You are not logged in.

#26 2004-02-19 06:31:44

jlowell
Member
Registered: 2003-08-10
Posts: 270

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

ubermartian,

Firstly:

Quote:
gentoo is suffering from both popularity and zealots. hopefully arch won't reach that stage.


From reading comments in this thread and in others, I have to laugh at that. There are a ton of arch-zealots on here.

You had expected Slack zealots at www.archlinix.org?

Gentoo in many ways is a superior distro to Arch, and would be a lot better if the developers had planned its growth properly.

I suppose I'll need some help here understanding just how it might be that a poorly planned distro could be superior to anything.

For the people who say that configuring arch is easier, I laugh at that. Gentoo is definitely easier providing that emerge doesn't break your system. It didn't used to be that fragile. I was hoping that arch would be a good replacement for Gentoo, so far it has been a mild dissapointment, but not as much as the dissapointment that Gentoo has become.

Are we grounding your belief that Gentoo's installation is easier than Arch's in the fact that Gentoo has turned out to be fragile and that emerge just might break your system? I would have to concede that a broken install is indeed easier on the user than one that carries through to the end successfully. I mean look at all the time you save.

The only benefits arch has over gentoo is that its a binary install, hasn't grown into a hulking mess of an OS and doesn't have a ton of users who cba to RTFM, use google or the search function of the forums.

Seriously, now, isn't that like saying that the only benefit life has over death is that you're alive? 

You make curious arguments, ubermartin. Once I managed to get past the condescension, all I could make of them was that Gentoo is better than Arch because Gentoo is a disaster. And you're giving us advice?

jlowell

Offline

#27 2004-02-19 07:01:15

ubermartian
Member
From: Edinburgh
Registered: 2004-02-06
Posts: 32

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

I love the way you twist my words.

The comment about zealots was aimed at people like you.  People who can't stand criticism in any form, positive or negative, because everything is perfect about their chosen distro.

I suppose I'll need some help here understanding just how it might be that a poorly planned distro could be superior to anything.

I think it was pretty obvious that my post was saying that gentoo started out as a good distro and declined.  I didn't say that the distro was poorly planned, just thats its growth was.  Pretty much the reason of the decline.

Are we grounding your belief that Gentoo's installation is easier than Arch's

Learn to read, I said configuring, not installing.  Installing arch is pretty simple compared to gentoo.  However configuring gentoo I found much easier, things like rc-update made it a breeze.  Emerge just had a tendency to overwrite your files or add in incompatabilies.  Pacman has this problem too as I've just found out. 

Once I managed to get past the condescension, all I could make of them was that Gentoo is better than Arch because Gentoo is a disaster. And you're giving us advice?

condescending?  Lol, I think your post was the condescending one.  But, no, no-one is allowed to citicize your o-so-perfect arch linux.

Did I once say that Gentoo, as it stands today is better than Arch?  No.  Arch and Gentoo started out with very similar goals,  different implementation.  Gentoo used to be a good distro; its not any more, that is what I said.  Some aspects of Gentoo are superior to those of Arch, and vice versa, that is true of debian, mandrake, redhat, fedora too.  I said quite clearly that arch should look at gentoo and learn from what went wrong.  How is that condescending?  Ever heard of learning from other peoples mistakes? or don't you make mistakes yourself?

Is it fashionable for arch users to slag gentoo off all the time?

Offline

#28 2004-02-19 07:28:08

robot5x
Member
Registered: 2004-01-26
Posts: 266

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

Isn't this all getting a little petty?
Use it if you want to....otherwise don't. This isn't a competition.

Offline

#29 2004-02-19 09:16:16

jlowell
Member
Registered: 2003-08-10
Posts: 270

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

Hi again, ubermartain,

I think it was pretty obvious that my post was saying that gentoo started out as a good distro and declined. I didn't say that the distro was poorly planned, just thats its growth was.

