Today marks the release of Gentoo Linux 2004.2 for the AMD64, HPPA, SPARC and X86 architectures.
Distribution Release: Gentoo Linux 2004.2
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I’m installing off a 2004.1 cd since yesterday.
Is there any important difference between the live cds/stages? Should I start all over with a 2004.2 live cd?
Don’t worry. Gentoo is a meta-distribution, so all you have to do is emerge sync and emerge -u world and your system is up to date. You don’t have to worry about new releases and you don’t have to reinstall.
Is nice to see Gentoo team progresing
Good work
I Love this Distro
In Gentoo, LiveCDs are ceremonial. No, you shouldn’t start all over again with 2004.2. You’d end up the same system whether you use 2004.1, 2004,2 or 2007.4. It doesn’t matter.
As long as 2004.1 detects your hardware very well, you can keep using it as an installation CD forever, well for long enough.
And once you get your system up and running, you would not need to get 2004.2 or any other future releases for that matter to get your system up to date.
You see Gentoo has this software called Portage. It automagically updates your system software to their latest versions without the need for new installation disks every, uhmmm, 3 months.
No, I’m not going to extoll its virtues. You’ll find it out for yourself.
Gentoo is aimed at experienced power users(read: Unix geeks). Installing Gentoo can be time consuming, but I wouldn’t call the process complex.
Now, I completely and totally disagree with you when you say you have to do so much work to have a program running. Really, what can be simpler than;
# emerge program
?
Well to be honest, for many of the same reasons Mandrake does not have a massive server farm loaded with OC48’s to accommodate the demand they would have if they had a similar repository based distribution system set up by default.
Gentoo is a small, self supported community. In my opinion, a mandrake-like installer for Gentoo would change that.
I am sure others disagree, but that is only my opinion so they are entitled to.
There have been several attempts to make a mandrake-like installer for Gentoo. To the best of my knowledge, none of them have come to fruition.
In my opinion, it doesn’t make sense to have a GUI installer for a core source based distro. It’s synonymous to saying there should be a mandrake-like installer for LFS(Linux from the scratch).
Because essentially Gentoo is LFS, if you install from stage 1 or 2, like any Geek worthy of his taste should do. 🙂
Was it a troll attempt?
Anyway, Gentoo is for those who like to understand how things work. The same kind of people who spent hours assemblying/unassemblying their bikes and their daddy’s radios.
It’s also for those (my case) who wanted to learn how Linux works; I learned more about Linux reading the Gentoo install guide and performing it than the years I spent using Mandrake and SuSE (I am not flaming MDK or SuSE though; it’s just a different approach)
Finally I think Gentoo is great for IT schools: if I were a teacher in such a place, I’d bring my students to the lab, go through a hands-on Gentoo install with them and explain the concepts underneath each step.
Someone once said that Gentoo is for those who prefer building Lego sets instead of buying finished toys, I think it’s quite appropriated too
Last but not least, if you can’t see the point of Gentoo, simply don’t use it
I’m not a very experienced Unix geek, and I find Gentoo a lot easier to maintain and use than any other distribution I’ve tried. True, you’ve got to read carefully the handbook and learn a few things but that’s also true for any other OS, unless some else takes care of your box for you.
Is anyone using Gentoo for production servers (for example, for webhosting or database applications)? Is Gentoo stable enough? Is is high-quality (like Debian) or things break every now and then? Are security updates promptly?
Unfortunately, I have yet found a datacenter to support Gentoo though…
Well, I use it on my laptop on which I coordinate every bit of my life. I would install it on a server in a heartbeat (with toned down settings); if not that, BSD.
I never would have believed I would like Gentoo, but I am a total convert now. I still think it’s not for everyone … the installation is a very LONG process. I did stage 1 installs on 2 of my machines but even the stage 3 install that I did on my laptop took a long time.
But to ME, it has been well worth it. The architecture of this distro is hands down the very best I have ever seen. And I’ve used a lot of distributions. Including Slackware, Debian, RedHat, Fedora, Mandrake… (By “used”, I mean I have actually spent at least a few months using them. I have “toyed with” many others but never spent much time with them.)
