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Gentoo Linux Announces Gentoo Linux 2004.1 377

Posted by timothy from the please-feed-the-docs dept.
Keppy writes "The departure of Daniel Robbins hasn't dented the progress of Gentoo Linux with version 2004.1 being released. ... please support Gentoo by purchasing something from the online store. The Gentoo homepage also has a short message about the future of Gentoo Linux now that Daniel has left. ' Robbat2 writes with an excerpt from the linked announcement: "Please consult our mirror index for download locations and the Gentoo Linux Installation Handbook for detailed installation instructions. Support for Gentoo Linux 2004.1 can be found through our user community by way of the Gentoo Forums, IRC, and various community mailing-lists. Release notes for each architecture can be found linked from the Gentoo Linux Release Engineering project page."
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Gentoo Linux Announces Gentoo Linux 2004.1 More

Gentoo Linux Announces Gentoo Linux 2004.1

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  • Gentoo is one of the best linux distribs, and here (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Novanix ( 656269 ) * on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @09:52AM (#8995633) Homepage
    Gentoo really is a great operating system, and maybe even for beginners. One of Gentoo's many strengths is the portage system. The portage system is a easy to use system that allows you to build just about any application from source automatically (and often with Gentoo optimizations). It can automatically build all the dependencies for the program too, saving you much time and effort. The portage system also supports binaries (must mention to avoid stoning) however that is often only used in replication systems. Since you can easily setup your own portage mirrors you can create your own custom packages (either that compile from source or are binaries) and easily deploy across your own servers. This would allow you to configure packages on one machine and then just distribute the binaries across duplicate machines if you wished (as I have heard of being done). I also have found Gentoo emerges rarely fail when compared to some of the problems you can run into with RPM. Another large benefit of gentoo is it doesn't install anything that isn't needed to clutter your system up. It will install the bare bones, (ssh, etc) and then you can emerge anything you want. This is much nicer than most OS's which will load it with crap from the start. It is one of the most configurable distributions I have seen, and every Gentoo install is truly unique. Again, while it may give you the barebones to start it takes little work (minus the cpu time to compile) to get it to where you want it. As I said earlier, I think Gentoo may even be a bit beginner friendly. While setup is a bit long and not nearly as easy as something like Redhat, they have a very easy to follow tutorial which walks you through it step by step that I think most beginners could follow. In addition, they have 3 different ways to install Gentoo. A live cd version that is basically bootable and then you have 3 different stages you can choose from. Stage One is a bit insane, for those who really need total control over what is installed. For most people Stage Two is fine as it still compiles virtually everything from scratch, giving you a ton of control, just saves some time over Stage One. Stage Three is for those who just need something fast or are a bit new, and can install binaries of various things to save you compile time and easy of install. This makes Gentoo truly amazing.

    • Re:Gentoo is one of the best linux distribs, and h (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @09:56AM (#8995677)
      That, folks, is karma whoring at it's best!

    • Re:Gentoo is one of the best linux distribs, and h (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Entropy ( 6967 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @09:59AM (#8995710)
      I just switched about three weeks ago from Debian to Gentoo, and so far I love it!

      emerge is as easy for me as apt-get was, and the only difference is I have to be patient with long builds. For me, thats a "so what" ?

      I'd personally rather wait during the install, than wait while the machine is supposed to be running.

      And while I am not a linux newbie, I certainly am no guru (yet :^), but I find Gentoo as easy as Debian. BOTH are MUCH better than RedHat, IMHO.

      Anyhow, whatever *nix one chooses, it handily beats Windoze over the head except for gaming. *sigh*

      Linux on THE desktop? Linux is on MY desktop.

      • Re:Gentoo is one of the best linux distribs, and h (Score:5, Informative)

        by D-Cypell ( 446534 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:36AM (#8996085)
        Anyhow, whatever *nix one chooses, it handily beats Windoze over the head except for gaming

        And hardware support... The only reason my laptop is still running XP is that my wireless card refuses to run.

        After a bit of hunting it seems that the problem is an IRQ conflict between the inbuilt LAN card (which cant be disabled in the BIOS) and the IRQ that the PCMCIA tries to grab when initializing the card.

        The card works in windows without a hitch.

        I dare say that someone with skills beyond mine in Linux could probably get it working, but for now im stuck in windows, as are most of the computer using population.

