Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

chrismortimore · 2006-07-17 00:22:30

Good evening all (well.. It's actually 1:30 AM here...)

I just switched my laptop over from Gentoo to Arch Linux about 6 hours ago now, and I must say, I'm very impressed my Arch.

The biggest plus for me is that it doesn't take me 6 hours to install OpenOffice, 8 hours to install KDE and an hour to install Xorg. So, I'm happy

Although the package tree for Arch is smaller, I can actually understand what PKGBUILDS do (already written 2), and I have no clue what ebuilds do despite how many times I've looked at them, so now I can extend the package tree as I need

The package tree is more up to date, yippee! I can now try gcc-4.1 without having to install packages from a testing tree, a big plus for my software development

My system is actually faster! With Gentoo, my laptop's start up time was ~50seconds (from me pressing "Enter" at the grub menu to the last daemon finishing loading and saying "DONE"). Now, I have the exact same daemons installed in Arch now (except I don't have the hddtemp daemon, can't find it as of yet), and doing from grub to the last daemon starting, my laptop now takes ~35seconds! Now if I can find a way to knock another 15 seconds off, I'll be very happy

So you now have a permanent convert to Arch Linux I'm going to keep my desktop running Gentoo for now so I can compare the two in terms of maintenance, and switch over to the winner at a later date. Congrats to the devs

Cheers,

Chris

PS: This is my first post from Arch Linux, all of my others have been through the Gentoo box.

skottish · 2006-07-17 00:29:02

From one happy new Arch person to another:

http://www.archlinux.org/packages/search/?q=hddtemp

To search for packages (even sub-names):

pacman -Ss <package_name>

mallow005 · 2006-07-17 02:36:10

I am a Gentoo user who recently chose Archlinux for my new-found PII 350 server. It had Gentoo on it, but I decided to go for a reinstall and didn't want to wait.

The overall installation process is a bit faster than compiling. However, to be fair, Gentoo does offer binaries (especially Open Office, what were you thinking!).

One gripe I have, is that I can't seem to figure out how to compile my kernel with less modules. I know there's the whole PKGBUILD method through ABS, but that was a bit of a pain and I don't know how it works with updating the kernel. Do I have to do that every time?

I wouldn't have to build a custom kernel if the regular kernel didn't load every single module it could, thus killing my 64megs of ram.

elasticdog · 2006-07-17 03:07:46

mallow005 wrote:

I wouldn't have to build a custom kernel if the regular kernel didn't load every single module it could, thus killing my 64megs of ram.

<code>mkinitcpio</code> is your friend on this one...read up on the mkinitcpio wiki page for ways to get your modules trimmed down (or search the forums, there have been a few posts on the matter).

Ryujin · 2006-07-17 04:17:10

And if you want to build your own kernel it is very easy, just follow the basic meathod, Arch is very vanilla so no real ricks are needed, although mkinitcpio is my new best friend and I just use the stock kernel.
And yes, Arch is the place to be, I started out on Gentoo and am just so much happier with Arch!

chrismortimore · 2006-07-17 08:14:10

skottish wrote:

From one happy new Arch person to another:
http://www.archlinux.org/packages/search/?q=hddtemp
To search for packages (even sub-names):
pacman -Ss <package_name>

If you actually look at what files that package gives though, it doesn't give an /etc/rc.d/ script, so I'd need to be more cunning... And run "hddtemp -d /dev/hda"

chrismortimore · 2006-07-17 09:27:13

mallow005 wrote:

Gentoo does offer binaries

A quick search on their current x86 tree brings up 100 binaries, 49 of which are java packages (REs, SDKs, that kinda thing). A further search shows they have 11366 packages in their tree. So, a quick bit of maths and it shows that 0.88% of their are binaries, and the rest are source. Not what I'd call a massive binary repo

mallow005 · 2006-07-17 20:05:04

I did try the standard way of updating the kernel, but for some reason it didn't work with arch. I don't remember the error but it would fail on make.

I played around with mkinitcpio and finally got it to work. I don't know what I did to make it work except I added ide_piix and ext3 to the MODULES="". Funny, ide_piix doesn't even load, but it works now. Before I was getting the error "error: 25 : bad variable" or something. Turned up nothing in the forum search, the only way I got it working was adding things I thought were relevant to my system to the MODULES. I thought that's what autodetect and udev were for?

I guess Gentoo doesn't have that many binaries. The other side of that is that it's a heck of a lot easier to customize packages via USE flags in Gentoo than by using ABS. Eh, I guess it depends on the processor. I wouldn't be too turned off by the compile times with one of those new Core 2 Duos.

Snowman · 2006-07-17 21:27:03

mallow005 wrote:

I guess Gentoo doesn't have that many binaries. The other side of that is that it's a heck of a lot easier to customize packages via USE flags in Gentoo than by using ABS. Eh, I guess it depends on the processor. I wouldn't be too turned off by the compile times with one of those new Core 2 Duos.

If you customize a lot of packages, check out srcpac (pacman -S srcpac). It will help you with your custom builds.

djpharoah · 2006-07-18 18:27:54

I too left Gentoo last week since I just couldnt wait for my computer to finish compiling something to use it.

Arch so far is amazing and has totally blown me away with the speed on my IBM T41p.

Gentoo was nice in that I learned a lot about linux in general and trouble shooting, but just wasnt what I needed for everyday use. Who knew when your computer would take a dump especially after emerge -avuDN world...

I was kinda curious about Arch but didnt want to reinstall on my old IBM T20 (which is still running gentoo btw). So I waited till I got my T41p and wow.

*props* to ARCH

Valheru · 2010-04-13 18:44:00

I left Gentoo about 3 years ago, after using it since 1.4. I learned everything I know about Linux because of Gentoo, but I don't miss it.

BTW, the reason why Gentoo is so damned slow to boot is because of those sodding Python scripts. And they need to rewrite Portage in C.

lifeafter2am · 2010-04-13 18:46:40

Seems like quite a few ex-Gentoo'ers on here. I myself left about a year ago now after being with them since 1.4 as well. Don't miss it that much. Plus I like this community better.

Misfit138 · 2010-04-13 19:55:53

Thread is from 2006, and I don't see it going anywhere now.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-07-17 00:22:30

Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#2 2006-07-17 00:29:02

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#3 2006-07-17 02:36:10

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#4 2006-07-17 03:07:46

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#5 2006-07-17 04:17:10

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#6 2006-07-17 08:14:10

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#7 2006-07-17 09:27:13

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#8 2006-07-17 20:05:04

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#9 2006-07-17 21:27:03

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#10 2006-07-18 18:27:54

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#11 2010-04-13 18:44:00

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#12 2010-04-13 18:46:40

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

#13 2010-04-13 19:55:53

Re: Arch vs Gentoo, I'm very impressed

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