The Gentoo handbook and all of the documentation available on the Gentoo website is extremely well written, unlike so many of the HOWTO’s that are available. And if you do have a question, I’ve found that the forums on the Gentoo website are a fountain of knowledge. Everyone has been very helpful.
I *highly* recommend Gentoo to those of you who are willing to spend a little bit of time up front actually reading and learning a few things. It’s not a click-through distribution. If that’s what you want, Gentoo is not for you. (Which is where I use to be myself.)
compile optimization, “logo blocks”, to learn etc., all make for cool answers to that question, but that is not why most people use Gentoo.
_most_ people use Gentoo because they are displaced Mandrake/SuSE/RH users frustrated with broken packages and RPM hell.
Gentoo’s install may be somewhat complex, but it is still arguably less difficult than trying to install some packages on an RPM distro and unlike said task, it only needs to be performed one time.
Gentoo’s install may be somewhat complex, but it is still arguably less difficult than trying to install some packages on an RPM distro and unlike said task, it only needs to be performed one time.
Not sure what you mean. Looks like you’re mixing the OS install with installing software afterwards.
If you’re refering to the install, then you don’t have broken packages or RPM hell with Mandrake/Suse/RH, it’s all OK in the CD;
if you’re refering to software install, then you surely don’t do it only once in Gentoo, unless you decide not to install anything afterwards.
At least in my Mandrake experience I had very little of “RPM Hell”, as long as I learned how to use urpmi and used the “easy urpmi” site to set some good sources.
I know people who use Gentoo on their servers. The primary advantage of using Gentoo for your server is that you get to install only the applications needed to run the server and nothing more. That is, it is extremely streamlined.
Stability:
How stable any Linux distro is depends heavily on its administrator. For instance, I wouldn’t hit the upgrade button on my server like I would on my desktop PC. The logical and safer thing to do is to have a test box or test server.
If upgrading the test box or test server breaks things, then you have your answer. If it doesn’t, then after a little testing, I would assume it is safe to upgrade.
Security:
Again a lousy administrator breaks a Linux system as it is with any other OS. However, Gentoo has a security utility called glsa-check. GLSA stands for Gentoo Linux Security Advisory. Essentially, the utility scans your system for packages that have security flags against them and then proceeds to install newer or more secure updates or patches.
The help page for glsa-check states that the utility is experimental and should not be used on a production system, yet. However, I find the test option, where glsa-check checks for packages that have flags against them, very useful. Your are not forced to install the new patches or packages.
Finally, for some reason, my Gentoo server seems to be very fast. Don’t ask why.
I use gentoo on all my systems, one of which I run apache, while it is for personal use only, it runs apache nicely, very stable.
Security updates come out VERY fast, gentoo has a huge community, and things get fixed quickly.
I find gentoo to be a great distro, it even runs very good on my ultrasparcs
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=199312
As nice as gentoo is, they still don’t have a proper base system, and a total lack of hier(7). They put the GTK+ libs in /usr/lib, how moronic is that?
If you want a source oriented OS use FreeBSD or NetBSD. And you get a really free license for free. FreeBSD has recently removed GNU’s proprietary tar and replaced it with bsdtar, a free implementation.
I had some difficulty getting gentoo to work in its last release form. It couldn’t detect my nic card, which meant I couldn’t emerge the drivers for it.
Hopefully this release will have fixed that!
Nice troll.
GNU is now “propietary” in contrast to the BSD licensce-cute. And pray tell in what way is Free/Net-BSD more “source oriented(sic)” than Gentoo ? It’s funny you pit Gentoo against FreeBSD- many of the things in Gentoo were modelled after things in FreeBSD. The only OS which is more “source oriented” than Gentoo is LFS-period.
