Ummm....because ALL OF THAT is advanced!

Have you ever tried it? It is easy to do. The Gentoo handbook walks you through it.

Shining Arcanine wrote:Have you ever tried it? It is easy to do. The Gentoo handbook walks you through it.

why bother reading a handbook whilst other os's and other distros just install...

Dante Ashton wrote:Ahhh....mandriva, how I adore thee...if only you were Debian based

well just try it, rpm isn't bad actually it is way more powerful than deb (it allows 32 and 64 bits side by side installation for example).

mandriva's kde is I dare say one of the best especially because of all the pulseaudio integration work being done, as well as nepomuk (a mandriva project) and mandriva's kde is heavily patched overall adding a lot to the user experience.

It may be, but I do use a lot of .deb based programs, which is more or less my primary issue with rpm (that and the naming convention for rpm files is, to me, confusing)

Oh, sorry if my eariler posts seemed a bit short, but I was using a phone...

Also, trying to get mutimedia items to work can be a pain...

Dante Ashton wrote:It may be, but I do use a lot of .deb based programs, which is more or less my primary issue with rpm (that and the naming convention for rpm files is, to me, confusing)

I have no idea what you mean, packages are just packages, we split them so you can install 32 and 64 bit packages in parallel

Oh, sorry if my eariler posts seemed a bit short, but I was using a phone...

Also, trying to get mutimedia items to work can be a pain...

how, it just works by default (if installed from mandriva one)

Here is my 2 cents.
To all binary distro users:
Try this:
Open a konsole or console and type: lsmod.
This will show you the kernel modules loaded.
You'll see a lot of modules for hardware that doesn't exist in your box.
But they take up RAM space.
That's because of the one size fits all philosophy of these distro's.
Yes I'm a Gentoo user too,have been for over 6 years.
Started with Slackware,RedHat,Suse,Mandriva etc.
And then the kernel itself.It was in most cases compiled for i686 ie. not for a multicore processor.
With Gentoo you decide what goes in and what not.
Same for the rest of the software.
Upgrading a binary distro usually turns out a disaster and ends in a reinstall.
With Gentoo you only upgrade single packages,never a reinstall.
One thing though if you wait a long time before upgrading you might run into problems that will necessitate a new install.
Gerard.

gerard82 wrote:Here is my 2 cents.
To all binary distro users:
Try this:
Open a konsole or console and type: lsmod.
This will show you the kernel modules loaded.
You'll see a lot of modules for hardware that doesn't exist in your box.
But they take up RAM space.
That's because of the one size fits all philosophy of these distro's.
Yes I'm a Gentoo user too,have been for over 6 years.
Started with Slackware,RedHat,Suse,Mandriva etc.
And then the kernel itself.It was in most cases compiled for i686 ie. not for a multicore processor.
With Gentoo you decide what goes in and what not.
Same for the rest of the software.
Upgrading a binary distro usually turns out a disaster and ends in a reinstall.
With Gentoo you only upgrade single packages,never a reinstall.
One thing though if you wait a long time before upgrading you might run into problems that will necessitate a new install.
Gerard.

To add to your comments, I used to use Ubuntu Linux via Wubi before I switched to Gentoo Linux and the default kernel was always compiled without SMP support. Ubuntu had a SMP-aware kernel available, but you had to hunt for it, which people who expect things to be done automatically for them by the OS installer scripts probably never do. If you are one of these people, you can do

Code: Select all

uname -v

When I do this, I get:

#29 SMP PREEMPT Thu Feb 11 09:18:59 EST 2010

If you did not hunt for your distribution's SMP aware kernel, you will likely not see SMP listed there.

You will likely also see that PREEMPT is missing too. Binary distributions often do not compile Preemptible Kernels, which is needed for a Low-Latency Desktop, so even if you hunt around to install the SMP-aware kernel your distribution provides, you will have a relatively laggy experience as opposed to what you would have had if your kernel was compiled with preemption support.