A distinction without a difference, perhaps? A distro, particularly one as complex and ambitious as Gentoo, is brought into existence without a vision? As a matter of fact, Robbins had it all laid out while he was working for the distro that immediately preceeded his creation of Gentoo. In no way does the history offer the sense of a man willing to allow himself to be so casually possesed by events. Sadly, ubermartain, truth would not seem to admit of good concepts that go bad, only of bad concepts that realize themselves.

Learn to read, I said configuring, not installing.

Another distinction without a difference? As you'd certainly have to know, both distros arrange for the completion of the principal configuration files during installation.

But, no, no-one is allowed to citicize your o-so-perfect arch linux.

Not bad, not bad. But permit me, if you will, to insert one revision for the sake of truth. I think it would be at once more fair and precise to say that no one is allowed to *invalidly* criticise our oh-so-perfect arch linux.  And there's a distinction with a difference.

Regards.

jlowell

Offline

#30 2004-02-19 09:32:12

d3c3it
Member
From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2003-09-10
Posts: 112
Website

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

at what point did arch start getting compared to gentoo and gentoo to arch? if anything arch is more closer to debian or slack imo comparing it gentoo is crazy. least from my usage, gentoo does things like configs files for example in a completly different way compared to arch and arch has a completly different way of package distrubution.

meh.....each there own. i use both and i love/hate features in both distros


"Covered in blood, Cant understand" - Biffy Clyro

Offline

#31 2004-02-19 14:33:45

scottro
Member
From: NYC
Registered: 2002-10-11
Posts: 466
Website

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

I too am always surprised by the Arch/Gentoo comparison.  I've frequently said that I find Arch closer to Deb than anything else, if I were comparing.  (As someone quite accurately pointed out, however, they felt my comparison was inapt <sorry, bad pun> that apt was a bit too modular. )

Yet, to explain it to someone used to Linux in general, I would still use the Deb comparison

Gentoo is probably a victim of its own success.  Mr. Robbins has always been good, in my opinion, at writing understandable documentation and Gentoo took a somewhat advanced method of installation and made it clear to the newcomer. 

As the gentleman who created Crux Linux wrote in answer to why use Crux Linux, it is a matter of personal taste.  I was first impressed by Arch when Gentoo had so many problems with the gcc upgrades from 2.x to
3.x   
As for which is easier to configure, well...

echo $INTUITIVE
what_you_are_used_to_using

Scott

Offline

#32 2004-02-21 23:38:55

speedster
Member
From: Stanley, NC
Registered: 2004-02-21
Posts: 20
Website

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

I've used Gentoo for quite awhile, but have recently switched over to Arch.  It's great!  Gentoo is too, but I just don't have the time to waste compiling things.  I just about drove my wife crazy with the computer compiling for hours.  Arch seems to be perfect- fast, pacman is very fast and everything seems stable so far.

Thanks for the ultimate distro! big_smile

Offline

#33 2004-02-27 13:52:01

d3c3it
Member
From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2003-09-10
Posts: 112
Website

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

i was just browsing the gentoo forums and OMG theres so much nastiness going on now towards n00bs. Its likly alot of them have heard that the forum is friendly and are very much linux noob with opinions like "this dont work why? linux sucks"

just ill educated but getting flamed instead, felt sorry for the bastard

EDIT because it made sense LOL


"Covered in blood, Cant understand" - Biffy Clyro

Offline

#34 2004-02-27 15:11:48

Moo-Crumpus
Member
From: Hessen / Germany
Registered: 2003-12-01
Posts: 1,487

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

I read the words, they don't fit my mind. Is it pidgin?  wink


Frumpus addict
[mu'.krum.pus], [frum.pus]

Offline

#35 2004-02-27 15:44:19

d3c3it
Member
From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2003-09-10
Posts: 112
Website

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

Pink Chick wrote:

I read the words, they don't fit my mind. Is it pidgin?  wink

fixed it, lol stupid brain big_smile


"Covered in blood, Cant understand" - Biffy Clyro

Offline

#36 2004-02-27 16:29:22

sarah31
Member
From: Middle of Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 2,975
Website

