Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

Sigi · 2006-06-30 18:01:02

Please excuse my previous posting. I don't have anything against gentoo.
<sarkasm>I just can't stand people asking dozens of mostly "not very intelligent" questions in this forum in about two month and finally ask if they should move on to gentoo because they heard that gentoo has got cool use-flags...</sarkasm>

mucknert · 2006-06-30 18:33:24

Sigi wrote:

Please excuse my previous posting. I don't have anything against gentoo.
<sarkasm>I just can't stand people asking dozens of mostly "not very intelligent" questions in this forum in about two month and finally ask if they should move on to gentoo because they heard that gentoo has got cool use-flags...</sarkasm>

Even though Sigi is swiss I'm inclined to agree with him. :mrgreen:

phrakture · 2006-06-30 18:41:07

kensai wrote:

Use Flags go against the KISS philosophy? What The....??? I find it pretty simple that I say well I don't need this or that I don't want my package pull those dependencies.

Simplicity is not the same as a simple interface that has complexity at the backend. Under the hood gentoo/emerge do quite alot. The scale looks like this:

Simplicity ------|--------------------------------------|---- Configurability
                Arch                                 Gentoo

One sacrifices simplicity the more configurable a system gets (vim, emacs, mutt). You can use your logic to claim "emacs is dead simple... to do that I just hit C-x,M-c,v!" but that doesn't make it true.

To end on a nice quote with reference to Ford's Model-T. It fits nicely with this point.

Henry Ford wrote:

You can have it in any color, so long as it's black

EAD · 2006-06-30 18:44:59

Sigi wrote:

Please excuse my previous posting. I don't have anything against gentoo.
<sarkasm>I just can't stand people asking dozens of mostly "not very intelligent" questions in this forum in about two month and finally ask if they should move on to gentoo because they heard that gentoo has got cool use-flags...</sarkasm>

Look, I LOVE ARCH !!!
I don't complaing about it :idea:
but, I think that in any good product there is allways a place to see if we are going in the right direction, and learn from other distos, I mean look if Micr$soft Vista will have some cool things, Should we put our head in the sand and deny it?
I think what make LINUX and GNU soo good is the fact that any one in the world can offer some impromvments, and if it is right we can implement it.
ARCH is cool and to keep it cool and KISS we should always ask our self if we are going in the right direction :!:

phrakture · 2006-06-30 18:49:14

phrakture wrote:

Simplicity is not the same as a simple interface that has complexity at the backend. Under the hood gentoo/emerge do quite alot.

This used to be much worse:

Gentoo Ebuild for X
Archlinux PKGBUILD for X

Now apply "KISS" and let me know which one makes more sense.

kensai · 2006-06-30 19:57:34

Yeah I have to admit it phrakture I agree with you. Gentoo is configurable and Arch is simple this is the difference so the choice would be: Do you want a highly configurable system (Gentoo) or a Highly Simple system (Arch) ?

Gullible Jones · 2006-06-30 20:11:14

Why not both, for different applications?

slackhack · 2006-06-30 20:19:49

i used gentoo for a few days a year or so ago -- about as long as it took to install + a few hours. (j/k, i think it was about a week.) before that, i came from using slackware for about a year. the thing is, when i was mucking around with gentoo, i never really felt like i was learning anything practical about linux that would help me later on, only a bunch of more or less ideosyncratic things about gentoo and its weird commands that weren't really applicable to other linuxes.

maybe i didn't use it long enough to really get into it, because gentoo does have about the best documentation i have ever seen in linux -- i used gentoo documentation to set up my network printer in debian :shock: -- but actually using it was such a hassle and got old so fast that by the time i found arch, i never looked back. ironically, for all of gentoo's "build flags" and compile options, arch has been hands down the fastest distro that i have ever used.

so for me the bottom line is: if you have a lot of time that you want to devote to learning and compiling an ideosyncratic system that won't be any faster than arch, go for gentoo. if you want to really learn the linux fundamentals, install slackware. if you want to use your computer to actually *do* things, install arch. every distro has its upside and its downsides, but taken altogether, it's extremely hard to beat arch. i don't think there's a better distro out there.

Jefg60 · 2006-06-30 21:17:47

I use both, but only because I have a machine with a C3 processor that arch cant handle. gentoo makes me cringe sometimes, compiling stuff for hours that is installed in 5 minutes with arch. BUT I use it because its configurable and flexible enough to work on my C3 and get the most out of it. (its faster than i486 optimized distros on the C3, in mplayer for example).

If it wasnt for having a small underpowered C3 machine I'd never have bothered with gentoo. I can see it is more configurable, but I cant see the benefit on a modern pentium 4. Arch is more than configurable enough and still allows you to compile things yourself and build packages where necessary without headaches and in a simple easy to understand way (one of the reasons I liked arch over the fedora / suse I was using before).

The gentoo docs are fantastic though!

kensai · 2006-07-01 18:12:43

Sadly I have been using Gentoo for some time now and is slowing down. I'm trying different things to speed things up again. If I can't resolve this I'll consider moving to Arch Linux again. My OS isn't supposed to slowdown this way.

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-02 01:11:56

Are you using ReiserFS?

kensai · 2006-07-02 01:25:05

Gullible Jones wrote:

Are you using ReiserFS?

Yeah I'm using reiserfs. I did a fresh install of arch linux just to see and I have the same slowdown. Strange. But other times I have been running reiserFS for longer times and no slowdown at all I think or maybe not that noticeable like the one I experience now.

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-02 02:07:43

I usually find that ReiserFS slows down after a while, perhaps due to fragmentation (maybe using the notail mount option could combat this?). Also keep in mind that its read speeds tend to be slower than other filesystems'.

Of course it might be something else... Do you know if you have UDMA enabled?

kensai · 2006-07-02 17:17:23

I thuink my problem is a faulty Hard Drive I am using another HDD now and all works fine.

kensai · 2006-07-02 17:47:45

I have installed Ubuntu 6.06 on the same disk but with jfs and everything is fast so the hdd is not faulty. It lead me to 2 option. ResiserFS and latest kernel 2.6.17 does not make a good combination or I'm crazy.

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-02 22:56:29

You're not crazy, ReiserFS just isn't very good. Hans Reiser seems to have a penchant for designing filesystems that are theoretically great and practically mediocre. :?

kensai · 2006-07-03 00:41:59

Gullible Jones wrote:

You're not crazy, ReiserFS just isn't very good. Hans Reiser seems to have a penchant for designing filesystems that are theoretically great and practically mediocre. :?

Hmmm... I see, I reinstalled Arch in this same HD that was slow on reiserfs with gentoo and then with Arch, now I made it jfs and everything is faster. I just love jfs I don't know why I moved in the first place. Thanks Gullible Jones for showing interest even knowing I was not treating you that good in this thread, sorry and thanks.

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-03 01:24:34

It's alright, I probably come across as an arrogant idiot at times.

deficite · 2006-07-03 04:36:31

My install of Arch on ReiserFS would prove you wrong Gullible. It is very good. I've installed on ReiserFS a few times (I tried Reiser4 in the past and learned my lesson on how horrible that is). Personally, I think ReiserFS and ext3 are both very good filesystems. I only went to ReiserFS on my latest install just to do something different.

iphitus · 2006-07-03 05:44:43

Rice it up! ricer4 for everyone!

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-03 09:44:32

deficite wrote:

My install of Arch on ReiserFS would prove you wrong Gullible. It is very good. I've installed on ReiserFS a few times (I tried Reiser4 in the past and learned my lesson on how horrible that is). Personally, I think ReiserFS and ext3 are both very good filesystems. I only went to ReiserFS on my latest install just to do something different.

Interesting. Did you put the notail mount option in your fstab?

kensai · 2006-07-03 13:04:38

deficite wrote:

My install of Arch on ReiserFS would prove you wrong Gullible. It is very good. I've installed on ReiserFS a few times (I tried Reiser4 in the past and learned my lesson on how horrible that is). Personally, I think ReiserFS and ext3 are both very good filesystems. I only went to ReiserFS on my latest install just to do something different.

My fresh install of Arch Linux with reiserFS will prove you wrong also. But I have installed arch with reiserfs several times with no slowdown so that proves me wrong also.

iphitus wrote:

Rice it up! ricer4 for everyone!

Well, reiser 4 is proven by benchmarks to be one of the slowest FS in 2.6 kernels.

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-03 13:18:22

Well, it could have to do with the code used to implement it in the kernel... Remember, until rather recently ext3 was a poor performer, and now it's very fast, due to changes in the kernel code. It might actually be possible to make Reiser4 perform better for less specialized applications. Then again, it might not, and fragmentation might always make itself a problem.

deficite · 2006-07-03 15:28:32

Gullible Jones wrote:

deficite wrote:
My install of Arch on ReiserFS would prove you wrong Gullible. It is very good. I've installed on ReiserFS a few times (I tried Reiser4 in the past and learned my lesson on how horrible that is). Personally, I think ReiserFS and ext3 are both very good filesystems. I only went to ReiserFS on my latest install just to do something different.
Interesting. Did you put the notail mount option in your fstab?

I'm just going with standard mount options. My analysis on it is that reiserfs does some things faster than ext3 and ext3 does some things faster thatn reiserfs. I like ext3 better, but I don't feel like going through the hassle of converting over right now. Perhaps when I move my Arch install over to my 40GB hard drive I will.

iBertus · 2006-07-03 15:51:11

I used reiser4 when it first was releases and it worked okay. I did keep running into problems with md5sums not matching up between file copies :shock:.

Typically, I avoid reiser-anything becasue I think Hans Reiser is a bit of an ass. That's another topic, tho...

Currently, I'm using JFS for all my partitions, but considering moving to ext3 with dir_index (or ext4 ) in the future.

Arch Linux

#51 2006-06-30 18:01:02

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#52 2006-06-30 18:33:24

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#53 2006-06-30 18:41:07

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#54 2006-06-30 18:44:59

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#55 2006-06-30 18:49:14

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#56 2006-06-30 19:57:34

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#57 2006-06-30 20:11:14

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#58 2006-06-30 20:19:49

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#59 2006-06-30 21:17:47

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#60 2006-07-01 18:12:43

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#61 2006-07-02 01:11:56

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#62 2006-07-02 01:25:05

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#63 2006-07-02 02:07:43

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#64 2006-07-02 17:17:23

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#65 2006-07-02 17:47:45

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#66 2006-07-02 22:56:29

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#67 2006-07-03 00:41:59

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#68 2006-07-03 01:24:34

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#69 2006-07-03 04:36:31

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#70 2006-07-03 05:44:43

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#71 2006-07-03 09:44:32

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#72 2006-07-03 13:04:38

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#73 2006-07-03 13:18:22

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#74 2006-07-03 15:28:32

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

#75 2006-07-03 15:51:11

Re: Is it worth the hustle to move to Gentoo ?

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