      • Re:Gentoo is one of the best linux distribs, and h (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ImpTech ( 549794 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @11:28AM (#8996660)
        The only thing I miss about Debian now that I'm on Gentoo is the easy ability to clean out the install. With Debian I could always go into dselect and walk through all the crap I had installed and remove it selectively, with full dependancy checking. It was tedious, but I was glad to be able to do it every now and then. As far as I can tell, Gentoo has no comparable functionality.

      • Re:Gentoo is one of the best linux distribs, and h (Score:5, Interesting)

        by milkman_matt ( 593465 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @11:39AM (#8996805)
        And while I am not a linux newbie, I certainly am no guru (yet :^)

        And this is one thing I really love about gentoo. Especially if you're a newbie to linux (I wasn't, but I like you, was certainly no master). Following the installation guide that gentoo provides was a very educational experience for me. Not only does it tell you step by step what to do to get your system up and running, it tells you WHY you're doing it. I was very impressed with the instructions. Oh, and when I ran into any problems at all, their forums had the answer, and when they didn't have the answer, someone responded to my post within a matter of a couple hours, and had the solution to my question.

        -matt

        • Re:Gentoo is one of the best linux distribs, and h (Score:4, Interesting)

          by opello ( 243896 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @01:14PM (#8997907) Homepage
          yes! i started in gentoo linux because a friend recommended it

          the more or less manual install, coupled with the very good documentation and guides, helped me grow acustomed to linux more than I had by just using it through shell accounts or on friend's boxes

          the full immersion that comes with its install is a learning experience that can't be beat, and when help is needed there are docs, forums, and irc -- and let me say the irc (imo) is one of the best ways to learn ... although a moment ago #gentoo had 1013 people, channels like #gentoo-laptop (since I have a laptop) are excellent resources
    • root@gentoo ~# emerge newlines
      HTH.

    • Re:Gentoo is one of the best linux distribs, and h (Score:4, Funny)

      by irix ( 22687 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:18AM (#8995907) Journal

      On topic when replying to this guy and still funny after all this time ... I've got the Karma to burn on the troll mods :)

      Official Gentoo-Linux-Zealot translator-o-matic

      Gentoo Linux is an interesting new distribution with some great features. Unfortunately, it has attracted a large number of clueless wannabes and leprotards who absolutely MUST advocate Gentoo at every opportunity. Let's look at the language of these zealots, and find out what it really means...

      "Gentoo makes me so much more productive."
      "Although I can't use the box at the moment because it's compiling something, as it will be for the next five days, it gives me more time to check out the latest USE flags and potentially unstable optimisation settings."

      "Gentoo is more in the spirit of open source!"
      "Apart from Hello World in Pascal at school, I've never written a single program in my life or contributed to an open source project, yet staring at endless streams of GCC output whizzing by somehow helps me contribute to international freedom."

      "I use Gentoo because it's more like the BSDs."
      "Last month I tried to install FreeBSD on a well-supported machine, but the text-based installer scared me off. I've never used a BSD, but the guys on Slashdot say that it's l33t though, so surely I must be for using Gentoo."

      "Heh, my system is soooo much faster after installing Gentoo."
      "I've spent hours recompiling Fetchmail, X-Chat, gEdit and thousands of other programs which spend 99% of their time waiting for user input. Even though only the kernel and glibc make a significant difference with optimisations, and RPMs and .debs can be rebuilt with a handful of commands (AND Red Hat supplies i686 kernel and glibc packages), my box MUST be faster. It's nothing to do with the fact that I've disabled all startup services and I'm running BlackBox instead of GNOME or KDE."

      "...my Gentoo Linux workstation..."
      "...my overclocked AMD eMachines box from PC World, and apart from the third-grade made-to-break components and dodgy fan..."

      "You Red Hat guys must get sick of dependency hell..."
      "I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH .rpms together on the command line, and that problems hardly ever occur if one uses proper Red Hat packages instead of mixing SuSE, Mandrake and Joe's Linux packages together (which the system wasn't designed for)."

      "All the other distros are soooo out of date."
      "Constantly upgrading to the latest bleeding-edge untested software makes me more productive. Never mind the extensive testing and patching that Debian and Red Hat perform on their packages; I've just emerged the latest GNOME beta snapshot and compiled with -O9 -fomit-instructions, and it only crashes once every few hours."