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

gentoo is all about making people feel bad.

feel bad about runing something else.

feel bad for suggesting sometthing else.

for not "knowing" as much as them.

for critisizing them.

in their minds gentoo = l33t and there is no argument you can give them that will tell them otherwise.

they consider themselves some sort of l33t bunch they do.

newsflash a dead fish could install and run gentoo. there is nothing to really learn except a few more things on the commandline.

their build system is a bunch of hooey, they forse you to swallow a bunch of crap settings, etc

a few weeks ago some gentoo developer cam on the irc channel wanting to learn more about arch to see if he wanted to help develop. the hell was that all about. just because you can develop for gentoo does not mean you walk right into arch and do what you wish. you have to earn your wings. you have to show judd that you can be trusted and you have concept of how arch works.

feh what a bunch of rpm rejects the gentoo lot are. pttui ! i spit on their piss ant distro.

i think comparing arch to it is just a waste of time. i don't know how it ever came up in the first place. gentoo and arch are very different distros about all you can compare on them is the speed ... which is a waste of time too because any difference between -march=i686 -O2 -pipe  and some other hyper optimized setting is pretty well milliseconds. (i am not saying optimizing for your processor is bad just that hyper optimizing is more often than not a waste of time and space)


AKA uknowme

I am not your friend

Offline

#37 2004-02-27 21:51:58

sweiss
Member
Registered: 2004-02-16
Posts: 635

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

I never liked gentoo. It was too messy and annoying, dumb installation procedure which could have easily been put into a simple script (at least for GRP install), and as if it was left behind in order to make Gentoo feel more hardcore. I am annoyed by the cockiness of it, calling it a "meta-distribution", the "best distro ever". It's annoying, and in a way decieving. I surely didn't know what I was getting when I first installed Gentoo, and there were a lot of annoying bugs in the way, and on the first time you install it you can't really tell whether you've stumbled upon a bug or if you're doing something wrong.

However, that is not the case with Slackware. I simply adore Slackware for the way it presents itself, for the users, no lies or hidden truths. All the cards are on the table. It seems to me that Arch is taking Slackware's route, which is what I like best.

I can easily see how Arch will turn into a cult distro the same way Slackware did, through the users, unlike Gentoo which has recieved its status mainly from its developers.

Offline

#38 2004-02-27 22:16:31

sarah31
Member
From: Middle of Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 2,975
Website

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

very well put sweiss


AKA uknowme

I am not your friend

Offline

#39 2004-02-27 23:31:15

wakeupbomb
Member
From: Liverpool, UK
Registered: 2004-02-15
Posts: 164

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

Some serious raging starting to happen in here

Offline

#40 2004-02-28 03:14:46

afu
Member
From: Tuscalooser, Alabummer
Registered: 2004-02-19
Posts: 155

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

Perhaps its my own ignorance, but I see no reason nor have no intrest in waiting for my base system to compile. Kernel, apache, special apps with special requirements, sure. I guess if I were really doing it myself, building my own system, one app at a time by hand it would be different. As a  developer, sure.

I like Slack, and now I like Arch.

Is it really as bad as you guys are saying about the snootiness over there?  Any other distro's have that kind of issue?
-Shawn

Offline

#41 2004-03-01 15:47:30

dreas
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2004-01-19
Posts: 15
Website

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

roll

sarah, sorry but you just sound as ignorant as you claim gentoo'ers to be.

gentoo, in my eyes, is nothing about being "l33t" at all. it's all about choice. what processor architecture am I using? will I optimize for speed or size? do I want totem to be compiled against xine or gstreamer? just to name a few of the endless choices I CAN make, but don't have to if the defaults are alright with me. I think though that this is valid for most source-based distributions out there. sure, you might be able to do the same in arch, but is it as easy as configuring one or two variables and you're set?

indeed, anyone and their mom can install gentoo, as long as they can read and follow instructions. the documentation is so well-written that even myself with almost no linux experience was able to install it on first try. the few things I wasn't sure about (kernel configuration and c-/use-flags) I got help from friendly people on IRC (#gentoo.de). in addition, the learning curve is huge! I don't understand how you can say that there's nothing to learn when using gentoo.

