[gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[C. Beamer]

Hello and Happy New Year to all,

I am so enamoured with Gentoo that I couldn't resist passing on this bit
of trivia.

O'Reilly recently published a book called "Linux Desktop Pocket
Reference".  The first chapter is available for viewing on the O'Reilly
website and in that chapter the author rated, from his personal
experience, 5 distributions under the following categories in the
process of getting Linux on the desktop:

Installation, Configuration, Program Installation, Documentation (Gentoo
rated 5 here, which is *totally* understandable and deserving), and
finally gave a weighted average for these.

The weighted averages for the 5 distros were:

Fedora: 3.45
*Gentoo: 3.75*
Mandriva: 3.70
Suse: 3.40
Ubuntu: 3.90

I've used all of these distros with the exception of Suse and can
understand why Ubuntu rated slightly higher than Gentoo.  I found it
very easy to get it installed and for me, it detected all my hardware
and configured everything without a glitch.  However, I find it
interesting to note that Gentoo scored the 2nd highest when it's
supposed to be one of the most difficult distros to get installed.

I admit, I did suffer some growing pains when installing Gentoo, but I
still think it's the greatest because of the control it gives me and I
have learned a lot about things like compiling the kernel in the process.

Gentoo rocks!

Regards,

Colleen

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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Chris White]

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On Saturday 31 December 2005 22:35, C. Beamer wrote:
> Fedora: 3.45
> *Gentoo: 3.75*
> Mandriva: 3.70
> Suse: 3.40
> Ubuntu: 3.90

Word of advice, things like this are generally flawed.  The best distro for 
your needs is the one that best suits what you expect your system to do.

Chris White

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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Philip Webb]

060101 Chris White wrote:
> On Saturday 31 December 2005 22:35, C. Beamer wrote:
>> Fedora: 3.45
>> *Gentoo: 3.75*
>> Mandriva: 3.70
>> Suse: 3.40
>> Ubuntu: 3.90
> Word of advice, things like this are generally flawed.

Quite true, but I believe CB's point was simply
that Gentoo is up there with the other well-known distros for usability.

> The best distro for your needs is the one
> that best suits what you expect your system to do.

Again, people out there should know that Gentoo may well be that distro.
Gentoo is not difficult, but requires on-going attention & input from users:
in return, you get a system which you can tune to do just what you want.

My own recent experience trying to update the OS in my back-up machine was
that Mandriva 2006 wouldn't install, Kubuntu could not be configured,
as it refused to recognise the password (it uses the same for user & root),
while Suse required downloading & writing  5  ISO's;
Ubuntu, of course, is only for those who are willing to use Gnome.
Finally, I got Mandriva 2005 installed & working well enough,
but only with a lot of time & effort (the machine too slow for Gentoo).

OTOH I've been using Gentoo in my main box without problems since 031005
& have a fully upto-date environment which does just what I want it to do.

Gentoo is probably suitable for a lot more users than realise it.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,  Philip Webb : purslow@chass.utoronto.ca
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|  Centre for Urban & Community Studies
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'  University of Toronto
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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[C. Beamer]

Philip Webb wrote:

>060101 Chris White wrote:
>  
>
>>On Saturday 31 December 2005 22:35, C. Beamer wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Fedora: 3.45
>>>*Gentoo: 3.75*
>>>Mandriva: 3.70
>>>Suse: 3.40
>>>Ubuntu: 3.90
>>>      
>>>
>>Word of advice, things like this are generally flawed.
>>    
>>
>
>Quite true, but I believe CB's point was simply
>that Gentoo is up there with the other well-known distros for usability.
>  
>
Exactly!  :-)  This rating was derived from the author's personal
experience.  Personally, I think that Gentoo is the best from my
experience.  It does have a bit of a learning curve (but because of the
things I've learned, I appreciated that learning curve), but I figure if
you give it a chance and can live with the long builds, it's rating is
well deserved.