      "Let's face it, Gentoo is the future."
      "OK, so no serious business is going to even consider Gentoo in the near future, and even with proper support and QA in place, it'll still eat up far too much of a company's valuable time. But this guy I met on #animepr0n is now using it, so it must be growing!"

      • It would be funnier if it wasn't so true...

        I do find that emerge is a wonderful tool for installing with, however, I think they still need to do some work on the installation guide... I managed to get my gentoo box up running KDE and SAMBA (+some other stuff I require) but, the lack of a decent troubleshooting guide, and my relative inexperience with how Linux actually DOES what it does, means that I'm buggered if I can get the sound to work in an X session.

        Still, my philosophy is 'This is how we learn'

        • Help is an IRC channel away. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ScottGant ( 642590 ) <scott_gant@sbcgloba l . n etNOT> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:48AM (#8996222) Homepage
          irc.freenode.net /join #gentoo

          Very helpfull people there. Base install of Gentoo comes with "irssi" IRC client that you can hook up to right from the install CD. Ask your question (no need to ask "can I ask a question") and try to be as specific as you can.

          Now, this IS an IRC channel so you might run into a few knuckleheads there, but be patient and you WILL be helped. The people there are very well versed and many of the OPs are themselves Gentoo developers and they know the system. They will help.

          I go there to help also. It's my small way of giving something back to the community as I'm not a developer, but I can try to help others.

          Most people are very patient there, but if you're asking a question that's plainly right in the install guide, they'll direct you to that usually.

          Don't be a jerk there and you'll do fine. Others I've seen log into the channel and go "this sucks, I can't get this and this working...Gentoo sucks...I can't do anything". Then when no one responds in about 20 seconds they shout "how come no one wants to help me...this sucks". And on and on. Some people are beyond help it seems...and not for just and OS install either, hehe.
      • speaking of karma whoring, thats not the first time ive seen that exact post somewhere else. am i missing out on an inside joke or are you trolling?
      • "You Red Hat guys must get sick of dependency hell..."
        "I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH .rpms together on the command line, and that problems hardly ever occur if one uses proper Red Hat packages instead of mixing SuSE, Mandrake and Joe's Linux packages together (which the system wasn't designed for)."

        Obviously, it's bad RPM Juju to mix and match RPMs from different distributions. As long as you stick with RPMs built for your specific release of

    • Stages are more flexible than that! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) * on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:21AM (#8995938)
      Stages are more flexible than that. If you use a tool like stager or catalyst you can compile fully-optimized stage3 tarballs for your next install from the system you're working on already, so you can still use 'today's' machine while building 'tomorrow's'.

      I have a stager script that I've hacked the bejeezus out of and configured to generate 2.6-headered NPTL systems that are fully optimized, even though the installs start at stage3. I've got flowcharts and stuff to keep track of the 'stage evolution'

      here's my process, IIRC:

      1. have working gentoo system with stager and a stage1 snapshot.
      2. emerge sync
      3. unmask or modify certain .ebuilds for desired result (gcc-3.3.3 and linux-headers-2.6.5 come to mind). Also modify stager for optimizations and stager/files/make.conf.$ARCH for USE flags.
      3. stager snap $DATE-custom
      4. stager athlon-xp 2 stage1 $DATE-custom
      5. stager athlon-xp 1 $DATE-custom $DATE-custom
      6. clean out temp files in /var/stager for good luck
      7. stager athlon-xp 2 $DATE-custom $DATE-custom
      8. stager athlon-xp 3 $DATE-custom $DATE-custom

      so now you've got a fully-native NPTL stage1 to build other stages from and a fully-native stage3 ready to install.

      My actual system is a lot more complex, as I build a 'generic i686' stage1 and then fork off to Pentium3 ad Athlon-XP builds for my different machines. I've also got a totally seperate stage geneology for the PPC build, but they all share the portage snapshots and configs for consistency.
    • This looks like a copy & paste of a horrible term paper... why mod this up?
    • Informative, but it sounds like you copy and pasted a press release.

    • Re:Gentoo is one of the best linux distribs, and h (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dalcius ( 587481 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @11:33AM (#8996724)
      I want to avoid scaring people away from Gentoo, but I do want to make it clear to Slashdotters that this isn't just like falling off of a log.