I think gentoo is only slightly faster compared to other distributions and this is due to choice. you decide what your kernel contains. you decide if you compile mozilla with irc and mail integration. these are the things that make it "faster" in my eyes, not the optimization flags which probably result in a few milliseconds of saved time as you said. hyper optimization, as you call it, may indeed lead to a broken or worse system if you don't know what you're doing.

I agree - you shouldn't compare gentoo and arch - you shouldn't compare source-based distributions with binary-based ones. you better compare arch (pacman) with debian (apt-get) or Red Hat (rpm). and out of these arch is the clear winner to me. debian though being incredibly stable is way too out-dated. also it didn't install well on my box, even a long time debian user friend of mine didn't manage to get it work properly. rpm and it's dependency-hell just causes a lot of trouble easily. arch just works and it works wonderful!

anyway I will stick with gentoo on my main box as it's the perfect distribution for ME. I know it ain't for anyone. I'm not closed-minded though and open for different things. That's why I have arch running on my third box and that's why I'll give sourcemage a try on my second box. I even recommended arch to many of my friends and helped them setting it up.

I really don't get why the majority of this forum is constantly bashing gentoo. No one forces you to use it, you have the choice, so why all the aggression towards it? frustration? envy?

sarah31 wrote:

gentoo is all about making people feel bad.

feel bad about runing something else.

feel bad for suggesting sometthing else.

for not "knowing" as much as them.

for critisizing them.

in their minds gentoo = l33t and there is no argument you can give them that will tell them otherwise.

they consider themselves some sort of l33t bunch they do.

newsflash a dead fish could install and run gentoo. there is nothing to really learn except a few more things on the commandline.

their build system is a bunch of hooey, they forse you to swallow a bunch of crap settings, etc

a few weeks ago some gentoo developer cam on the irc channel wanting to learn more about arch to see if he wanted to help develop. the hell was that all about. just because you can develop for gentoo does not mean you walk right into arch and do what you wish. you have to earn your wings. you have to show judd that you can be trusted and you have concept of how arch works.

feh what a bunch of rpm rejects the gentoo lot are. pttui ! i spit on their piss ant distro.

i think comparing arch to it is just a waste of time. i don't know how it ever came up in the first place. gentoo and arch are very different distros about all you can compare on them is the speed ... which is a waste of time too because any difference between -march=i686 -O2 -pipe  and some other hyper optimized setting is pretty well milliseconds. (i am not saying optimizing for your processor is bad just that hyper optimizing is more often than not a waste of time and space)

Offline

#42 2004-03-01 16:17:23

Moo-Crumpus
Member
From: Hessen / Germany
Registered: 2003-12-01
Posts: 1,487

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

newsflash a dead fish could install and run gentoo. there is nothing to really learn except a few more things on the commandline.

I don't think it is disgracing for a distribution to be installable by dead fishes. For my taste, I have learned still something in installing gentoo and using it for -  lol - some days. But documentation was very well, therefore I noticed "Ah, that is the way to handle it!".

Some people think learning was equal to engineering research, and I don't understand - never have, will never - why this should be necessary for running arch or is something a distribution should strive for.

Have a nice day, community!


Frumpus addict
[mu'.krum.pus], [frum.pus]

Offline

#43 2004-03-02 05:42:02

Guest
Guest

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

I'm surprised you can get so lame sometimes Sarah. Look, arch's build system (like you say) is so good that it isn't even able to make 'gzexe' work. Do I feel the need to spit out insanity about the huge bunch of loosers using arch all around the world? Hell no... Do I think they feel leet because their distro's build system is 1) an obvious ripoff 2) somehow limited ? Hell no... Then am I crazy? Hell yeah... I mean, as every Linux user, I should be a Social Outcast. I promise I'll try harder next time lame ass bitch smile

#44 2004-03-04 19:35:32

Guest
Guest

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

Arch is a clone of debian,

root@arch ~ # ln -s /usr/bin/apt /usr/bin/pacman

upss sorry.