The placement of librarys(gtk+ etc.) is in general far more sane than I have ever seen in any other distro- the placement is partially chosen to aid in compilation from source. Gentoo does not follow the LSB and the LFH- the deviations are primarily due to things like the flexible script based runlevel system which Gentoo uses. In a default install of Gentoo /usr/local is empty and “init x” is simply linked to the runlevel scripts-which anyone can modify of newly create themselves. Now when the day comes where FreeBSD supports 1/10 the hardware which Linux supports I may consider using it-In large part I view the *BSD’s as “our open-source bretheren” and it is the GNU toolchain which makes the BSD’s somewhat appealing to me. But I imagine that Gentoo alone now has as large a install base as FreeBSD-and then of course there is the community- and Gentoo’s community simply wins hands down in contrast to anything else in the opensource world. Come to think of it I have seen many examples of FreeBSD converts to Gentoo-which places what you stated in a rather strange light.
But then again- Gentoo and FreeBSD have different target communities-there is overlapping, yet they remain distinct-BSD is still primarily a server OS which alsow works well as a desktop provided that ones hardware is adequately supported-whereas Gentoo is in the first instance a hacker/tinkerer OS which can be customized to do any number of functions-hence why it is called a metadistribution. Each should find the OS which matches their needs best-if you simply want a desktop OS there are many dsitros which are aptly suited for this(SuSE, Fedora, Mandrake, Linspire, etc.)- if you simply want a server OS you are probably best served by RHEL, SuSE Enterprise, Debian and the *BSD’s- But if you want hybrid solutions, which are custom tailored to the particular application and environment you may find that Gentoo is simply the best.
Aside from my personal usage- where I definitely prefer Gentoo- after years of using SuSE, having started with Slackware, I found Gento to be optimal for my job-I administer LTSP clients for a local university department-at once the machine must be a fairly stable server and a bleeding-edge desktop-highly customized for the needs of the users. It is trully a hybrid situation. Previously the university had used SuSE which did give us a stable server environment but the desktop in the default installation was unusable and it proved to be more trouble than it was worth trying to customize it to our own needs due to the ways in which SuSE modifies their desktop software. GNOME under SuSE is a nightmare to administer because it is not GNOME as given to us in source by the authors-and SuSE does not document their changes.
With Gentoo you get desktop enviroments the way they were designed and envisaged by the authors themselves. Is Gentoo for everybody and anybody -hmm- well anybody can learn Gentoo and master it-but then they are’nt “anybody” anymore.
I’m happy they’re releasing the new liveCD, etc. But, with the pending releases of KDE 3.3, GNOME 2.8, and the new Xorg Xserver in the next 3-5 few weeks… I would much rather that they slightly post-poned the release.
It would have been nice to have a precompiled binary of these beasts, as it would cut installation time by almost a day.
*sigh* …emerge -u world, i guess it’ll have to be.
and for anyone claiming that gentoo is too hard, etc.
I’ve gotta say… it has the most detailed and up-to-date documentation. If you just follow along the guide, it’s very easy… and you learn a helluva lot about how/why things work. on a linux box.
The only thing Gentoo keeps you from learning…is the kind of dependency hell most other distros stick you with. Even the ones with a great package manager don’t cut out all the headaches…. b/c even the biggest distros dont have prebuilt packages of every conceivable program you might want. And using other peoples binary/rpms can be a real headache, especially if they have absure dependencies.
With gentoo, all you have to do is type “emerge <Package_Name>”…. it determines what it needs, in addition to your desired package, compiles and installs everything you need.
Gentoo puts a lot of power/control in your hands, and it cuts the bloat out that most distros stick you with…. but, it’s by no means too difficult. Just follow the documentation, and you shouldn’t have any major hangups. =)
This linux geek has been running Linux desktops in some form since about 1998. I have yet to encounter a better system to meet _my_ needs than Gentoo. While it is most certainly for linux power users who are comfortable with the command line, and who know how to compile the kernel, Gentoo allows you to have an unprecedented degree of control and makes certain things much much easier.
Switching from devfs to udev, and switching from XFree86 to X11.org were both very easy to do while using Gentoo. They write all the scripts so you don’t have to 😉
If you perform a stage 3 install, the only really hard part is compiling the kernel correctly with the right options and the right hardware support. If that is old hat for you, it should be pretty easy to get a nice gentoo system up and running.
