Re: [SLUG] Amusement for Gentoo nonenthusiasts

From: R. Samuel Jose, Jr. (rob@buzr.com)
Date: Tue Dec 07 2004 - 10:48:01 EST


On Mon, 2004-12-06 at 23:39, Chad Perrin wrote:
> Levi Bard wrote:
> > http://funroll-loops.org/
> >
> > For entertainment purposes only. No Gentoo users were harmed in the
> > linking of this site.
>
> Pardon me. I only just now noticed this sitting in my inbox. I know
> I'm about a month and change late with this.
>
> That is HILARIOUS. I know just the Gentoo lover to send the link to:
> someone I've known since ninth grade, lo these many (many many) moods ago.
>
> s/moods/moons/
>
> I'm sure he'll have a cow.
>
> --
> Chad
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Yeah, yeah, yeah...

I am one of the Gentoo converts, but not for the leet hax0r
compile-for-speed reasons. Mainly it was for the ease of updating
existing packages and installing new packages.

I cut my teeth on RH 7, and stayed in RH-land through FC2. But rpm-hell
resembled DLL-hell too closely, and it was annoying to try to install a
new app. I ended up just downloading the source for the apps and their
dependencies, and compiling it myself.

So when I looked at Gentoo the first time, I very much liked the emerge
world. Plus after the install, I get a real tabula rasa to work with.
Further, I learned and continue to learn a lot about things that are
under-the-hood.

Yes, there are drawbacks. One being that Gentoo likes to put the config
files for various apps in /etc/conf.d. This is a problem, for example,
with Tomcat server, which likes it's config file in <tomcat dir>/conf.
Although you can tweak things to make it work, but then you have issues
with other apps like eclipse and the tomcat plugin.

Also, on my slower boxes, emerging things like gnome or open-office is
an all-night-and-part-of-the-day process. But on speedy boxes like
amd64, I can have a complete install with desktop manager and apps I
want in an afternoon, which isn't too bad.

Also, unmerging doesn't remove dependencies, which is not horrible, but
sort of undermines the whole notion of having only the packages you need
and nothing else.

So yeah, it's a little more involved to do things the Gentoo way, but I
like it, since I often learn something as I go. However, it can be
maddening for a new Linux user, since much of the admin is done by
hand. My sister wants me to install linux on one of her old boxes, and
I will be installing SuSe there since it's pretty newbie-friendly, and
it comes with lots o' docs.

Anyway, I'm not trying to slam any other distros. Each distro has its
place; I'm just happy with Gentoo these days. :)

Cheers -
Rob

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