In addition, although this might no longer be the case, when I used Ubuntu, the default kernel was not even compiled for i686, so I had a generic kernel compiled for the original Pentium processor installed for me by default, so not only had to hunt for the SMP-aware kernel, but I also had to hunt for the i686 version of the SMP aware kernel so that my machine would be "fully optimized" and despite this it still had the lag issues caused by not having preemption support in the kernel. Again, since most binary distribution users expect this to be done automatically for them by the installation scripts, they usually never install the most optimal kernel provided by their distribution, which harms overall system performance compared to what it would have been if the "optimal kernel" was installed.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no easy way for me to install a .rpm package in a debian-based distro. There is also no easy way for me to install a .deb file into an .rpm distro.

I don't want to mess around with the terminal, and I have NEVER had to compile anything...why should I start now? I take no joy in tinkering with my computer, I only take joy in my music, or my writing, or my books, or my movies.

gerard82 wrote:Here is my 2 cents.
To all binary distro users:
Try this:
Open a konsole or console and type: lsmod. This will show you the kernel modules loaded.
You'll see a lot of modules for hardware that doesn't exist in your box.
But they take up RAM space.

Nope they are almost all relevant

Upgrading a binary distro usually turns out a disaster and ends in a reinstall.

I never had problems upgrading but even if I had, doing a reinstall takes about 15 minutes, much faster than recompiling even amarok let alone a complete system.

Dante Ashton wrote:Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no easy way for me to install a .rpm package in a debian-based distro. There is also no easy way for me to install a .deb file into an .rpm distro.

I don't want to mess around with the terminal, and I have NEVER had to compile anything...why should I start now? I take no joy in tinkering with my computer, I only take joy in my music, or my writing, or my books, or my movies.

You technically would not have to compile anything (aside from the kernel, which has obvious performance benefits for KDE). The package manager in a source based distribution such as Gentoo will compile everything for you. You only have to tell it what you want installed.

Dante Ashton wrote:Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no easy way for me to install a .rpm package in a debian-based distro. There is also no easy way for me to install a .deb file into an .rpm distro.

alien can convert the packages do it but many programs have both rpm and debs anyway;

aapgorilla wrote:

gerard82 wrote:Here is my 2 cents.
To all binary distro users:
Try this:
Open a konsole or console and type: lsmod. This will show you the kernel modules loaded.
You'll see a lot of modules for hardware that doesn't exist in your box.
But they take up RAM space.

Nope they are almost all relevant

Upgrading a binary distro usually turns out a disaster and ends in a reinstall.

I never had problems upgrading but even if I had, doing a reinstall takes about 15 minutes, much faster than recompiling even amarok let alone a complete system.

It was a disaster for another student I met at my university and it was a disaster for me as well. The upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 killed X for him, so he had to go into the terminal. This was when he had an assignment involving GUI programming due the next day. Thankfully he had already finished his assignment so he copied the files off his system onto a USB key and then submited them with one of the university windows machines. He managed to revive X, but right now his laptop takes 17 seconds for the kernel to transition to Ubuntu's userland initialization scripts. My laptop running Gentoo has XDM loaded in the same timeframe.

I had difficulties with the 8.04 upgrade, which resulted in a fresh install. Also, running the beta version of 9.04 ended badly after the final version came out, as the upgrade scripts could not properly handle the upgrade of the required packages. This really does not happen with Gentoo.

As for doing a reinstall of Gentoo, portage actually has the option of generating binary packages for any software it installs, so reinstalling them only requires installing binaries. You do not need to recompile any code at all. This makes rolling back really easy if an upgrade messes up your system, assuming you enable the feature.

aapgorilla wrote:

Dante Ashton wrote:Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no easy way for me to install a .rpm package in a debian-based distro. There is also no easy way for me to install a .deb file into an .rpm distro.

alien can convert the packages do it but many programs have both rpm and debs anyway;

With alien and any other installation method that does not rely on your package manager, your installed software will not be properly managed by your package manager, which is precisely why all distributions discourage using other methods of installation, including Gentoo.

Shining Arcanine wrote:With alien and any other installation method that does not rely on your package manager, your installed software will not be properly managed by your package manager, which is precisely why all distributions discourage using other methods of installation, including Gentoo.

This is not true, alien converts to your native pm, it's just that it won't always work because the program might be compiled against different libraries or the setup is a bit different.