For me Gentoo represents the l337ness of the BSD environment with a ports tree on steroids, with all of the bells and whistles of the linux kernel (ALSA anyone?). With Gentoo I can have my cake and eat it too.
Ok i have just installed the previous release of Gentoo on my Athlon64. The specs are 1GB ram, a64 3200+, SATA drives. It took the better part of 24 hours to install the system.
HOWEVER, it has got to be by far the best package management i have seen on Linux. Yes time consuming (unless you use pkg) but its DEFINATELY worth it. My a64 is running at the speed its meant to be and rock solid. It puts fedora Core 2 , suse and MDK to shame, BY FAR! I am not a full convert yet but i am on my best way there. I am running Debian in 32bit mode since i cant get my radeon 9800 pro to work under 64 bit (except vesa). But the installation manual is exemplary, it is how documentation SHOULD be written. Hell you can read the install manual like a normal document… its so easy to read.
I started with a stage 3 install, it was done after about an hour with a running system with KDE, Gnome, Mozilla and OpenOffice from their live/package CD. which means i could use the system perfectly after 1 hour optimized fo A64. then i did the emerge sync, and over the next few hours (a LONG time!!!) i did this: emerge -u world && emerge k3b && emerge rhythmbox && emerge mozilla-firefox && emerge evolution .. yes this is VERY VERY hard (irony) , it took a looong time to compile but the system is then fully upgraded with the apps installed that i want, nothing more… and you kow what from now on once a month (if i want to) i can run emerge sync && emerge -u world and over night i will have a fully updated system.
I agree this is not for newbies but its definately worth going the process just to see how things work and so that you start understanding the system that you like so much (linux). Every distro is aimed for a target group. Gentoo is NOT newcomer oriented but anyone with a little bit of experience can install and configure it, BECAUSE of the documentation..
my 0.02Euros
I totally agree with you (as you can see on my post). one thing i would like to note thoguht about the “kernel compile” those guys (gentoo) even made that a POC (Piece of cake) run genkernel and gentoo compiles a kernel like the one you booted off with all the hardware detection so you get your system running and if you want to fiddle with the kernel late ryou can always re-compile on your own but at least you are up and running (so far as gentoo detected your hardware).
but yep, definately an excellent distro
Wow I didn’t know that about Gentoo.
Is genkernel installed by default, and does it produce a .config file?
yes its is “installed” by default it comes (at least) with a stage 3 install on the CD but you can also install it afterwards as described here: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&cha…
its a big compile but it took under 10 minutes on my machine so i think its berable , especially since you have a working kernel.. and yes it makes a .config file which you can then modify..
But it’s a distro.
Most gentoo users don’t know more about “how linux works” then any other Linux user.
Sorry.
But knowing how to emerge world doesn’t make you a kernel hacker… it’s just the same as apt-get (rpm/deb).
I enjoy using gentoo from time to time… If only the gentoo community would have dealt with the zealots inside it.
G.
It is a big bid diference source base and binary base distro is not the same config procedures.
I know. However, if you follow the great FAQ, it’s no big deal and once you finish installing, you don’t need to know much to operate it.
With all due respect, Gentoo is not LFS…
GNU is proprietary in a sense, yes. Take for example tar. GNU’s implementation of tar sometimes generates proprietary tar files that cannot be unpacked with NetBSD’s tax. If they were SUS star-compliant it wouldn’t be a problem. They embraced and extended C for years so, sometimes, you needed their compiler to build some programs, regardless of whether you already had an ANSI C compliant compiler.
Libraries like GTK+ and any other stuff don’t belong in /usr/lib. NetBSD puts libraries in /usr/pkg/lib, doesn’t pollute the base with 3rd party stuff (packages) and leaves /usr/local for you. Show me a Linux distro that can do that. As long as GNU/Linux systems are built by throwing a bunch of random GNU programs on top of a kernel it won’t be possible.
Although other distros may have graphical installers that make the first few minutes with an OS easier, what matters is what remains after the install.
