here, but I tend to reboot only for kernel upgrades. Power failures don't 
> happen that much here.
>
> --
> Joost
>
>

We used to have frequent power outages.  If it was windy, lights out. 
If it was raining and windy, certainly lights out then.  A few years
ago, they replaced a whole section of power lines that went about 10
miles.  It went from the substation almost to the road I live on which
is where they kept having trouble. I think what it was doing is the wind
or rain would weigh the lines down and they were so old and weak, they
broke.  Oddly tho, winter didn't seem to bother them as much as summer. 
Since they replaced that large section of lines, they may blink at times
but that's about it.  Also, they cleared out a LOT of trees that was
around the lines too.  They do that every few years tho. 

Yea, I live out in the sticks.  We hunt, fish, grow a garden etc out
here.  If I don't get some sleep, I won't be able to work on that
tractor when the sun pops up in a few hours either.  It needs a new
clutch. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[John Blinka]

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On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> Top posting since John started it.  lol
>

Sigh...  Can I blame it on gmail's interface (rather than me not paying
attention...)?  Sorry.

John

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Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[J. Roeleveld]

On Saturday, April 16, 2016 03:35:18 PM John Blinka wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Top posting since John started it.  lol
> 
> Sigh...  Can I blame it on gmail's interface (rather than me not paying
> attention...)?  Sorry.

Use a different interface? :P

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[Alan McKinnon]

On 16/04/2016 21:35, John Blinka wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com
> <mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Top posting since John started it.  lol 
> 
> 
> Sigh...  Can I blame it on gmail's interface (rather than me not paying
> attention...)?  Sorry.


Errrr, ummmmm, no. That won't fly...

But, never fear, there's an alternative! We can PRETEND that it's all
GMail's fault, and not speak of it!

It's a social contract thing, sort of like "what happens in Vegas stays
in Vegas". Deal?


:-)          <==== Big fat notice to draw attention to this bit


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[J. Roeleveld]

On Saturday, April 16, 2016 09:51:52 PM Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 16/04/2016 21:35, John Blinka wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com
> > 
> > <mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >     Top posting since John started it.  lol
> > 
> > Sigh...  Can I blame it on gmail's interface (rather than me not paying
> > attention...)?  Sorry.
> 
> Errrr, ummmmm, no. That won't fly...
> 
> But, never fear, there's an alternative! We can PRETEND that it's all
> GMail's fault, and not speak of it!
> 
> It's a social contract thing, sort of like "what happens in Vegas stays
> in Vegas". Deal?

I refuse to accept "social contracts" like that as they are generally made up 
to cover cheats...

> :-)          <==== Big fat notice to draw attention to this bit

Which bit?

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[Alan McKinnon]

On 16/04/2016 21:54, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Saturday, April 16, 2016 09:51:52 PM Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> On 16/04/2016 21:35, John Blinka wrote:
>>> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com
>>>
>>> <mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>     Top posting since John started it.  lol
>>>
>>> Sigh...  Can I blame it on gmail's interface (rather than me not paying
>>> attention...)?  Sorry.
>>
>> Errrr, ummmmm, no. That won't fly...
>>
>> But, never fear, there's an alternative! We can PRETEND that it's all
>> GMail's fault, and not speak of it!
>>
>> It's a social contract thing, sort of like "what happens in Vegas stays
>> in Vegas". Deal?
> 
> I refuse to accept "social contracts" like that as they are generally made up 
> to cover cheats...

Precisely. Exactly. Some of us need them to ... to ... never mind

> 
>> :-)          <==== Big fat notice to draw attention to this bit
> 
> Which bit?

third from the left of course


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 16 Apr 2016 15:35:18 -0400, John Blinka wrote:

> > Top posting since John started it.  lol
> >  
> 
> Sigh...  Can I blame it on gmail's interface (rather than me not paying
> attention...)?  Sorry.

Of course you can. You can blame it on sunspots if you like.

However, that doesn't mean people will believe you and stop pointing and
sniggering at the top-poster ;-)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.

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[gentoo-user] Re: Calm

[Grant Edwards]

On 2016-04-16, John Blinka <john.blinka@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been meaning to write such a post for some time now.  Thanks for
> prompting me to add my 2 cents.

Same here.  I switched all my "daily drivers" from Mandrake/Mandriva
almost 15 years ago, and have no regrets.  No more of the RPM
dependancy merry-go-round that used to happen so often.  I've
reinstalled a couple times after major hardware upgrades (disk
failure) or decisions to switch from 32 to 64 bits.  But I've never
needed to routinely reinstall from scratch the way I always had to
with RPM-based distros (Mandriva and before that RedHat).  With
RPM-based distros, upgading across major numbers rarely worked.  And I
always ended up having to build a lot of libraries and apps from
source anyway because of required library version clashes.

I still have to regularly install and use RedHat/CentOS and Ubuntu in
order to test apps/drivers I maintain -- and I'm always glad when I
can take off the straigh-jacket and handcuffs and go back to Gentoo.

--
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Calm

[Dale]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2016-04-16, John Blinka <john.blinka@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've been meaning to write such a post for some time now.  Thanks for
>> prompting me to add my 2 cents.
> Same here.  I switched all my "daily drivers" from Mandrake/Mandriva
> almost 15 years ago, and have no regrets.  No more of the RPM
> dependancy merry-go-round that used to happen so often.  I've
> reinstalled a couple times after major hardware upgrades (disk
> failure) or decisions to switch from 32 to 64 bits.  But I've never
> needed to routinely reinstall from scratch the way I always had to
> with RPM-based distros (Mandriva and before that RedHat).  With
> RPM-based distros, upgading across major numbers rarely worked.  And I
> always ended up having to build a lot of libraries and apps from
> source anyway because of required library version clashes.
>
> I still have to regularly install and use RedHat/CentOS and Ubuntu in
> order to test apps/drivers I maintain -- and I'm always glad when I
> can take off the straigh-jacket and handcuffs and go back to Gentoo.
>
> --
> Grant
>
>

I started using Linux with Mandrake 9.1.  After about six months of
dealing with the dependency problems and that pesky init thingy, I
starting looking for something else.  The upgrades were never easy and
that init thingy would stop working for some reason and then I'd have to
reinstall again.  To this day, I really have no affection for the init
thingy.  Right now, I have three or four sets of kernels/init thingys
around just in case. 

I've installed Mangio, replacement for Mandrake/Mandriva, and it's not
as bad as it once was but I wouldn't want to have to install it here. 
I'm sure after a few upgrades, it would get ugly. 

Moving to Gentoo was the best thing I ever did.  I may change again one
day but it would require some serious screwing up.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[Alan McKinnon]

On 16/04/2016 16:48, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hello, Gentoo.
> 
> I'm just saying hello to confirm I'm still here.
> 
> For many months now, Gentoo has simply worked for me, without problems.
> I sync my system several times a week, and emerge just works.
> 
> The last bit of excitement I had was in early 2015 when I was trying to
> sort out the mess in my xfce4 system after gnome-3 had been made stable.
> In the end, I gave up and reinstalled Gentoo, which this time took me
> only a week.
> 
> Admittedly, there's very little which is cutting edge on my system - the
> box is 6½ years old, it boots with lilo on an old fashioned BIOS, my
> filesystems are ext3 (or in one case, ext2) on spinning rust.  The only
> remotely adventurous things I've got are RAID-1 (via the kernel) and
> lvm2.
> 
> So a big thanks to all the developers who've brought about this happy
> state of affairs!
> 


Awesome name you got there fella :-)

My Gentoo experience is much the same as yours although we live and work
in very different worlds. My stuff seems to JustWork(tm) almost always
even though I use ~arch everywhere except one 10-year old desktop (it's
old and slow so I keep it on arch to minimize emerge times).

I've only once had a problem I couldn't work my way out of, the
above-mentioned desktop has an IDE motherboard and the drive slowly got
worse without me noticing till one day it packed up. New, drive
reinstall. But with an /etc/ backup it was really just a little more
work than emerge -e world.

So yes, huge kudos to the gentoo devs for giving us these tools to make
all of that possible!

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 16 Apr 2016 14:48:51 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> So a big thanks to all the developers who've brought about this happy
> state of affairs!

+1


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Top Oxymorons Number 14: Temporary tax increase

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Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[Marc Joliet]

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On Saturday 16 April 2016 14:48:51 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>Hello, Gentoo.
>
>I'm just saying hello to confirm I'm still here.
>
>For many months now, Gentoo has simply worked for me, without problems.
>I sync my system several times a week, and emerge just works.
>
>The last bit of excitement I had was in early 2015 when I was trying to
>sort out the mess in my xfce4 system after gnome-3 had been made stable.
>In the end, I gave up and reinstalled Gentoo, which this time took me
>only a week.
>
>Admittedly, there's very little which is cutting edge on my system - the
>box is 6½ years old, it boots with lilo on an old fashioned BIOS, my
>filesystems are ext3 (or in one case, ext2) on spinning rust.  The only
>remotely adventurous things I've got are RAID-1 (via the kernel) and
>lvm2.
>
>So a big thanks to all the developers who've brought about this happy
>state of affairs!

I concur!

-- 
Marc Joliet
--
"People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we
don't" - Bjarne Stroustrup

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Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[Matthew Marchese]

On 4/18/2016 3:32 PM, Marc Joliet wrote:
> On Saturday 16 April 2016 14:48:51 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>> Hello, Gentoo.
>>
>> I'm just saying hello to confirm I'm still here.
>>
>> For many months now, Gentoo has simply worked for me, without problems.
>> I sync my system several times a week, and emerge just works.
>>
>> The last bit of excitement I had was in early 2015 when I was trying to
>> sort out the mess in my xfce4 system after gnome-3 had been made stable.
>> In the end, I gave up and reinstalled Gentoo, which this time took me
>> only a week.
>>
>> Admittedly, there's very little which is cutting edge on my system - the
>> box is 6½ years old, it boots with lilo on an old fashioned BIOS, my
>> filesystems are ext3 (or in one case, ext2) on spinning rust.  The only
>> remotely adventurous things I've got are RAID-1 (via the kernel) and
>> lvm2.
>>
>> So a big thanks to all the developers who've brought about this happy
>> state of affairs!
> I concur!
>
The first three entries in this thread, and the last few are what keep
guys like me encouraged. Loved reading about all your success stories.
Thanks for sharing! :)
-maffblaster