>  
>
>>The best distro for your needs is the one
>>that best suits what you expect your system to do.
>>    
>>
>
>Again, people out there should know that Gentoo may well be that distro.
>Gentoo is not difficult, but requires on-going attention & input from users:
>in return, you get a system which you can tune to do just what you want.
>
>My own recent experience trying to update the OS in my back-up machine was
>that Mandriva 2006 wouldn't install, Kubuntu could not be configured,
>as it refused to recognise the password (it uses the same for user & root),
>while Suse required downloading & writing  5  ISO's;
>Ubuntu, of course, is only for those who are willing to use Gnome.
>Finally, I got Mandriva 2005 installed & working well enough,
>but only with a lot of time & effort (the machine too slow for Gentoo).
>
>OTOH I've been using Gentoo in my main box without problems since 031005
>& have a fully upto-date environment which does just what I want it to do.
>
>Gentoo is probably suitable for a lot more users than realise it.
>  
>
I couldn't have said this better myself!  :-)

As I said in my original post, I've used all these distros with the
exception of Suse.  I have the most experience with Redhat and Fedora
and *personal opinion*, I would use Gentoo over any of them.

Sure, all distros have their good points and bad and it all comes down
to what works best for the person using it (as Chris pointed out).  I
didn't intend that this should be a "written in blood" evaluation.  I
just wanted to point out that a technical writer rated it well within a
group of well known distros when this would surprise a lot of people
(not necessarily Gentooists) and I thought you guys might find it
interesting.

And surely you guys must agree the the "Documentation" rating (this was
a 5 for Gentoo, and the highest) is right on!  Even an idiot like me can
follow this documentation and produce a favourable end result.

Happy New Year! :-)

Colleen
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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[michael]

On Sun, 1 Jan 2006, Philip Webb wrote:

> 060101 Chris White wrote:
>> On Saturday 31 December 2005 22:35, C. Beamer wrote:
>>> Fedora: 3.45
>>> *Gentoo: 3.75*
>>> Mandriva: 3.70
>>> Suse: 3.40
>>> Ubuntu: 3.90
>> Word of advice, things like this are generally flawed.
>
> Quite true, but I believe CB's point was simply
> that Gentoo is up there with the other well-known distros for usability.
>
>> The best distro for your needs is the one
>> that best suits what you expect your system to do.
>
> Again, people out there should know that Gentoo may well be that distro.
> Gentoo is not difficult, but requires on-going attention & input from users:
> in return, you get a system which you can tune to do just what you want.
>
> My own recent experience trying to update the OS in my back-up machine was
> that Mandriva 2006 wouldn't install, Kubuntu could not be configured,
> as it refused to recognise the password (it uses the same for user & root),
> while Suse required downloading & writing  5  ISO's;
> Ubuntu, of course, is only for those who are willing to use Gnome.
> Finally, I got Mandriva 2005 installed & working well enough,
> but only with a lot of time & effort (the machine too slow for Gentoo).
>
> OTOH I've been using Gentoo in my main box without problems since 031005
> & have a fully upto-date environment which does just what I want it to do.
>
> Gentoo is probably suitable for a lot more users than realise it.

How slow is too slow for Gentoo? I'm using Gentoo on a 233MHz laptop.
It's not fast, but it's perfectly adequate. Install did take over a
week, I'll admit.

I'm curious because I seem to do a lot of squeezing the most out of
underpowered computers, and Gentoo has been my friend in these projects.
I would like to know what conditions are not well suited to Gentoo.

Michael
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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Chris White]

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On Sunday 01 January 2006 23:22, michael@michaelshiloh.com wrote:
> How slow is too slow for Gentoo? I'm using Gentoo on a 233MHz laptop.
> It's not fast, but it's perfectly adequate. Install did take over a
> week, I'll admit.
>
> I'm curious because I seem to do a lot of squeezing the most out of
> underpowered computers, and Gentoo has been my friend in these projects.
> I would like to know what conditions are not well suited to Gentoo.
>
> Michael

TBH that's a question of, it can be done in any situation, it's simply how 
willing you are to adjust to those situations.