First, after a Gentoo install you have a sane /etc with only a handful of files and directories – this let’s you get a grasp of how little it takes to get Linux up and running. Other distros install so much garbage that it’s difficult to know what the hell is going on (is it me, or is the typical 1GB RedHat install a bit over the top?).
Second, the source based Portage system is (in my opinion) much easier to use since you can immediately eliminate any problems that can often come from g++ or libc incompatibilities. This by itself eliminates one whole class of annoying problems that affect binary distros.
I had some difficulty getting gentoo to work in its last release form. It couldn’t detect my nic card, which meant I couldn’t emerge the drivers for it.
Hopefully this release will have fixed that!
That did suck. The fix is to use the smp sources on the CD. That seemed to detect my nic.
I enjoy using gentoo from time to time… If only the gentoo community would have dealt with the zealots inside it.
Where? Most people using Gentoo are not zealots. In fact I hate when people use such a loaded word. We are talking about operating systems here, not religion! Does Gentoo have some overzealous users? Yes they do, just the same as every other operating system. Read ANY comments to the articles on this site and you will see flaming from users of every OS. In fact the Gentoo community is much friendlier than many others outside of it.
Where? Most people using Gentoo are not zealots. In fact I hate when people use such a loaded word. We are talking about operating systems here, not religion! Does Gentoo have some overzealous users? Yes they do, just the same as every other operating system. Read ANY comments to the articles on this site and you will see flaming from users of every OS. In fact the Gentoo community is much friendlier than many others outside of it.
Sadly enough… I’m right.
I can’t even begin to count the number of threads in other-distro’s forums were trashed by Gentoo users… At times, it seems impossible to ask a question about Fedora/Slackware/SUSE/etc without attracting 10 Gentoo users that, instead of trying to help, trash your thread with “switch to Gentoo” posts.
As I said… I use Gentoo, RHEL and Fedora and I love them all.
I don’t think that I am using it for the same reason that any of the others here are using it for. Really, RPM is a great system – better than Gentoo’s system as it can do an excellent job handling dependencies when you install AND remove software . I like Gentoo because of all of the packages it offers by default.
In my opinion, it doesn’t make sense to have a GUI installer for a core source based distro. It’s synonymous to saying there should be a mandrake-like installer for LFS(Linux from the scratch).
Because essentially Gentoo is LFS, if you install from stage 1 or 2, like any Geek worthy of his taste should do. 🙂
I’m not sure I agree. It seems to me that Gentoo has some strengths that could be preserved even with some sort of installer. I mean, you have to create a link for your timezone file, right? This is a step you’re pretty much guarenteed to do. So what if you provided a little menu that you choose the timezone, and it did it for you rather than needing to type a command? What if you could call up some menu-system (even text-based) that would let you choose from the available portage packages, instead of needing to figure out what they’re called?
I don’t see how the availability of these tools would make Gentoo somehow “less good”, since the result is the same, but it might make installation easier.
Personally, I’d like some sort of a system that would just let you automate the install a little more. The most annoying thing about setting up Gentoo, IMHO, is that you need to run something, emerge something, wait a couple hours run something else, edit some files, emerge something else, wait a few hours, compile the kernel, wait a few hours, bla bla bla, wait a few hours, emerge some more… you get the idea. It’d be nice if someone were to write a script or menuing system that allows you to set up a bunch of the options first, and allow you to do ALL the downloading/compiling at once, unattended. I’d mind the long (full day) install less if I didn’t have to be present for so much of it, intervening every few hours. If I could spend two hours setting everything, and let it run unattended for 10 hours, those 10 hours would bother me less.
I’ve been using Gentoo since December (previously having used RedHat:5.2-9.0 on desktop, Trustix on servers) and I’m a big fan. My experience has been overall very positive. Portage is the real gem of Gentoo. The forums are also top notch when trying to track down a problem–even when the issue is not Gentoo-specific. Documentation is also superb.
I’m definitely a power-user, so Gentoo may be closer to home for me, but I can see those wanting to learn more about how Linux works gaining much insight from using Gentoo for a short time.
I just converted to Gentoo last week. I must say this distro is best positioned to be the Linux server of choice for the future. Gentoo is a great product – especially for displaced RedHat users like myself.
I use Gentoo for hosting for about 65 domains (Apache2, MySQL, Postfix, etc). Gentoo does the job very well. But one thing I hate about Gentoo is the fact, that the ebuild’s are not always consisten. Read my comment here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=168779
Btw: I started years agoo with SuSE and then Red Hat and then then Gentoo. Just jesterday I had a trouble with a Compaq Proliant Server (the system was up and runing for about 650 days without any reboot. Yes. Red Hat 7.1 and old 2.4.20-xfs kernel) and I started to update the packages on that server, because I was thinking that would fix the problem. If I would not have the knowledge I gained with Gentoo, then I would probably never rebuild RPM packages for RH8/RH9/Fedora to get the CPQ Proliant up again. But my years with Gentoo payed off and helped me alot to understand the interna of Linux. Okay… Red Hat is not Gentoo, but they are both Linux. And the years bevore I used Gentoo, never pushed my knowledge that far as Gentoo did.
Btw2: Since Gentoo showed up, I am using it on my IBM laptop as my one and only Desktop environment (Okay… I have another disc with WinXP somewhere here, but I don’t remember when I inserted that disc the last time into the laptop). I use this laptop for business and I need a working system. However… Gentoo can get you to much addictive. You will find yourself emerge rsyncing all the time and look for new packages. This is very dangerous. Anyway… it took me some time to get over that addiction. But now I use the system and as every system: It has good and bad things.
You will find yourself emerge rsyncing all the time and look for new packages.
Don’t do that. You add load to the Gentoo servers (respectively their mirrors) and waste you time. Use http://packages.gentoo.org
well /usr/lib is a correct path for gtk in linux. linux is built on gnu userland and gnu utils isnt third party in linux
distrubution. the BSD have there own userland hence GNU tilis is thirdparty and have other parts. why would you want to but libries and apps that isnt third party in a place for third party libs and apps?.
“better than Gentoo’s system as it can do an excellent job handling dependencies when you install AND remove software.”
Well, I think gentoo does a great job, you just have to know the tools. emerge -C package then emerge depclean will remove the package and then all uneeded deps left on the system. It is wise to use emerge -p depclean first to check which packages will be removed…
I have a local rsync mirror now.
depclean does NOT remove reverse dependecies. depclean just removes entries found in portage but not in the world file. That’s it.
Libraries like GTK+ and any other stuff don’t belong in /usr/lib. NetBSD puts libraries in /usr/pkg/lib, doesn’t pollute the base with 3rd party stuff (packages) and leaves /usr/local for you.
That may be the standard for NetBSD but it’s not for most linux distros. There’s nothing stopping it from being so, however at the same time why not? With most distros, especially those meant for desktop use GTK+ is hardly 3rd party. It’s a vital part of the desktop OS they’re using. If you’re going to nitpick a distro at least pick things that are seriously problems.
GNU is proprietary in a sense, yes. Take for example tar. GNU’s implementation of tar sometimes generates proprietary tar files that cannot be unpacked with NetBSD’s tax.
—————-
this is completely incorrect. GNU tar has options to specify completely posix compatible options and everything that it produces with is readable across any unix like operating system. its also completely already GPL and cross platform which is NOT proprietary at all. if its not readable its a bug in either or both of the tools
The “problem” with gentoo is the same of the others distros : manage dependencies – One time it will fail! One program install the wrong library version, and thats it!!! I think the slackware is better in thia point (don’t manage dependencies)
[qoute] Personally, I’d like some sort of a system that would just let you automate the install a little more… [/quote]
If this is what you need, then what you want is Onebase – with about 4/5 commands, you can have a source based install in hours, not days and you don’t even need a guide, a manual or anything else. You also have the option of binary install in that you can set the system up just the way you like it and recompile the whole thing from source with one simple command – olm -r -s system – http://www.ibiblio.org/onebase/
hornsmoker –
. . . on a blue & white g3. Initially, I had some trouble getting the kernel configured properly, and then figuring out the tricks to getting yaboot to work properly, but it’s been relatively smooth sailing since (although I had some errors trying to emerge xmms–still unresolved atm, too). This is definitely NOT a distro to install if you’re in a hurry, but if you have another box to use while the gentoo box is getting started, then there’s no reason to worry–especially after you get an ethernet switch on your workbench.
My only concern about the viabiity of gentoo is the impact on the repository servers, which get hit with everybody doing ’emerge sync’. There is a common courtesy that one only ’emerge sync’ 1-2 times a day max, but that certainly indicates a vulnerability IMO. I am a bit uncomfortable with the idea of relying so heavily on a central repository like that.
I am a bit uncomfortable with the idea of relying so heavily on a central repository like that.
The Gentoo repository is not central. It is distributed. They have many rsync servers. And adding a new one is easy and if you want, you can read the Gentoo docs and then build one for your local network or become a public mirror for the repository.
I can not find a mirror with the 2004.2 PPC version…
There is a graphical installer for gentoo, sort of.
vidalinux is gentoo w/ an anaconda installer. you still have to wait for X + gnome to compile, but you dont have to actually do anything more complex than a redhat/fedora install…
The “problem” with gentoo is the same of the others distros : manage dependencies – One time it will fail! One program install the wrong library version, and thats it!!! I think the slackware is better in thia point (don’t manage dependencies)
Have you used Gentoo, or are you just trashing it? I’ve been using Gentoo for a few months now, and I have not had one issue with dependencies. I don’t know much about Slack, but I do know I’d rather have dependecy management. I know there’s something called slapt-get (an apt clone), but out of the box, I just can’t beat the management Gentoo has.
http://tracker.netdomination.org/
Sadly enough… I’m right.
I can’t even begin to count the number of threads in other-distro’s forums were trashed by Gentoo users… At times, it seems impossible to ask a question about Fedora/Slackware/SUSE/etc without attracting 10 Gentoo users that, instead of trying to help, trash your thread with “switch to Gentoo” posts.
As I said… I use Gentoo, RHEL and Fedora and I love them all.
That’s funny because I see the same thing with Debian, FreeBSD, and Windows. Every mention of Gentoo gets a BSD user’s panties in a bunch. Some Debian users are the same way but it seems they’ve stayed out of this so far. We have all seen the remarks that Windows users have made in response to just about every article about Linux.
I think what you are refering to is partially true though. I don’t think it’s trashing threads though. It’s usually in response to someone who makes a complaint about Linux in general but failed to see that Gentoo eliminates their problems. I’m not saying Gentoo is perfect but it does solve a lot of problems that other distos still have, while creating a bunch of its own.
> Is anyone using Gentoo for production servers (for example, for webhosting or database applications)? Is Gentoo stable enough? Is is high-quality (like Debian) or things break every now and then? Are security updates promptly? <
well I use it on several servers and it behaves superb.. some of them :
uptime : 13:08:18 up 279 days
uptime : 13:23:21 up 186 days
they would be more if i didnt stop them for adding/removing some hardware.. the only problem i had was with a ftp server, but after recompiling kernel and differnet stuff and configuration tweaks it happens that the problem is one of the HDD’s i.e flacky hardware not gentoo fault.
Having used Slack in the past and Gentoo almost exclusively for the last two years, I can say with certainty that (at least in my experience) what you’re talking about isn’t an issue. I’ve never had *any* dependency problems in Gentoo that didn’t result from masked packages, and those are few and far-between. And if you want unstable packages, they are also quite easy to deal with — just enter a line in /etc/portage/package.keywords or package.unmask, emerge the package, end of story. I’ve found package management in Gentoo to be much easier than in any other distribution I’ve used, and never had any breakage whatsoever.
The other solution is to modprobe the module for your nic; it’s most likely available, just not loading automatically. Many people have had this problem with the 2004.1 CD, unfortunately.