On Sun, 2005-03-27 at 19:01 -0500, Jason Cooper wrote: > Harry Putnam ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) scribbled: > > Being a new user, I'm wanting to get an overview of what an average > > gentoo user might do or need to do over a 6mnth period. > > > > I installed 3 days ago and am still getting things setup. Seems like > > an awfull lot of time has gone into emerging stuff I wanted installed. > > > > Now it turns out there is an update to portage and my system is > > telling me it needs to update portage and then update the already > > installed packages. 2 more huge chunks of time lost to compiling. > > > > An activity that seems so intensive that I have been reluctant to and > > doubted the advisability of installing or making configs during the > > compile process. > > > > So far I've spent a very lot of time waiting for something to finish > > emerging. It seems like things like Mozilla take an extrordinary > > long time. > > > > I'm wondering what a user might see over 6 mnths. How many portage > > updates in that amount of time. Howmany `update worlds'. > > Of the 5 machines I have running gentoo, I would say on average I run > 'emerge -uDav world' from every other day to once a week. However, I > sure don't sit around and watch it. > > Typically, I'll launch the emerge, then start reading email, news, etc, > and writing code, etc while it works in the background on the same > machine. I've never had an emerge stop me from getting work done. > > Hell, a lot of times I completely forget my CPU is pegged out running a > merge, till I flip over to that desktop to look at something, then I see > compiler messages flying by... Basically, it doesn't affect the UI at all.
Tip for Harry: In /etc/make.conf set: PORTAGE_NICENESS=19 and the emergeing will go into the background and "give way" to other processes with higher priority. Also you don't need to update just because you can. If, for example, you stick to security updates, you will have far less compiling. However you may also miss something exciting on the leading edge. And yes mozilla takes a while. But if you really want to wait, try openoffice. As Jason says, just let it do the compiling in the background, and get on with using the computer. :-) > > > hth, > > Cooper. > -- > gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list > -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