One of the main factor people consider is time.  They want the stuff now and 
they don't want to wait around for things to compile.  However, with that 
inherent approach comes the lack of flexibility in choosing what you don't 
need, and what you do.  Think of postgres/mysql/sqlite for example.  All of 
these provide database functionality, but chances are you're only going to 
pick one.  If you don't use postgresql support, then why add it into various 
applications, causing both more space and more memory to load.  While that 
example alone might not seem like a lot, consider the different 
functionalities portage offers the ability to customize through USE flags.  
After awhile people start to realize that stuff is loaded faster, not because 
of suped up CFLAGS, but because the parts they stripped out creates faster 
load time.  

Now, binary support for portage exists, but it's not as advertised as the true 
install method.  That's because most senior developers consider Gentoo to 
have always been a source based distro.  Anything to make it binary would 
consider it to be more like debian or some such.  

Then ANOTHER argument comes into play by people that have mass server 
deployments.  People that have a cluster of 100 systems with the same specs 
don't want to sit around and compile for each one.  Instead they could have a 
build server that builds the binary packages for the systems, then the 
systems do the install.

That's basically what it comes down to.  Time is the main factor that draws 
people away.  However I personally consider this a side effect, and have no 
problem letting emerge -u world do its thing overnight.

Chris White

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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Philip Webb]

060101 Chris White wrote:
> On Sunday 01 January 2006 23:22, michael@michaelshiloh.com wrote:
>> How slow is too slow for Gentoo? I'm using Gentoo on a 233MHz laptop.
>> Install did take over a week, I'll admit.
> One of the main factor people consider is time ...
> ... Time is the main factor that draws people away.

Exactly ! I really don't have "over a week" to spend updating a back-up box !
Esp as I have only  1  monitor, so can't use the regular machine meantime !

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,  Philip Webb : purslow@chass.utoronto.ca
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|  Centre for Urban & Community Studies
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'  University of Toronto
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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Dale]

Philip Webb wrote:

>060101 Chris White wrote:
>  
>
>>On Sunday 01 January 2006 23:22, michael@michaelshiloh.com wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>How slow is too slow for Gentoo? I'm using Gentoo on a 233MHz laptop.
>>>Install did take over a week, I'll admit.
>>>      
>>>
>>One of the main factor people consider is time ...
>>... Time is the main factor that draws people away.
>>    
>>
>
>Exactly ! I really don't have "over a week" to spend updating a back-up box !
>Esp as I have only  1  monitor, so can't use the regular machine meantime !
>
>  
>
Of the four machines I have, three are updated over ssh, no monitor at 
all.  Rigs are below.  I can even start the updates and then shutdown my 
main rig, that has the monitor.  I login and start a screen session, 
then start the updates.  If I plan to shutdown my main rig for some 
reason, I do the -f option first since the souces are on my main rig.  
If I need to shutdown my main rig, I just exit the screen session and 
logout.  I can login later and re-attach the session to see how it's going.

Maybe there is something different about my old Compaq but I don't think 
it would take me that long, even with one CPU.  My install went pretty 
quick and I did compile everything.  I even did a emerge -ev world to 
make sure.

Maybe I just hate Mandrake to much.  LOL  Please don't tell me I have to 
install Mandrake ever again.  PLEASE !!!!!

Also keep this in mind, "good things come to those who wait."  To me, 
Gentoo is worth waiting for.

Dale
:-)



-- 
To err is human, I'm most certainly human.

I have four rigs:

1:  Home built; Abit NF7 ver 2.0 w/ AMD 2500+ CPU, 1GB of ram and right now two 80GB hard drives.  Named Smoker
2:  Home built; Iwill KK266-R w/ AMD 1GHz CPU, 256MBs of ram and a 4GB drive.  Named Swifty
3:  Home built; Gigabyte GA-71XE4 w/ 800MHz CPU, 224MBs of ram and a 2.5GB drive.  Named Pokey
4:  Compaq Proliant 6000 Server w/ Quad 200MHz CPUs, 128MBs of ram and a 4.3GB SCSI drive.  Named Putput

All run Gentoo Linux, all run folding. #1 is my desktop, 2, 3, and 4 are set up as servers.  

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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 1 Jan 2006 09:50:42 -0500, Philip Webb wrote:

> Exactly ! I really don't have "over a week" to spend updating a back-up
> box ! Esp as I have only  1  monitor, so can't use the regular machine
> meantime !

What's wrong with using ssh and screen?


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If at first you don't succeed, give up. No use being a damn fool.

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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Philip Webb]

060101 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Jan 2006 09:50:42 -0500, Philip Webb wrote:
>> I really don't have "over a week" to spend updating a back-up box !
>> Esp as I have only  1  monitor, so can't use the regular machine meantime !
> What's wrong with using ssh and screen?

I don't have a home network, just  2  machines +  1  monitor.
There's also only  1  ADSL connection, so I can't use the Internet.
No, I'm not going out to buy more hardware.  Am I missing something ?

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,  Philip Webb : purslow@chass.utoronto.ca
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|  Centre for Urban & Community Studies
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'  University of Toronto
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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 1 Jan 2006 12:40:55 -0500, Philip Webb wrote:

> > What's wrong with using ssh and screen?
> 
> I don't have a home network, just  2  machines +  1  monitor.
> There's also only  1  ADSL connection, so I can't use the Internet.
> No, I'm not going out to buy more hardware.  Am I missing something ?

A cable at least, a cable and two cheap NICs at most :)

Networking the two would enable you to use the second machine as a
backup server, reducing the risk of needing to use it as your main box.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

What's this script doing? unzip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; gasp ; yes ;
umount ; sleep

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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

On Sunday 01 January 2006 19:53, Neil Bothwick wrote:

> > No, I'm not going out to buy more hardware.  Am I missing something
> > ?
>
> A cable at least, a cable and two cheap NICs at most :)
>
> Networking the two would enable you to use the second machine as a
> backup server, reducing the risk of needing to use it as your main
> box.

And it would make possible the use of the ssh+screen combination 
described before.
Moreover, it would make possible to share the ADSL line between the two 
boxes, so they could be connected to Internet both at the same time.
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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Philip Webb]

060101 Etaoin Shrdlu wrote:
> On Sunday 01 January 2006 19:53, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>> No, I'm not going out to buy more hardware.  Am I missing something
>> A cable at least, a cable and two cheap NICs at most :)
>> Networking them would enable use if the 2nd machine as a backup server,
>> reducing the risk of needing to use it as your main box.
> And make possible the use of the ssh+screen combination described before.
> Moreover, it would allow sharing the ADSL line between the two boxes,
> so they could be connected to Internet both at the same time.

But why would I want to go to all that trouble
just to have another computer I can plug in if the usual one fails ??
I would have to have on OS in the back-up machine -- Mandriva 2005 ? -- ,
run Sshd (or whatever) with accompanying security paranoia
(which I've never had to get into so far), get it to work properly
-- there are always bugs & awkwardnesses with something like that -- ,
then use it all to install -- slowly -- Gentoo on the 2nd machine.
This would be all new to me & have no other use for work or normal life,
all for a machine I built in 2000 & which is beginning to show signs of age
(eg the on/off switch doesn't work reliably) !!

Really, some of us believe computers are working machines, not toys,
& we try to keep our systems simple, reliable & useful.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,  Philip Webb : purslow@chass.utoronto.ca
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|  Centre for Urban & Community Studies
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'  University of Toronto
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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 1 Jan 2006 14:41:28 -0500, Philip Webb wrote:

> Really, some of us believe computers are working machines, not toys,
> & we try to keep our systems simple, reliable & useful.

Which is why I mentioned that by networking the two, you could also use
the second machine as a backup server. I do this because my working
machines have to keep working. All backups are automated, from one machine
to the other. If something fails I have immediate access to all software,
configurations and, most importantly, data. My home directory is backed
up hourly, so recovering from a failure should not take much longer than
that.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

An infinite number of monkeys pounding away on keyboards will
eventually produce a report showing that Windows is more secure,
and has a lower TCO, than linux.

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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sun, 1 Jan 2006 06:22:14 -0800 (PST), michael@michaelshiloh.com wrote:

> I'm curious because I seem to do a lot of squeezing the most out of
> underpowered computers, and Gentoo has been my friend in these projects.
> I would like to know what conditions are not well suited to Gentoo.

I think the wetware is more important than the hardware. The willingness
to look for, read and follow instructions is the most important
requirement.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Don't put all your hypes in one home page.

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Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Dale]

michael@michaelshiloh.com wrote:

>
> How slow is too slow for Gentoo? I'm using Gentoo on a 233MHz laptop.
> It's not fast, but it's perfectly adequate. Install did take over a
> week, I'll admit.
>
> I'm curious because I seem to do a lot of squeezing the most out of
> underpowered computers, and Gentoo has been my friend in these projects.
> I would like to know what conditions are not well suited to Gentoo.
>
> Michael



I have Gentoo on a old Compaq Server, it's in my sig below, and at the 
time I installed it, it only had one CPU.  It took me a few hours to get 
to a console prompt.   It has no GUI, no monitor either.  It runs great 
by the way. 

> root@putput / # uptime
>  04:14:46 up 20 days,  5:23,  1 user,  load average: 4.00, 4.00, 4.00
> root@putput / #


I shut it down only when a storm is coming.  I only have a UPS for my 
desktop system.  I had rude shutdowns.  It runs folding and that is it.

All that said, I would like to see Gentoo on a 75MHz rig.  That would be 
fun to watch KDE compile on.  LOL  What, maybe a month or two, at 
least.  LOL

Dale
:-)


-- 
To err is human, I'm most certainly human.

I have four rigs:

1:  Home built; Abit NF7 ver 2.0 w/ AMD 2500+ CPU, 1GB of ram and right now two 80GB hard drives.  Named Smoker
2:  Home built; Iwill KK266-R w/ AMD 1GHz CPU, 256MBs of ram and a 4GB drive.  Named Swifty
3:  Home built; Gigabyte GA-71XE4 w/ 800MHz CPU, 224MBs of ram and a 2.5GB drive.  Named Pokey
4:  Compaq Proliant 6000 Server w/ Quad 200MHz CPUs, 128MBs of ram and a 4.3GB SCSI drive.  Named Putput

All run Gentoo Linux, all run folding. #1 is my desktop, 2, 3, and 4 are set up as servers.  

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] A Bit of Trivia

[Darryl Wagoner]

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Greetings,

I am new to Gentoo user.  I have been using Linux since slackware was the
only distro.  I had been using Red Hat for many years until Red Hat until
they out grow the desktop users.  I tried Mandrake for a while and found it
was a pain to upgrade applications or install new applications because of
version shew of GTK, etc.  Then other things would break.

I had stayed away from Gentoo because of the "high maintains".  But I
couldn't find anything else that seem to fit my needs.  So I gave Gentoo a
go and have regretted it every since.  Regretted not doing it years before
that is.

I can understand why it is a distro for experts.  First it takes away too
long to compile everything and configuring the kernel isn't for a linux
newbee either.  That is the downside, the upside is that you only have to do
it once.  Then you can keep everything up to date with emerge.  So far I
have installed 3 systems with Gentoo and I am going to try to make it the
standard at my company.  The tools are great!  emerge, rc-update,
etc-update, etc.

I am a very happy user.


--
Darryl Wagoner - WA1GON

"Evil triumphs when good men do nothing."  - Edmund Burke [1729-1797]

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