Comparing binary vs source distributions is stupid, and who compares them are stupids.

#45 2004-03-09 09:08:40

Bobonov
Member
From: Roma - Italy
Registered: 2003-05-07
Posts: 295

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

I think the only term of comparision between gento and arch is taht are both two realy updated distro and this is the only common base they have since they are based on two completely diferrent concept.

Most of the people that start to use either gento or arch are people looking for last bleeding edge package.

Most of the people moving from gento to arch are people annoied by compiling time under getoo.

I  personally can undesrstand this, ie downloading openoffice arch pakcage is much faster than recompiling it (the source is much bigger than the package) and the compiling time is more than 6 ours on a fast computer and during the compilation is practically impossible to use the pc.

I do not say that arch is perfect, it has way to improve but I have to admit that is still a 0.6 version of a very new distribution.

It is sure that most of the time in this forum you find messages "against" gento, most of them are form people coming from gento and staying with arch because they decided that arch has more point in favor compared to gento (off course this is their opinion based on their needs).

In future is possible that you start to find in gento forum messages from deluded arch user that blame arch for this or that reason.

Sorry but people have all the rights to express their disappointment with gentoo if they tried it and they didnt like.

As well as people express disappointmetn about arch. (if you look in the forum you can find these messages as well)

Offline

#46 2004-03-09 14:56:22

m33sb3w
Member
From: Villanova, PA, USA
Registered: 2004-03-02
Posts: 19

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

Bobonov wrote:

Most of the people moving from gento to arch are people annoied by compiling time under getoo.

I  personally can undesrstand this, ie downloading openoffice arch pakcage is much faster than recompiling it (the source is much bigger than the package) and the compiling time is more than 6 ours on a fast computer and during the compilation is practically impossible to use the pc.

I'd just like to address this because I've seen it mentioned quite a few times and I frankly don't like the bad rap that Gentoo is getting on this board from users who may not be totally informed...

Gentoo Installation Guide wrote:

You also have several possibilities: you can compile your entire system from scratch or install prebuilt packages to have your Gentoo environment up and running in no time. And of course you have intermediate solutions in which you don't compile everything but start from a semi-ready system.

I pulled that right from the installation guide.  You can start the Gentoo install from three different stages.  If you opt to start from the first stage you pretty much do everything from scratch.  That's how I did it because I didn't mind the wait.  However, you can start from an intermediate second stage or even a third stage.  With the third stage, you pretty much just extract a tarball and you're done.  I've never done it like this, but I do believe there is no compiling if you start from stage three.  None!

Gentoo Installation Guide wrote:

The Gentoo Reference Platform, from now on abbreviated to GRP, is a snapshot of prebuilt packages users (that means you!) can install during the installation of Gentoo to speed up the installation process. The GRP consists out of all packages required to have a fully functional Gentoo installation. They are not only sufficient to have a base installation up to speed in no time, but all lengthier builds (such as KDE, XFree, GNOME, OpenOffice, Mozilla, ...) are available as GRP packages too.

However, these prebuilt packages aren't maintained during the lifetime of the Gentoo distribution. They are snapshots released at every Gentoo release and make it possible to have a functional environment in a short amount of time. You can then upgrade your system in the background while working in your Gentoo environment.

Gentoo Portage Manual wrote:

Gentoo provides ebuilds, the Gentoo packages if you like. But when you want to install such an ebuild, you can choose between building the package and using a prebuilt package.