      In short, here are some negative things to keep in mind:
      • Gentoo is built from source code. This means it can take an entire weekend (Friday night included) to get a system built, or longer depending on your CPU/RAM/HDD. This also means your Mozilla install isn't a trivial event. ;)
      • If you have problems, you're in a 'brave new world' so to speak. If you don't have a handle on the situation, it might require outside help and research to solve the problem.
      • Problems come up on their own. Since programs are compiled and linked against each other and many libraries, when versions change, problems can arise in certain setups, especially new ones. Sometimes an install will fail simply because someone @ Gentoo didn't dot their i. Normal solution: report it and/or just wait a few days and the problem is almost always resolved on their end.
      • This is not a click-n-install, auto-magic-detection distro. You will be using the command line for most administration. Don't confuse me here, your desktop is very graphical (and quite nice!) and you've got all the good applications for email, browsing, etc. But administration is a command line task. This distro is not for you if you would rather drink curdled milk than use a command line.

      In turn, here are some more (and some repeated from the parent post) good points from my view:

      • You can compile any program under the sun on your box, but for those that are offered by Gentoo you have some handy features available. All the information for available applications but the source code is stored on your computer. This means it's searchable. "emerge -s xmms" will give you a long list of plugins and other xmms (think WinAMP) related items.
      • Installing programs is one command. Want gaim? "emerge gaim" and come back in 5-10 minutes. Everything is downloaded, md5sum checked, and installed. No hunting for the latest versions of RPMs for your distro or grabbing a tarball yourself. Easy peasy.
      • Updating your system to the also a breeze. Update your local copy of all of the package installation files mentioned above (known as the Portage tree) with "emerge sync". In about 5 minutes, come back and run "emerge world -UD" and every package on your system will be upgraded to the latest available.
      • Community is there. Almost any problem can be found in the Gentoo Forums, and most all of them have solutions. I solve most of my problems with a quick search. Second to that, I check the bugzilla repository. Very rarely do I have a problem which isn't at least mentioned in either location, and most have a solution. But if you need interactive help, the IRC channel can be very helpful! I haven't spent much time in there, but when I do drop by there are generally at least two people getting help.
      • Gentoo's install guide is very detailed and geared towards novices. If you don't run into problems, for the most part you can just cut and paste commands to install. ;)
      • Because of the way you install Gentoo, you become much more familiar with the way Linux works under the hood (GUI) and can, from there, be better able to solve any problems you run into. You also step into the realm of being able to install and maintain your own servers (www, ssh, ftp, mail, etc.) with your newfound systems knowledge. And it makes a good resume item. :)
      • Gentoo is bare bones, as mentioned in the parent. Nothing on the system you don't want there. This makes for a great feeling of 'having a handle on things.' :)

      Gentoo is for the computer user who likes to customize his environment and have control and know what is what. If you just want to 'use' your computer, go get Mandrake or Fedora or Windows. If you like

      • Gentoo is built from source code. This means it can take an entire weekend .... This also means your Mozilla install isn't a trivial event. ;)

        Problems come up on their own. Since programs are compiled and linked against each other and many libraries, when versions change, problems can arise in certain setups, especially new ones.

        ...You will be using the command line for most administration....

        For the first one, Gentoo also offers pre-build Mozilla binaries for you to use. dont know what compile flags

      • switching to Gentoo (Score:3, Informative)

        by dpilot ( 134227 )
        I recently switched some of my boxes to Gentoo.

        Up until then, I'd had some control over 7 boxen running RedHat, mostly RH8. I never moved to RH9 because I didn't like the emerging direction. Starting to cast about for a new distribution, I began to realize that I was thinking of support for family, etc, and not *fun*.

        My dual-boot work laptop now runs Gentoo, as does my second (up and coming) server. Other systems are waiting for me to get more comfortable, and for the various nForce2 patches to stabilize
      • Having just had my first real taste of Gentoo [madpenguin.org], I'd like to comment on your post:

        Gentoo is built from source code. This means it can take an entire weekend (Friday night included) to get a system built... Yeah, no kidding. I was a bit suspicious about build times because often when someone jokes "this days days to compile" they mean "it took a long time" which could mean anything. Here's a real stat for newbies: I had a P2/450/384mb RAM, took a little over 8 hours (including reading manual, fixing mistak

  • News or Commercial? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by deutschemonte ( 764566 ) <lane.montgomery @ g mail.com> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @09:53AM (#8995643) Homepage
    This sounds more like a commercial than news to me.

  • Things of note... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <bc90021 AT bc90021 DOT net> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @09:55AM (#8995663) Homepage
    1) For posts like this, it's good to be a subscriber. ;)

    2) It's good to see that the DR announcement has not changed anything in terms of release schedule, and the job they did setting up the hierarchy seems to be working very well.

    3) At least one mirror has a file claiming to be 2005.1. While Gentoo is great, I don't think that it's being delivered from the future. (At least not yet. ;) )

    4) The minimal CD is still only 82MB!

    5) Slashdot, could Gentoo get its own icon? It's here [gentoo.org]. Thanks!
    • 3) At least one mirror has a file claiming to be 2005.1. While Gentoo is great, I don't think that it's being delivered from the future. (At least not yet. ;) )


      You never know with Gentoo. IIRC, Gentoo advertised a 2.4.19 kernel when the latest stable was 2.4.18.

  • In related news, (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @09:55AM (#8995668)
    Debian has announced their expected release of Sarge to coincide with the next ice age.

  • Hooray for Gentoo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PuffCammy ( 739447 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @09:57AM (#8995685) Homepage
    I've used Gentoo since last October. Before that, I had essentially never seen a Linux machine. It is my first distro and I haven't really looked back. I've tried others just to see what they were like, mainly Fedora and Debian, but they just don't shape up to the standards I've put and Gentoo has given me. It took a while in the beginning to learn all the ins and outs, but now I can navigate through it with so much ease. Hoorah to Gentoo and its bleeding-edge innovation.

  • Give it a go. (Score:5, Informative)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdot@spamgoe ... minus herbivore> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @09:58AM (#8995697) Homepage
    If you have never tried Gentoo, you should give it a try. Contrary to popular belief, you can have the base installed and running in 15 minutes, and from then you just emerge the packages you want. gentoo-dev-sources, openssh, sysklogd, vixie-cron, at, ntp, whatever.
    The documentation is brilliant, and all the defaults for the packages are sensible, and well thought out.
    When I install a box, I do it at about 4pm. Give it 30 mins to configure, and install a new kernel, reboot, and leave it to emerge -u world ; emerge kde mozilla overnight.
    Couple of things though - emerge ufed, and gentoolkit - ufed is a gui for editting USE flags, and gentoolkit contains qpkg.

    A very brief doc I knocked up is here [umtstrial.co.uk]. It's probably slightly out of date by now, but you get the idea.

    • Re:Give it a go. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      Tip: Make sure to save copies of your XF86config, fstab, grub and kernel config files. They'll make life much, much easier than having to generate all those things from scratch.

      If you don't have a previous installation of Mandrake, Red Hat or something like that, you should consider doing one before the Gentoo install. Their partitioning tools are easier than raw fdisk, especially if you want to resize a Linux partition. (Reformat them, though, for the Gentoo install.) Again, save those config files!
      • A better option actually would be to use the install from Knoppix method. Not only does the Knoppix CD comes with good partitioning tools, you can copy the XF86Config from the one it generates at startup.

  • The Gentoo "geek-factor" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lacrymology.com ( 583077 ) <nospam@minotaurc ... g.com minus city> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @09:58AM (#8995702) Homepage
    I am relatively new to the Linux game, so perhaps I am just ignorant -- so please forgive me if that is the case. However, it seemed to me as an outsider that true geeks used Linux, while mortals used Windows and Mac. However, having joined the fray it seems that within the Linux community is highly fragmented. Now it seems that the true geeks use Debian and Gentoo, while the mortals use Mandrake and Redhat. Weird.
    -m
    • I'm sitting in front of two monitors:

      To the left is Gentoo (running 2004.1) on an Athlon XP 3200+ w/ 1Gb of RAM (my main workstation), to the right, Debian unstable on an Athlon XP 2800+ w/ 512Mb of RAM (currently in the middle of an apt-get dist-upgrade, and downloading what seems to be lots of KDE packages).

      Meanwhile, I'm downloading FreeBSD 5.2.1 for my little router. So what does that make me? :)

    • Re:The Gentoo "geek-factor" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by IncarnadineConor ( 457458 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:18AM (#8995897)
      Once you move to Gentoo you'll realize that true geeks use BSD. When you get there you'll realize they use Plan 9. And you'll never actually use Plan 9, because no one uses Plan 9, so the cycle ends there.

      • Re:The Gentoo "geek-factor" (Score:5, Funny)

        by Dan Ost ( 415913 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:30AM (#8996029)
        I know a couple of folks who use Plan 9. In fact, one of them is planning on
        moving to Inferno because Plan 9 is getting too mainstream.
      • Somebody mod this guy "Insightful". There seems to be a huge "I'm a bigger geek than you" factor involved in OS choice, at least on SlashDot. Despite what the BSD guys seem to think, I use Linux because I like it and because I'm familiar with it, not "because I hate MS". Despite what most Linux users seem to think, I use Mandrake because it gives me a powerful, easy to use desktop, not because I'm a "Linux noob" (exactly the opposite: I'd like to leave my Linux admin workload at work, thank you!)

        For a m

    • Very insightful. The holy wars within the GNU/Linux world are as isometric as they are endless. Use a soulless federation like Debian, a commercial sellout like SuSE or RedHat, or a lovingly crafted, wisely designed, endlessly upgradable, feel at home source distribution like Gentoo. I leave it up to you!

    • Common misconception. Actually there is no "true geek" distro - at CodeWeavers which is staffed almost entirely by geeks, you'll see everything from Debian Testing (the CTO), to Slack to bleeding edge Fedora/SuSE releases. They are all Linux, after all.

  • Upgrade (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ChaserPnk ( 183094 )
    What's the easiest way to upgrade for current users?
    • # emerge -u world

      And you're done.

    • Upgrading is not needed (Score:4, Informative)

      by BuddieFox ( 771947 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:05AM (#8995757)
      Actually, with the Gentoo portage, current Gentoo users should be the ones least interested in new Gentoo distributions, since Gentoos portage allows updating of components to "the latest version" regardless of what cd-version you used to install it.

      To me the greatest benefit of Gentoo is this: I do not need to blow a machine clean and install a new version or risk a lot with an uncertain install of large packages, I just gradually update my system as new versions become available!

      And contrary to popular belief, Gentoo is pretty "user friendly" since it allows "on the fly updating". But this is of course once you actually have your system working flawlessly to begin with.. :)
      • And contrary to popular belief, Gentoo is pretty "user friendly" since it allows "on the fly updating"

        How is that different to every other distribution under the sun?

      • An interesting bit that can be added to the parent is the fact that the actual bootstrapping process for a fresh install of Gentoo doesn't actually need an installation CD.

        I set up my home PC using a 1.4rc CD, but at work, I tried the "Knoppix install". You use a Knoppix CD (which is handy to have around anyway) to boot up, and set up your partitions. Then, you download the Stage 1 tarball from Gentoo, get the portage tools set up, and emerge the rest of your system. An advantage is that you can play games
    • emerge -au world :)

  • about that departure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by __aahlyu4518 ( 74832 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:02AM (#8995735)
    "The departure of Daniel Robbins hasn't dented the progress of Gentoo Linux with version 2004.1 being released. ... "

    Robbins anounced his departure.. what.. last monday ?? Ofcourse his departure didn't affect the release... it was already finished !

    And Robbins hopes to continue working on the release engineering aspect of Gentoo...

  • Drobbins' store (Score:2, Interesting)

    by redog ( 574983 )
    The gentoo store's funds go directly to Daniel Robbins. This is planned to change as soon as drobbins has the not for profit org in place. Untill then your purchaces fund him directly not the gentoo project.

    -Not that he hasn't done alot to deserve the money. But If your trying to support the community that supports gentoo you may want to wait untill the NFP community is actually created instead of funding the departing founder.

    • Re:Drobbins' store (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ViceClown ( 39698 ) * on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:22AM (#8995943) Homepage Journal
      Daniel has also accumulated on the order of about $20,000 in dept keeping Gentoo going so... helping the guy who gave us all Gentoo feed his kids isn't such a bad thing, IMHO :-)

    • Re:Drobbins' store (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cornice ( 9801 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:24AM (#8995970)
      It seems that Drobbins could maintain ownership of the trademark and thus profit from the store indefinitely. That said, you obviously have not followed the effort and money that Drobbins has put into Gentoo. From a Gentoo Newsletter:

      In addition, Daniel will retain royalty-free rights to use of the "Gentoo" trademark and the "G" logo, allowing him to continue him to run the Gentoo Store if he wants, in order to support his family and attempt to pay some of the $20,000 in debt he accumulated during his tenure as Chief Architect.

      I think Drobbins deserves every penny that can be squeezed from the Gentoo store and then some. Thanks Daniel.

  • Upgrade (Score:4, Informative)

    by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:05AM (#8995759)
    I'm assuming one can upgrade by doing the following:

    #emerge sync
    #emerge -DUu world

    (oh and upgrading to the latest kernel that will be in /usr/src/ after the emerge)

    Could someone confirm or deny?

    • Not a good idea... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You shouldn't just blindly update everything on the system. (which is what emerge world does) Do "emerge -pv world" to see what would be upgraded; then check and update each package individually.
      • Yes, but this is time-consuming if you have 100 or more packages that need updating. I always go through the list, then mask out everything I don't want updated(in package.mask). Alot quicker. Of course, I'm the same person that emerges complete development packages, soo...
    • I think it's just:

      emerge -UD world

      and you can and should do this whenever you want. The releases really are just for the install CDs. Gentoo is constantly evolving and updating. An emerge -UD will always bring you up to date. I would suggest doing this first though:

      emerge -UDpv

      This will display the ebuilds that will be updated and their use flags whether on or off. For critical packages I would emerge them seperately. I would also always follow with a run through etc-update to be sure your config

  • Best Gentoo Utility! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:13AM (#8995852)
    By far is esearch. "emerge esearch" will get you a suite of utilities that will index the portage tree and make it easier and faster to search the package descriptions. It will also sync and show you any new or updated packages since the last time you synced. A great addition to any Gentoo machine.
  • I tried Gentoo a while back, all the hype round here made it sound quite exciting. I installed the binary base, set all the build variables and let it do its thing.

    The system it built for me wasn't noticably faster than my old Slackware install. It certainly wasn't worth the pain of the build process.

    Gentoo worked just fine, but in the end I decided I preferred my old "home grown" Slackware setup because I already knew where everything was and how it all fitted together, so I dug out the tape and went ba
    • If you have the bandwith (which does cost a little) then how can it be overrated for the money, last time I checked it's free.

      I agree that unless you use prelinking the system won't be noticably faster than any other distro. And prelinking won't help all packages at that.

      I can't argue against using something that's firmilar but if you know what you're doing, if you've used one distro you've used them all. If you think that compiling everything from tarballs and solving dependancy problems on your own is
    • I guess since Gentoo uses tar.bz2, that is the cause you don't like Gentoo?

      And 'emerge program' is easier than your world. It will:
      a) Check and install all dependencies of 'program'
      b) Unpack the source, run configure, make and install the 'program' for you.
      c) Portage allows you to have several versions of a program installed due to it's use of slots.

      Not beeing a Gentoo zealot, but I don't see how your argument is valid.

  • etc-update (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:24AM (#8995963)
    Don't forget to run etc-update after you upgrade; that way you can merge any changes to the config files in /etc. (hence the name "etc-update")

    IMPORTANT!!!!: make damn sure you know what you are doing before running etc-update!!!! It is very easy to bork your system if you're not paying attention. Read the manpage and check with the forums before using it.

  • Gentoo vs. Slackware (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @10:30AM (#8996033)
    Good day,

    I literally just moved my home computer from Slackware 9.1 to Gentoo 2004.0 last week (ok, over the course of the last week!) and I have to say that it is indeed the slickest Linux distribution I have ever used!

    I still run Slackware 9.1 on my laptop, which has 5/3 the memory and a CPU twice as fast as my home computer - but my new Gentoo box actually runs about TWICE as fast!! It's amazing how compiling everything w/ -O3 and -march=XXX really makes a huge difference. Last night I was simultaneously compiling OpenOffice, Evolution and Gimp, with no slowdown at all in my web browzing, development, etc!

    Also, nvidia, sound, FB, kernel 2.6.5 worked the first time, plus it has thousands of packages to download (everything I need), and boots faster than Windows did on my faster machine (by ~8-15 seconds, depending on my readings).

    One more thing - Portage is even more user-friendly than downloading *.tgz from linuxpackages.net and running installpkg. It searches for the right version from various mirrors, then downloads, does MD5 checking, and compiles automatically, and maintains a nifty little log, and checks for all dependencies. Also - it provides the most freedom I've seen in a distribution - nothing I don't need or want is installed. Getting evolution to be optimized to my machine is just a matter of typing "# emerge evolution"

    Gentoo is indeed fan-freaking-tastic (if you have the patience to compile everything from scratch).

    A. Coward
  • What is not often mentioned is the stable vs. unstable settings in portage. Ie, in /etc/make.conf is the setting 'ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86"', which means unstable/testing packages, as opposed to "x86", which is just regular old stable pacakages.

    There have been lots of issues over the past few months regarding improper (too hasty and with too little testing) moving of pacakges from ~x86 to x86. This often results in pacakges that will not compile cleanly in the stable branch for all users.

    There was a hide

  • Karma Whoring (Score:3, Funny)

    by DroopyStonx ( 683090 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @11:05AM (#8996423)
    Since everyone is getting away with posting obvious shit like:

    "Update your system with 'emerge sync' and then 'emerge -DUu world'"

    and

    "Don't forget to run etc-update after you upgrade; that way you can merge any changes to the config files in /etc. (hence the name "etc-update")"

    I figured I'd take part in some karma whoring of my own: GENTOO IS A LINUX DISTRO!!! omg!!!!!! I bet you DIDN'T KNOW THAT!!!

    Now give me my fucking karma.
  • I've used Gentoo briefly as a workstation OS, but one thing I've wondered is how stable is it?

    Is anyone using Gentoo in a server farm in a production environment? That's always been one of the strengths of Debian's stable release. You can run your servers for years at a time and never have an update break ANYTHING. Has Gentoo reached this level of stability yet or is it more of a bleeding edge kind of distro?

  • Gentoo is not for everyone... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by g_adams27 ( 581237 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @11:21AM (#8996584)
    There's a lot of Gentoo lovin' going on here, and while I am a satisfied Gentoo customer more-or-less, people should realize that Gentoo is a very young and bleeding-edge distro. The good thing about Gentoo is that it'll teach you a huge amount about the inner workings of Linux. The bad news is that you'll be doing that learning as you're pounding your head against a wall trying to fix something that an "emerge -u" broke.

    Some Gentoo developers just seem to release stuff without thoroughly testing it out. Here's some examples just from my own experiences over the last 2 months:

    • "emerge -u openldap" fails. The root cause (at listed in the bug report) is "libiodbc package appears to be badly broken, reported to it's maintainer. problem should go away when it's fixed."
    • "emerge -u alsa-driver" breaks my ALSA setup (no sound). Updated ALSA library package had a severe bug.
    • New "hotplug" libraries created a race condition with gentoo's dependency caching program. Result: the /var/lib/init.d/depcache file is written to simultaneously by multiple processes. Result: corrupted file. Result: unpredictable booting, ranging from certain programs not starting to completely unusable bootable state.
    • tcng program requires certain kernels to be installed (don't know why, but it does). New kernel is released, breaking tcng which does not recognize the new kernel. (new tcng released 2-3 weeks later)

    Gentoo can be a very cool distro if you're willing to put up with the annoyances of (IMHO) a somewhat muddled and slipshod update-release process.

  • Gentoo is pretty damned good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @12:00PM (#8997036) Journal
    Gentoo is the distro that has made me most happy with Linux.

    Well that, or deciding to install OpenBox as the Window Manager, and then having pure simplicity itself on my desktop as opposed to KDE or Gnome.

    It has brought new life to my old HP Omnibook laptop, now 6 years old at least. Of course it was hell installing it, even with a Stage 3 install. The laptop was previously running Mandrake with Blackbox, and would run out of memory all the time (160MB installed) even without running much. Gentoo, by being custom all the way, means that I have memory spare, enough to run Apache and Postgresql and have a little portable web development machine.

    The only thing that is scaring me is that I have just emerge -DUu world, and something has downloaded the kernel 2.4.21 headers when I have kernel 2.6.5 on my machine. I did emerge -pv world first as well, and this was not indicated, grrr.

  • Odd Timing... (Score:3, Informative)

    by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <{yoda} {at} {etoyoc.com}> on Wednesday April 28, 2004 @01:22PM (#8998014) Homepage Journal
    I was in the middle of building a new Gentoo box when this thread got started...

    "New" as in a reformat and repurposing of a venerable rack-mount. My email server moved to a new box and this one is becoming a firewall. All of my production machines are running Gentoo.

    Yes it's crazy. But I k#0\/\/ w#@t 1m d01#% +0 C##p fr0# 831n% 0wnd.

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