I believe that's pretty much self-explanatory.  You can install pre-built packages on Gentoo.  The small packages are kept relatively up-to-date, I'd say comparable to the packages in Arch.  The bigger packages are sometimes not as up to date, because they're made when a new Gentoo release comes out.  With Gentoo's new quarterly release schedule I don't see that as a major problem.  You'll also find that some of the big packages, such as Openoffice and Mozilla, are updated quite frequently.  If you need a program immediately, install the binary.  Then you can compile it when you have free time.  This is actually a bit of a segue into one more not-Gentoo specific thing that makes compiling painless...

CFQ (Complete Fair Queueing) Scheduler
I've been using the CFQ IO scheduler since somewhere in the early 2.5.60-something kernels.  It was written by Jens Axboe (sp?) and is included in Con Kolivas' (ck) kernel patches.  Andrew Morton includes the ck patchset in his mm-sources.  The CFQ scheduler is great for desktop interactivity and responsiveness.  I experience minimal slowdown (Openoffice takes a three or four seconds longer to load, webpages take a second longer to render) while compiling software.  I've been using mm-sources for nearly a year now and I've never experienced any instability or problems.  I really recommend trying them with the CFQ scheduler enabled. (To enable the CFQ scheduler you add 'elevator=cfq' to your GRUB menu.lst after the 'root=/dev/<partition>' part in the entry).  The latest mm-patch is linked to right on the front page of kernel.org

Offline

#47 2004-03-10 07:46:59

Bobonov
Member
From: Roma - Italy
Registered: 2003-05-07
Posts: 295

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

As I said in my post  most of the people using arch or gento are looking for the most up to date system as possible.
I know that little package are made for gentoo too but this automatically exlude (correct me if I am wrong) all bigger like openoffice, kde, gnome (that are the think usualy desktop user are looking for) so the only choice is to compile them.

Offline

#48 2004-03-10 13:50:22

m33sb3w
Member
From: Villanova, PA, USA
Registered: 2004-03-02
Posts: 19

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

Bobonov wrote:

As I said in my post  most of the people using arch or gento are looking for the most up to date system as possible.

Well--and this is back on topic  smile--I've noticed that many Arch packages are not up to date as what I have on my other system.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily complaining, just pointing this out.  Most packages are right up there at the latest stable version.  A few are a little behind.  However, there are hardly any "unstable" packages in Arch.  Probably a third to a half of my desktop system is packages that aren't officially "stable".  I miss having that in Arch.  Yes, I know I can write the PKGBUILDs myself, but right now I don't have the time to do that for ALL the packages I want.

Offline

#49 2004-03-10 13:59:05

Bobonov
Member
From: Roma - Italy
Registered: 2003-05-07
Posts: 295

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

It is arch politics in general to use only stable release (no cvs, beta, alpha, rc etc. etc) unless strictly necessary, like for important bugfix or security update.
This rule is generally applied especially for core package (gcc, kernel, core library), sometime package are made anyway form rc or alpha release, i.e. last openoffice.

About package not updated to the latest stable release you have the possibility to notify the mantainer.

Offline

#50 2004-04-15 02:27:35

mr_ed
Member
From: Ottawa, ON, Canada
Registered: 2004-04-13
Posts: 72

Re: Gentoo Users Experience with AL

skparkes wrote:

I also love the slackware simplicity of Arch.  Not everything is ran at startup, and you just edit your rc.conf to set everything up.  It's so quick to boot and easy on the system.  And unlike slack, you don't have to install the kitchen sink to avoid dependency issues.

Agreed.  smile

skparkes wrote:

Speaking of which, I'll throw in how I did my alsa.  ... and then load them with alsactl in rc.local.  Anyone have a better way?

Hey, that's exactly one of the things I was look for.  I was about to post a "Where should I put alsactl restore?" question.

To stay on topic, I gave up on Gentoo when I updated the world, ran etc-update, and watched it hose my system.  Well... there went two days of compiling...  roll

I really like Arch.  I'm considering wiping Slack off of my laptop because I like pacman so much.

One of the things that drew me to this distro was finding out that I'll only ever need to re-install if I have a hard drive failure.  smile

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB