Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed.
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed. You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 12:36, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. wrong. The installation needs a certain difficulty to keep idiots away. Nobody needs idiots (except maybe ubuntu). That is insulting. My mother uses Ubuntu. Thanks for calling her an idiot. Obviously if someone wants to use his computer in order to get something done without doing a Ph.D on Portage and /etc first, then that person is an idiot. Great thinking. Fortunately, there are people (like the Ubuntu folks) who don't think that way and are trying to make Linux more popular to people who need a computer to do tasks that are not related to the computer itself. I don't agree with the way to see it of Nikos. However, even if I agree with you in that having Ubuntu (which is another choice) is a good thing, I don't agree that Gentoo should be yet-another-ubuntu. Gentoo is Gentoo, and Ubuntu is Ubuntu. If your mother uses Ubuntu, that's fine. But we don't need to lower the acceptance level of Gentoo so your mother can use it. I think that it's fair to ask a minimal degree of will to read and learn for a distro like Gentoo. The rest of Gentoo users do it, no one died that I know of because of it. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed. You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :) and gentoo was never meant for the clueless.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed. You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :) I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed. You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :) It seems to me that not to many normal people would use Gentoo anyway. By and large, we're probably geeks...I mean, c'mon, this is a mailing list for users of a distro of linux. Your normal My computer gets myspace group isn't exactly our audience.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 14:53, Saphirus Sage escribió: Cocoy Dayao wrote: There are certain situations where the step-by-step installer isn't adequate. For instance, when I was installing gentoo on my G4, it was straight forward and easy, but when I decided to do a minimal install on my Everex laptop, I needed to use initrd, which I previoiusly had no experience with and the Gentoo handbook didn't mention. Granted, it eventually worked, but I would be hesitent to say that there was adequate documentation on it. And that's why we speack about a community effort, and bugtrackers exist. So you can let the relevant people know and the next one to read the handbook will find a solution if s/he has the same problem. The handbooks didn't magically appear out of thin air in 1 second as they are now, nor did Gentoo. It's not The community vs. you, you are part of the community since the very moment you start using linux. No manual is perfect, the difference is that here at least you have the chance to change it to make it better. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 16:23, Grant Edwards escribió: On 2009-02-05, Dirk Uys dirkc...@gmail.com wrote: The type of user I don't like is the ignorant type. Innocent users are ok, they don't know, but ignorant users choose not to know. Surely there are things you use without knowing how they work. You probably use a phone, but do you _really_ know how the cellular system works? How about the landline phone system? The water supply system? Sewage treatment? Do you know how a refinery works? A chemical plant? How about the CPU in your computer. Do you actually know how it works? And so often these ignorant users demand that they should be able to do anything on a computer. If you wish to benefit from using computers, you should be prepared to spend some time to get to know how the stuff works. The more you want to do, the more you need to know. Not: I want amarok without mysql and xyz plugin running all silky and smooth, but don't give me any command line run-arounds or lots of talk about USE flags. We're all ignorant about 99% of the things we use. You just happened to choose a different 1% than some other people. That's completely unfair. If you don't want to know how a fridge work you buy a fridge, not the tools to make a fridge, which is what Gentoo is. If you don't want to make the fridge yourself, go Ubuntu and let us build our fridges ourselves. Why do you want to spoil our fun? Isn't there enough premade distros that are easy to handle around? -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 20:00, Mike Edenfield escribió: On 2/5/2009 7:01 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: no. He is an idiot if he does not read the docs. Simple. Like people who don't read the manual to their car or vcr and then complaining if something does not work. Idiots. They should read the manual is *not* a valid design goal for a system. At best, it's a justification or rationalization when outside constraints force a design to be non-intuitive. Gentoo is not a distro. You don't use it, It's a metadristro that can be used to build a proper distro, after that you can use the final product. Given the choice between two otherwise equally functional systems (of any sort -- electronic, mechanical, digital, etc); if one requires me to spend extensive time reading an instruction manual to use and the other is designed to be easy to use out of the box -- the idiot is the person wasting their time reading instead of being productive. To use your own example, I have no problem figuring out how to start my car, turn on the A/C, tune my radio, and drive to work without reading the automobile manual. No. Your point is valid but in the other sense. If you are choosing the wrong tool for you, it's your problem. If you don't want to build a system from scratch but you insist on using Gentoo and you insist that it MUST be easy to use, then you are the one that screw the thing up. I want to remove some screws, but I want to do it with my hammer!!! If Gentoo's installer *has* to be difficult because it's the only way to supply additional benefits or features, that's a perfectly reasonable argument. If Gentoo's installer is *stuck* being difficult because there is a lack of resources interested in making it better, that's an upsetting, but equally reasonable argument. As said in other posts, I think that the true reason is that there's not any interest in doing it. Many attempts have been started and abandoned in the past. If Gentoo's installer is difficult *on purpose* just to make Gentoo hard to use, that's ridiculous. It's not dificult. You can read, you can do it. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 21:03:30 +0100 (CET), Jesús Guerrero wrote: Gentoo is not a distro. You don't use it, It's a metadristro that can be used to build a proper distro, after that you can use the final product. It's a flatpack distro ;-) -- Neil Bothwick Hi, I'm not a signature virus. Why don't you just copy me into your signature? signature.asc Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Saphirus Sage wrote: Nikos Chantziaras wrote: You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :) It seems to me that not to many normal people would use Gentoo anyway. By and large, we're probably geeks...I mean, c'mon, this is a mailing list for users of a distro of linux. Your normal My computer gets myspace group isn't exactly our audience. It seems Sabayon Linux did quite some good work here. And it's still Gentoo. Too bad they broke quite stuff, but the idea is nice: A Gentoo that isn't only for geeks and gurus.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: SNIP and gentoo was never meant for the clueless. Ah, come on Volker, say what's true. My 81 year old dad uses Gentoo and he cannot use vi. Maybe you really meant, but didn't say, 'Gentoo was never meant for the clueless administrator'. Once it's up and running it's Linux. Nothing more. Nothing less. What's the big deal? - Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. - Mark
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Jesús Guerrero wrote: It's not The community vs. you, you are part of the community since the very moment you start using linux. Most people don't want to be some part of some weird community. They just want to use a computer. If they were looking for friends, they might try the local sports club. Linux has reached a point where it tries to appeal to users. You don't ask them anymore to go fix the problems. You have to fix them yourself. I believe any distro that doesn't adopt a development model where user support and QA are important, is going to die at some point. Linux doesn't seem to have gathered new users since ages; 2003 maybe? Or 2004? No visible growth since then. With no new users, and most users converting to Ubuntu and openSUSE, there's simply not enough users left to keep other distros alive.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: because it kept the 'i am too cool to read the docs' idiots away. Being forced to read the documentation is a good thing - and it did not hurt gentoo's popularity. Only after it started to catering to idiots and more and more of loud mouthed 'I am the centre of the universe, I don't need to read docs, use google or bugzilla. I demand an answer and help NOW' assholes came on board, the popularity went down. The above statement is ridiculous and I've said my piece on it several times. Not worth the bother of debunking it yet again so I'll just link the infamous Elitist Chowderhead thread from four years ago. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/109660/focus=109984 What people forget is that a well built installer has to run through a number of steps that get you a running system. Ideally a system that has exactly what you expect to be installed and how. Whether this is a GUI, ncurses based, whatever is besides the point. An installer project builds a set of tools that eventually can be used to install hundreds of machines in a uniform way and that is damn useful. kashani
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: SNIP and gentoo was never meant for the clueless. Ah, come on Volker, say what's true. My 81 year old dad uses Gentoo and he cannot use vi. Maybe you really meant, but didn't say, 'Gentoo was never meant for the clueless administrator'. in that case it is YOU who had to read the documentation.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :) I think you mean to say no boot loader is perfect. ;-) --Joshua Doll
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :) I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 21:25, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Jesús Guerrero wrote: It's not The community vs. you, you are part of the community since the very moment you start using linux. Most people don't want to be some part of some weird community. They just want to use a computer. If they were looking for friends, they might try the local sports club. Right. But people who don't want to do some work to change the things have no right to complain either. Unless they are paying a monthly bill how you do on your sports club. Do you pay here? -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 22:01, Jesús Guerrero escribió: El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 21:25, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Jesús Guerrero wrote: It's not The community vs. you, you are part of the community since the very moment you start using linux. Most people don't want to be some part of some weird community. They just want to use a computer. If they were looking for friends, they might try the local sports club. Right. But people who don't want to do some work to change the things have no right to complain either. Unless they are paying a monthly bill how you do on your sports club. Do you pay here? To reword it, if you like it use it, if you don't then don't use it. It's not about joining a weird community as you defined it or about making friends here. I am not here to make friends since I -as most people here I guess- do have a social life that's not inside my monitor. This is about people that's giving you for free a tool to do your work. And you can't even bother to fill in a bug? Well, whatever... I supposed that complaining on mailing lists instead will fix the issue faster... -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:25:11 +0200, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Most people don't want to be some part of some weird community. They just want to use a computer. If they were looking for friends, they might try the local sports club. Who are these people on whose behalf you speak? Why should Gentoo try to cater for them when there are already a zillion distros doing that? Gentoo is not a distro for most people. Linux has reached a point where it tries to appeal to users. You don't ask them anymore to go fix the problems. You have to fix them yourself. I believe any distro that doesn't adopt a development model where user support and QA are important, is going to die at some point. Linux doesn't seem to have gathered new users since ages; 2003 maybe? Or 2004? No visible growth since then. With no new users, and most users converting to Ubuntu and openSUSE, there's simply not enough users left to keep other distros alive. On what do you base these claims? Stating that Linux has no new users does not make it true, but reading emails from people stating I am new to Linux, as I do most days, would indicate that the opposite is true. QA is important to the Gentoo devs. As for user support, I thing we get tremendous value for money from the devs, worth every penny we pay them. Gentoo arose out of a dissatisfaction wit the way other distros did things, so using them as a yardstick now renders the whole project pointless. If you don't like the way Gentoo does things, you can either work to improve it or use something else more suited to your needs. If all you want is a GUI for the installer, take a look at Quickstart and see if there is a way to add a configuration GUI to it. -- Neil Bothwick ... Yummy, said Pooh, as he hilted his paw into the honeypot. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :) I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Sorry for top posting, it's BlackBerry's behavior. I cannot agree when you say that gentoo docs are written for geeks. Gentoo's install guide is very well written and i18ed, at least in my native language. It takes the user step by step to prepare his enviroment, to install the distro, and to finalize it, always explaining every step and giving choices. First time I installed gentoo my only linux experience was 8 months of suse, I am not an IT person, but I haven't found the installation that painful. === TopperH === Momesso Andrea -Original Message- From: Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:43:43 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh? Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed. You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :) I think you mean to say no boot loader is perfect. ;-) --Joshua Doll The ubuntu installer did not tell me which drive it was installing the boot loader onto, nor did it give me a choice -- it chose the one it thought was appropriate (and it was wrong). If you google for ubuntu grub sata ide you can see it happens to nearly everyone who has a mixture of IDE and SATA drives where they boot from IDE but linux gives sda to sata and sdc to IDE or whatever.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :) I think you mean to say no boot loader is perfect. ;-) --Joshua Doll The ubuntu installer did not tell me which drive it was installing the boot loader onto, nor did it give me a choice -- it chose the one it thought was appropriate (and it was wrong). If you google for ubuntu grub sata ide you can see it happens to nearly everyone who has a mixture of IDE and SATA drives where they boot from IDE but linux gives sda to sata and sdc to IDE or whatever. Actually the kernel has assigned most hdd, etc. some form of sd* for awhile now. The only thing that is labeled different, that I've seen in awhile is my dvd burner. Anyways getting to my statement I was being facetious. I can't think of a single piece of software that is perfect, except for maybe hello, world!, but that's not very useful. --Joshua Doll
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. - Mark What I find ironic here, I have been know to use copy and paste to install Gentoo. I may have to change a mount point or a partition location, hda2 to hda6 or something, but otherwise, copy and paste works well. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-) Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. --Joshua Doll
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Joshua D Doll wrote: Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-) Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. --Joshua Doll Man pages notoriously bad?! Now that's a stance I can hardly understand, they've always been a godsend in my experience! Just practice using a command a few times, look through the options and learn it in the period of ten minutes, and a man page has done its purpose. If this stance is due to your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, then do not apply the lacking to anything but your own capacity for comprehension.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Saphirus Sage wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-) Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. --Joshua Doll Man pages notoriously bad?! Now that's a stance I can hardly understand, they've always been a godsend in my experience! Just practice using a command a few times, look through the options and learn it in the period of ten minutes, and a man page has done its purpose. If this stance is due to your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, then do not apply the lacking to anything but your own capacity for comprehension. Just cause you haven't run across an uninformative/incomplete man page doesn't mean others haven't. Also man pages lacking valuable information is the reason why GNU has switched to the majority of their packages to using info! You shouldn't flame someone because your experiences are different from their's. --Joshua Doll
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Joshua D Doll wrote: Saphirus Sage wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-) Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. --Joshua Doll Man pages notoriously bad?! Now that's a stance I can hardly understand, they've always been a godsend in my experience! Just practice using a command a few times, look through the options and learn it in the period of ten minutes, and a man page has done its purpose. If this stance is due to your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, then do not apply the lacking to anything but your own capacity for comprehension. Just cause you haven't run across an uninformative/incomplete man page doesn't mean others haven't. Also man pages lacking valuable information is the reason why GNU has switched to the majority of their packages to using info! You shouldn't flame someone because your experiences are different from their's. --Joshua Doll I have to say that I have had times that even after someone showed me how to use a command, the man page made no sense still. If it doesn't make sense when you know a little about using it, how can it make sense when you don't? I think examples is a good way to do that and the more the better. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Saphirus Sage wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-) Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. --Joshua Doll Man pages notoriously bad?! Now that's a stance I can hardly understand, they've always been a godsend in my experience! Just practice using a command a few times, look through the options and learn it in the period of ten minutes, and a man page has done its purpose. If this stance is due to your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, then do not apply the lacking to anything but your own capacity for comprehension. Just cause you haven't run across an uninformative/incomplete man page doesn't mean others haven't. Also man pages lacking valuable information is the reason why GNU has switched to the majority of their packages to using info! You shouldn't flame someone because your experiences are different from their's. --Joshua Doll I have to say that I have had times that even after someone showed me how to use a command, the man page made no sense still. If it doesn't make sense when you know a little about using it, how can it make sense when you don't? I think examples is a good way to do that and the more the better. Dale :-) :-) I'd wager that examples are the responsibility of third parties. Frankly, if I've read a man page and found it inadequate, a quick google search usually will come back with enough examples to resolve any problem. I'm not saying a manpage should be without any examples at all, but if the provided documentation isn't thorough enough, that's what these mailing lists and forums are for.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 5 Feb 2009, at 23:12, Joshua D Doll wrote: ... Also man pages lacking valuable information is the reason why GNU has switched to the majority of their packages to using info! I suspect the reason for this is far more about navigation then contents. GNU can rewrite all their man pages if they don't like the content, but `man` does not offer the facilities to hyperlink sections that `info` does. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 5 Feb 2009, at 23:03, Saphirus Sage wrote: ... Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. Man pages notoriously bad?! Now that's a stance I can hardly understand, they've always been a godsend in my experience! Just practice using a command a few times, look through the options and learn it in the period of ten minutes, and a man page has done its purpose. If this stance is due to your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, then do not apply the lacking to anything but your own capacity for comprehension. To be fair there is an art to reading manpages. Manpages tend to be terse yet authoritative, but it was only after (perhaps) a couple of years of using Unix (and perhaps longer) that I learned to appreciate them. I think manpages tend to assume that the reader is already proficient with Unix and often that the reader is familiar with regular expressions. They tend to use the academic language of computer science which may be completely baffling to someone who is technically logically very competent but self-taught. My experience is that only after learning the syntax of manpages (is that itself documented?) do I find most of them tremendously easy to navigate to find the one specific option I'm looking for. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Vie, 6 de Febrero de 2009, 4:03, Stroller escribió: My experience is that only after learning the syntax of manpages (is that itself documented?) do I find most of them tremendously easy to navigate to find the one specific option I'm looking for. If all the problem about man pages is navigation another pager can be used. If all the problem is that they are not graphical, install konqueror and use man:/. If the problem is contents then that's nothing to do with man, but with whomever made (or didn't made) the page. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 6 Feb 2009, at 03:08, Jesús Guerrero wrote:
El Vie, 6 de Febrero de 2009, 4:03, Stroller escribió:
My experience is that only after learning the syntax of manpages (is
that itself documented?) do I find most of them tremendously easy to
navigate to find the one specific option I'm looking for.
If all the problem about man pages is navigation another pager
can be used.
I didn't really mean navigate like that.
And in the quote above I wasn't criticising navigation of manpages.
I just mean that if there's one option I want to find (I don't know -
list by date order in `ls` for instance) then I just find it
tremendously EASY to find that in a man page. You can search for a
word using the normal old / of `less` and 9 times out of 10 you find
the command flag very quickly (if not immediately).
If you're new to a command that's been recommended to you, or an app
you've just installed, then I find the Synopsis section is
tremendously useful, but it has to be said that:
less [-[+]aBcCdeEfFgGiIJKLmMnNqQrRsSuUVwWX~]
[-b space] [-h lines] [-j line] [-k keyfile]
[-{oO} logfile] [-p pattern] [-P prompt] [-t tag]
[-T tagsfile] [-x tab,...] [-y lines] [-[z] lines]
[-# shift] [+[+]cmd] [--] [filename]...
doesn't make any sense to the untrained eye. It just looks like
gobbledegook. There's maybe a Linux n00b manual that explains the
syntax of man's Synopsis, but I'm sure I only learned to translate
the likes of the above after reading man pages for commands that I
already knew - learned through inference, osmosis and newsgroups.
If the problem is contents then that's nothing to do with
man, but with whomever made (or didn't made) the page.
Yes, but there's a problem with the MAJORITY of contents, perhaps of
the majority of people writing manpages? It just seems to be a culture
of the way man pages are written. They make perfect sense only with
experience - don't get me wrong, I love 'em and at least to a degree I
think that's how it should be.
But I think the criticism of someone who finds man pages difficult to
read your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, ...your
own capacity for comprehension is a tad unfair.
Take a look at this:
DESCRIPTION
Less is a program similar to more (1), but which allows
backward move-
ment in the file as well as forward movement. Also, less does
not have
to read the entire input file before starting, so with
large input
files it starts up faster than text editors like vi (1).
Less uses
termcap (or terminfo on some systems), so it can run on a
variety of
terminals. There is even limited support for hardcopy
terminals. (On
a hardcopy terminal, lines which should be printed at the
top of the
screen are prefixed with a caret.)
Commands are based on both more and vi. Commands may be
preceded by a
decimal number, called N in the descriptions below. The
number is used
by some commands, as indicated.
The first sentence could far better be written Less is a program for
scrolling up down through textfiles - actually this highlights the
typical manpage charm of greater obscurity through complete
correctness. The second sentence doesn't seem valuable enough (these
days) for the main summary - it would be more useful to mention the
ability to search - and the 3rd sentence is more relevant to the 1970s
than today (the bracketed section which follows is more relevant to
the 16th century). Most newcomers to `less` will never have used
`more` or `vi`, and the last two sentences - well, there's just
something wrong with them. They're not very readable. I had to read
them twice myself - who the heck would think to use a NON-decimal
number, anyway?
Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Vie, 6 de Febrero de 2009, 5:40, Stroller escribió:
less [-[+]aBcCdeEfFgGiIJKLmMnNqQrRsSuUVwWX~] [-b space] [-h lines] [-j
line] [-k keyfile] [-{oO} logfile] [-p pattern] [-P prompt] [-t tag]
[-T tagsfile] [-x tab,...] [-y lines] [-[z] lines]
[-# shift] [+[+]cmd] [--] [filename]...
doesn't make any sense to the untrained eye. It just looks like
gobbledegook. There's maybe a Linux n00b manual that explains the syntax
of man's Synopsis, but I'm sure I only learned to translate the likes of
the above after reading man pages for commands that I already knew -
learned through inference, osmosis and newsgroups.
I have no idea if that's documented in any place.
If the problem is contents then that's nothing to do with
man, but with whomever made (or didn't made) the page.
Yes, but there's a problem with the MAJORITY of contents, perhaps of
the majority of people writing manpages? It just seems to be a culture of
the way man pages are written. They make perfect sense only with
experience - don't get me wrong, I love 'em and at least to a degree I
think that's how it should be.
But I think the criticism of someone who finds man pages difficult to
read your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, ...your own
capacity for comprehension is a tad unfair.
Yes. I wasn't implying that you were wrong, just giving
some general tips that could be useful if the problem was
one of those that I was enumerating.
But sometimes, the amount of info to present is simply overwhelming.
To name just a couple of man pages that are really excellent I'd say
that the fvwm and bash ones are really good. But being rather long
they are better suited as reference guides. They are not tutorials,
that's for sure.
That's where the network nature of unix like OSes break into scene,
learning without having access to internet is harder, I can tell
from experience in my beginnings.
About the age of the pages, well, some of the packages are so old
and rarely need updates that they go mostly unmaintained for ages.
It's just a guess anyway.
--
Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Friday 06 February 2009 06:40:01 Stroller wrote: If the problem is contents then that's nothing to do with man, but with whomever made (or didn't made) the page. Yes, but there's a problem with the MAJORITY of contents, perhaps of the majority of people writing manpages? It just seems to be a culture of the way man pages are written. They make perfect sense only with experience - don't get me wrong, I love 'em and at least to a degree I think that's how it should be. Man pages are mostly written as reference documents. Like technical specs, they tend to list the capabilities of the app without giving the bigger picture overview as that is assumed to be known. They are not teaching aids or howtos. For that you need classes, dummy guides etc. When you've learned how man pages work, then you can use the man pages. But the man pages don't tell you how the man pages work. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Friday 06 February 2009 04:45:04 Stroller wrote: On 5 Feb 2009, at 23:12, Joshua D Doll wrote: ... Also man pages lacking valuable information is the reason why GNU has switched to the majority of their packages to using info! I suspect the reason for this is far more about navigation then contents. GNU can rewrite all their man pages if they don't like the content, but `man` does not offer the facilities to hyperlink sections that `info` does. I suspect it has more to do with RMS's liking for micro-managing things, for changing everything he can get his hands on, and also a great big dose of Not Invented Here syndrome. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 6 Feb 2009, at 05:03, Jesús Guerrero wrote: ... But sometimes, the amount of info to present is simply overwhelming. To name just a couple of man pages that are really excellent I'd say that the fvwm and bash ones are really good. But being rather long they are better suited as reference guides. LOL! I had thought to give the Bash manpage as an example of a man page which is terrible! For just that reason - its length! My most common usage of the Bash manpage is because I can never remember the command to append the new history lines to the history file (in one terminal) and the one to read the new history lines (in another terminal). The Bash manpage is HUGE and this topic is towards the end; searching on history brings up so many hits on the way there that it slows you right down. You're right that it's huge comprehensive you could print it out for very enlightening bedtime reading (I didn't know you could do that!), but the Bash manpage is the only one that has led me to try `info`! Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Vie, 6 de Febrero de 2009, 7:57, Stroller escribió: On 6 Feb 2009, at 05:03, Jesús Guerrero wrote: ... But sometimes, the amount of info to present is simply overwhelming. To name just a couple of man pages that are really excellent I'd say that the fvwm and bash ones are really good. But being rather long they are better suited as reference guides. LOL! I had thought to give the Bash manpage as an example of a man page which is terrible! For just that reason - its length! Well, in that sense, ALL the man pages of for anything that's more complext than ls will be horrible. There's no way to can shorten it unless you take features off from bash. It's a very powerful shell. Same goes for my other example: fvwm. -- Jesús Guerrero
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Joshua D Doll wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. I'll just quote Linux Hater here: Write tons of documentation on complicated procedures to make things work, instead of making things work. That the best damn thing I ever read about telling users to RTFM.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 08:58:23AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 01:48:34 Nikos Chantziaras wrote: So all in all, I agree. Using Gentoo is nowadays not so much a matter of performance optimization but of better control of how to build the packages and the rolling release nature (I'm tired of major updates every 6 months in the majority of binary distros.) I also like the USE flags which let me chose how to build something and get rid of dependencies I don't need. Administrative features like dispatch-conf are also very useful. This is the main benefit of Gentoo for me. I have to use SuSE or RHEL at work for the database machines - Sybase will not support any other other distro - and the 1G+ base install from those distros drive me nuts. Contrast that with the DNS caches which run FreeBSD, the difference is about a factor of 5 if not more. I also get sick and tired of installing postfix on a database machine purely to send nagios alerts, and watching the distro helpfully want to pull in PostgreSQL, MySQL, LDAP, SASL, Courier and some fancy MTA-switcher thingy. All because the maintainer enables those features and now I gotta have them. No thanks. Rather give me USE so I say what goes on the box. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com Often on gentoo related IRC chanels comes someone who asks why his firefox-bin (or openoffice-bin or *-bin) runs faster than his built-from-source firefox. Usually chan's gurus answer that upstream packagers use all the possible compiler optimizations (CFLAGS LDFLAGS etc.) for the given package, while the average gentoo users keeps a set of system wide very safe optimizations that are good for most packages, but not the best for every particolar package. Is that statement correct? === TopperH === pgp2P5xwzz7JV.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
El mié, 04-02-2009 a las 14:03 +0100, Momesso Andrea escribió: On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 08:58:23AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 01:48:34 Nikos Chantziaras wrote: So all in all, I agree. Using Gentoo is nowadays not so much a matter of performance optimization but of better control of how to build the packages and the rolling release nature (I'm tired of major updates every 6 months in the majority of binary distros.) I also like the USE flags which let me chose how to build something and get rid of dependencies I don't need. Administrative features like dispatch-conf are also very useful. This is the main benefit of Gentoo for me. I have to use SuSE or RHEL at work for the database machines - Sybase will not support any other other distro - and the 1G+ base install from those distros drive me nuts. Contrast that with the DNS caches which run FreeBSD, the difference is about a factor of 5 if not more. I also get sick and tired of installing postfix on a database machine purely to send nagios alerts, and watching the distro helpfully want to pull in PostgreSQL, MySQL, LDAP, SASL, Courier and some fancy MTA-switcher thingy. All because the maintainer enables those features and now I gotta have them. No thanks. Rather give me USE so I say what goes on the box. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com Often on gentoo related IRC chanels comes someone who asks why his firefox-bin (or openoffice-bin or *-bin) runs faster than his built-from-source firefox. Usually chan's gurus answer that upstream packagers use all the possible compiler optimizations (CFLAGS LDFLAGS etc.) for the given package, while the average gentoo users keeps a set of system wide very safe optimizations that are good for most packages, but not the best for every particolar package. Is that statement correct? === TopperH === I've always felt the compiled openoffice faster than the binary one, but if it is not the case portage also gives you the chance of establishing per-package optimisations on '/etc/portage/env/' or in the paludis bashrc, so if one user wants an particular app to go faster, he can research about the best way to build this one. This way, the user can keep the very safe optimisations for the rest of the system and some -unsafe optimisations- for the packages he want. It is more about choices... signature.asc Description: Esta parte del mensaje está firmada digitalmente
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 08:45:50AM -0430, Sebastián Magrí wrote: [snip] Often on gentoo related IRC chanels comes someone who asks why his firefox-bin (or openoffice-bin or *-bin) runs faster than his built-from-source firefox. Usually chan's gurus answer that upstream packagers use all the possible compiler optimizations (CFLAGS LDFLAGS etc.) for the given package, while the average gentoo users keeps a set of system wide very safe optimizations that are good for most packages, but not the best for every particolar package. Is that statement correct? === TopperH === I've always felt the compiled openoffice faster than the binary one, but if it is not the case portage also gives you the chance of establishing per-package optimisations on '/etc/portage/env/' or in the paludis bashrc, so if one user wants an particular app to go faster, he can research about the best way to build this one. This way, the user can keep the very safe optimisations for the rest of the system and some -unsafe optimisations- for the packages he want. It is more about choices... Sure, I've used per-package optimizations myself in some particular cases, but that's not the point. A package manteiner *should* know better than an average user which optimizations will tune better their own package. My question can be put like this: Do binary distro's per package optimiziations override the benefit of having arch specific optimiziations that gentoo allows? === TopperH === pgp5Jqrnm0iHU.pgp Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Sebastián Magrí wrote: Also, Gentoo is a great school. If you want to learn how a Linux system works, and really want to learn about Unix systems, then Gentoo is the best for you. I don't get that argument. I didn't learn how Linux or Unix works with Gentoo. I didn't even find my prior knowledge of Unix and Linux of much use either. Typing emerge package and dispatch-conf doesn't offer me much knowledge. It's as simple as Debian in this regard. If I wanted a learn Unix distro, I would be using Slackware :P
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 11:08, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Jesús Guerrero wrote: [...] A big big advantage is that besides the huge number of packages that we have, we also have dozens of overlays. [...] and some of them are really bug. QFT ;) Ouch, I meant big, though that applies as well :lol: -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 14:31:26 +0100, Momesso Andrea wrote: Sure, I've used per-package optimizations myself in some particular cases, but that's not the point. A package manteiner *should* know better than an average user which optimizations will tune better their own package. But the user knows their own needs and system better. If the user is using -Os, it is reasonable to assume they have a reason for doing so and not override it. The only time ebuilds should override user CFLAGS is when the build is known to fail with certain settings. -- Neil Bothwick Top Oxymorons Number 36: Alone together signature.asc Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On 2009-02-04, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: This thread is not complete without the obligatory link: http://funroll-loops.info/ Brilliant! I really like this one: To me, an extra 0.1% performance increase, even if I am only imagining it to be faster, is certainly worth one day a week recompiling all of the latest packages from source code. Even if I do occasionally get my CFLAGS in a muddle! And this one pretty much echos my feelings: Real Gentoo users understand, it's not about OPTIMILAZIATIONS, it's about USE flags. Apparently I'm one of the people who think Gentoo rules because they can't use RPM properly. ;) -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! This PORCUPINE knows at his ZIPCODE ... And he has visi.comVISA!!
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 2009-02-04, Jes?s Guerrero i92gu...@terra.es wrote: El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 8:39, Alan McKinnon escribi?: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 09:27:31 Christopher Walters wrote: I personally don't view Gentoo as a distro in the traditional sense. To me, it's a build system, an app - portage or paludis - and the devs that make cool input files for that app. Building a distro from scratch for embedded devices is a painful process if you don't have an automated build system. It's not quite a trivial exercise, but portage does make it a whole lot easier. That's mostly what I call a metadistro. A set of tools and instructions to build a proper distro that suits you, and maintain it. Except that what you build and maintain isn't a distro, it's a single machine. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! Are you still an at ALCOHOLIC? visi.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
El mié, 04-02-2009 a las 14:31 +0100, Momesso Andrea escribió: On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 08:45:50AM -0430, Sebastián Magrí wrote: [snip] Often on gentoo related IRC chanels comes someone who asks why his firefox-bin (or openoffice-bin or *-bin) runs faster than his built-from-source firefox. Usually chan's gurus answer that upstream packagers use all the possible compiler optimizations (CFLAGS LDFLAGS etc.) for the given package, while the average gentoo users keeps a set of system wide very safe optimizations that are good for most packages, but not the best for every particolar package. Is that statement correct? === TopperH === I've always felt the compiled openoffice faster than the binary one, but if it is not the case portage also gives you the chance of establishing per-package optimisations on '/etc/portage/env/' or in the paludis bashrc, so if one user wants an particular app to go faster, he can research about the best way to build this one. This way, the user can keep the very safe optimisations for the rest of the system and some -unsafe optimisations- for the packages he want. It is more about choices... Sure, I've used per-package optimizations myself in some particular cases, but that's not the point. A package manteiner *should* know better than an average user which optimizations will tune better their own package. My question can be put like this: Do binary distro's per package optimiziations override the benefit of having arch specific optimiziations that gentoo allows? === TopperH === It does, but I am almost sure that most of the binary distro's package maintainers can't ship a package with hard optimisations because it will possibly work fine on his box but not in the user's box. There is where we heard histories about binary distros users compiling their apps to improve it's performance, possibly breaking their system at the same time. Gentoo maintainers *should* also know better than the users which optimisations can be given to the user for a package to build and work fine... Other case is when it represents a risk of having unstable apps, in that case dropping optimisations is necessary in order to have more stable apps. signature.asc Description: Esta parte del mensaje está firmada digitalmente
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 15:25:49 + (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote: Except that what you build and maintain isn't a distro, it's a single machine. Why? -- Neil Bothwick WinErr 01B: Illegal error - You are not allowed to get this error. Next time you will get a penalty for that. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gentoo at gmail.com writes: One *BIG* difference is when the GPUs on video cards are used as co-processors on systems. ATI and Nv are working on making general purpose C languages for programs to take advantage of the power of the GPU. Look for Gentoo to beat the other distros, by the very nature of how it compiles code for everything. http://funroll-loops.info/ According to your logic, Nvidia and ATI(AMD) are ricers? http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cg_toolkit.html http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15886 Or maybe the folks at CMU are ricers? http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cil/v-source.html Surely these folks at StonyBrook are ricers? http://www.ecsl.cs.sunysb.edu/fir/ Not to mention these folks at Stanford, http://novembertech.blogspot.com/2006/10/stanford-atis-gpu-can-calculate-much.html And all of these scientists are ricers? http://gpgpu.org/ I count myself proud to be among this company of ricers as you put it.. James
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 8:39, Alan McKinnon escribió: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 09:27:31 Christopher Walters wrote: I personally don't view Gentoo as a distro in the traditional sense. To me, it's a build system, an app - portage or paludis - and the devs that make cool input files for that app. Building a distro from scratch for embedded devices is a painful process if you don't have an automated build system. It's not quite a trivial exercise, but portage does make it a whole lot easier. That's mostly what I call a metadistro. A set of tools and instructions to build a proper distro that suits you, and maintain it. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
With unit processors approaching up to 128 Cores on a single GPU I can see why the guys at all those institutions want to put EL lights in their big hawking 4 card SLI rigs? That's like 1600 Cores on a single system, Even Blue Gene L only has Dual Core PowerPC 440's, whith AMD's 4870 having 800 SPU's on a single die, the X2 has two of them; oh and did we mention they are cheap? (Blue Gene cost 100 million, right now a 4870x2 is only $500). No they would never be useful for anything other then rendering bouncing bobbies! ;) On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 11:07 AM, James wirel...@tampabay.rr.com wrote: Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gentoo at gmail.com writes: One *BIG* difference is when the GPUs on video cards are used as co-processors on systems. ATI and Nv are working on making general purpose C languages for programs to take advantage of the power of the GPU. Look for Gentoo to beat the other distros, by the very nature of how it compiles code for everything. http://funroll-loops.info/ According to your logic, Nvidia and ATI(AMD) are ricers? http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cg_toolkit.html http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15886 Or maybe the folks at CMU are ricers? http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cil/v-source.html Surely these folks at StonyBrook are ricers? http://www.ecsl.cs.sunysb.edu/fir/ Not to mention these folks at Stanford, http://novembertech.blogspot.com/2006/10/stanford-atis-gpu-can-calculate-much.html And all of these scientists are ricers? http://gpgpu.org/ I count myself proud to be among this company of ricers as you put it.. James -- Hazen Valliant-Saunders IT/IS Consultant (613) 355-5977
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 2009-02-04, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 15:25:49 + (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote: Except that what you build and maintain isn't a distro, it's a single machine. Why? Do you distribute what you're building as a something for others to use to install Linux? I don't, and none of the other Gentoo users I know do. They're all building and maintaining installations on individual machines. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! My life is a patio at of fun! visi.com
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On 2009-02-04, James wirel...@tampabay.rr.com wrote: Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gentoo at gmail.com writes: One *BIG* difference is when the GPUs on video cards are used as co-processors on systems. ATI and Nv are working on making general purpose C languages for programs to take advantage of the power of the GPU. Look for Gentoo to beat the other distros, by the very nature of how it compiles code for everything. http://funroll-loops.info/ According to your logic, Nvidia and ATI(AMD) are ricers? http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cg_toolkit.html http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15886 Or maybe the folks at CMU are ricers? http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cil/v-source.html Surely these folks at StonyBrook are ricers? http://www.ecsl.cs.sunysb.edu/fir/ Not to mention these folks at Stanford, http://novembertech.blogspot.com/2006/10/stanford-atis-gpu-can-calculate-much.html And all of these scientists are ricers? http://gpgpu.org/ I count myself proud to be among this company of ricers as you put it.. And some of us count ourselves proud to be amongh the company of people who have a sense of humor. ;) -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! This PIZZA symbolizes at my COMPLETE EMOTIONAL visi.comRECOVERY!!
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Mittwoch 04 Februar 2009, Momesso Andrea wrote: On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 08:58:23AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 01:48:34 Nikos Chantziaras wrote: So all in all, I agree. Using Gentoo is nowadays not so much a matter of performance optimization but of better control of how to build the packages and the rolling release nature (I'm tired of major updates every 6 months in the majority of binary distros.) I also like the USE flags which let me chose how to build something and get rid of dependencies I don't need. Administrative features like dispatch-conf are also very useful. This is the main benefit of Gentoo for me. I have to use SuSE or RHEL at work for the database machines - Sybase will not support any other other distro - and the 1G+ base install from those distros drive me nuts. Contrast that with the DNS caches which run FreeBSD, the difference is about a factor of 5 if not more. I also get sick and tired of installing postfix on a database machine purely to send nagios alerts, and watching the distro helpfully want to pull in PostgreSQL, MySQL, LDAP, SASL, Courier and some fancy MTA-switcher thingy. All because the maintainer enables those features and now I gotta have them. No thanks. Rather give me USE so I say what goes on the box. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com Often on gentoo related IRC chanels comes someone who asks why his firefox-bin (or openoffice-bin or *-bin) runs faster than his built-from-source firefox. Usually chan's gurus answer that upstream packagers use all the possible compiler optimizations (CFLAGS LDFLAGS etc.) for the given package, while the average gentoo users keeps a set of system wide very safe optimizations that are good for most packages, but not the best for every particolar package. Is that statement correct? partly. Gentoo CFLAGS don't replace the ones already there. Except stuff like OX where the package has something like O99 set (mplayer, hello) and you set O2 or Os. O99 = O3. But you shouldn't see any difference.
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Jesús Guerrero wrote: [...] A big big advantage is that besides the huge number of packages that we have, we also have dozens of overlays. [...] and some of them are really bug. QFT ;)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 16:01:19 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: If I wanted a learn Unix distro, I would be using Slackware :P s/Slackware/Linux From Scratch/ That just teaches you to read and repeat the same commands over and over. You learn about Linux by administering it, not installing it. -- Neil Bothwick By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 16:19:17 + (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote: Except that what you build and maintain isn't a distro, it's a single machine. Why? Do you distribute what you're building as a something for others to use to install Linux? I don't, and none of the other Gentoo users I know do. They're all building and maintaining installations on individual machines. It doesn't have to be for others. What about someone maintaining a network of machines? -- Neil Bothwick EMail - garbage at the speed of light. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Wednesday 04 February 2009 15:31:26 Momesso Andrea wrote: My question can be put like this: Do binary distro's per package optimiziations override the benefit of having arch specific optimiziations that gentoo allows? That can only be answered with valid benchmarks on paper in front of you. Have you performed valid benchmark tests? -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
Hazen Valliant-Saunders hazenvs at gmail.com writes: No they would never be useful for anything other then rendering bouncing bobbies! ;) Bouncing bobbies? Sound like a fraternity game for new recruits... So Searching and Sorting, are documented to orders of magnitude faster on GPU (SIMD) machines. Are those 'bouncing bobbies' algorithms that form much of our software foundation? common, How could you look at video or play video games without the GPU. It's opening up and going mainstream. Gentoo is naturally positioned to be the distro of choice. Watch, wait and learn. James
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 03:59:44PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 15:31:26 Momesso Andrea wrote: My question can be put like this: Do binary distro's per package optimiziations override the benefit of having arch specific optimiziations that gentoo allows? That can only be answered with valid benchmarks on paper in front of you. Have you performed valid benchmark tests? Nope, if I had there would have been no reason to ask... :) === TopperH === pgpbhLQnjMuRe.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 7:17, Grant Edwards escribió: On 2009-02-04, James wirel...@tampabay.rr.com wrote: Grant Edwards grante at visi.com writes: Whenever I see a write-up of Gentoo, it's described as a system similar to BSD ports where you build packages from source. The main benefit claimed for this approach is that you get better performance because all executables are optimized for exactly the right instruction set. is practically nil in real-world usage. Not true. You can eliminate many non-essential portions of a compiled program, via use flag and the freedom you get to select software, as opposed to other distros. Smaller executables are usually always faster. [...] But that wasn't what I was talking about, and AFAICT that's not what reviewers are talking about when they talk about adjusting compiler flags to optimize performance. They seem to be talking about building for Athlon instead of P4 (or vice-versa). Perhaps I've always completely misunderstood the articles I've read, and they were indeed talking about USE flags that control options passed to configure and not about things like gcc's -march and -O options. USe flags can be used for anything. Note that ebuilds are ultimately bash scripts. And USE flags are just that: f-l-a-g-s. Flags are used in a script to control things that can be run -or not- depending on a condition, things like if in amd64 do this, if not, if hardened do that, if yes and hardened to anything else... That includes things like activating concrete portions of arch dependent code or a patch, things like passing a simple option to add or remove a dependency, and any other things that you could do manually on a shell. It can of course be used as well to adjust CFLAGS and other things depending on the architecture or whatever condition you want. And even more, they can be used to filter CFLAGS that the developers know that are harmful (and that's a big part of the portage stability, because in the past users used to shot themselves on the feet by adding a 20 lines long CFLAGS declaration into their make.conf's. Note that reviewers usually test a thing for 2 days, and then they think they are qualified to talk about whatever thing. Some times, these reviews are useless for this reason. They only scratch the surface, giving a bad impression or just a poor one. Note that I said some times, though I think that most times is potentially a more correct qualifier. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 14:19, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Sebastián Magrà wrote: Also, Gentoo is a great school. If you want to learn how a Linux system works, and really want to learn about Unix systems, then Gentoo is the best for you. I don't get that argument. I didn't learn how Linux or Unix works with Gentoo. I didn't even find my prior knowledge of Unix and Linux of much use either. Typing emerge package and dispatch-conf doesn't offer me much knowledge. It's as simple as Debian in this regard. If I wanted a learn Unix distro, I would be using Slackware :P Gentoo forces you to use linux in the sense that you need to do all the work by yourself to install it. What you describe is just the regular update/install process, which is simple enough as you said. But installing the OS is another thing. Not too difficult, but without a doubt you need to know or learn the basics of linux to be able to handle it. Most distros just require that you put the cd in the tray and press next, then you appear into a kde or gnome desktop. In Gentoo the installation is manual and you need to deal with a lot of basic stuff. For an experienced user, to install Gentoo is a piece of cake, no doubt. Also, note that he said linux, and not unix. If you want to learn Unix, then slackware is no more Unix-like than gentoo, it might be even less. For a unix-like OS look into solaris or any bsd flavor instead. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 16:25, Grant Edwards escribió: On 2009-02-04, Jes?s Guerrero i92gu...@terra.es wrote: El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 8:39, Alan McKinnon escribi?: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 09:27:31 Christopher Walters wrote: I personally don't view Gentoo as a distro in the traditional sense. To me, it's a build system, an app - portage or paludis - and the devs that make cool input files for that app. Building a distro from scratch for embedded devices is a painful process if you don't have an automated build system. It's not quite a trivial exercise, but portage does make it a whole lot easier. That's mostly what I call a metadistro. A set of tools and instructions to build a proper distro that suits you, and maintain it. Except that what you build and maintain isn't a distro, it's a single machine. That I only know ;) It's up to you if you reuse the distro on a second machine or on a whole cluster. And certainly, Gentoo provide the means to reutilize whatever you compiled and configured on many machines, like with catalyst and the newer metro tool from drobbins. -- Jesús Guerrero
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Jesús Guerrero wrote: El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 14:19, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Sebastián Magrà wrote: Also, Gentoo is a great school. If you want to learn how a Linux system works, and really want to learn about Unix systems, then Gentoo is the best for you. I don't get that argument. I didn't learn how Linux or Unix works with Gentoo. I didn't even find my prior knowledge of Unix and Linux of much use either. Typing emerge package and dispatch-conf doesn't offer me much knowledge. It's as simple as Debian in this regard. If I wanted a learn Unix distro, I would be using Slackware :P Gentoo forces you to use linux in the sense that you need to do all the work by yourself to install it. What you describe is just the regular update/install process, which is simple enough as you said. It was very easy for me. The first I came in tough with Gentoo was with the 2007 DVD. I booted, double clicked the installer icon, clicked next a few times with checking some tickboxes too, and then emerged -e system and world and the packages I need. After that I was asking myself where the difficulty lies many people refer to when it comes to installing Gentoo. Seriously, I didn't learn anything. Maybe CLFAGS and USE flags.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 17:19, Grant Edwards escribió: On 2009-02-04, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 15:25:49 + (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote: Except that what you build and maintain isn't a distro, it's a single machine. Why? Do you distribute what you're building as a something for others to use to install Linux? I don't, and none of the other Gentoo users I know do. They're all building and maintaining installations on individual machines. Not true at all. Lost of uses do stage4 and stage5 stuff to deploy them in lots of places. Even the official stage3 have been built using Gentoo of course, and the livecds using the Gentoo tools and catalyst. So, as you see, some of the stuff created with this metadistro is deployed in thosands of machines. Oh, and don't forget about the drobbins stuff in funtoo, which is also built using to a lesser degree the Gentoo stuff. There are some other projects that build a distro starting from a Gentoo base which could fit better in your concept of what a distro is, like vidalinux or sabayon. But even if that was the case, that doesn't change the fact that you are building your own distro using the Gentoo tools. A linux distribution is not called so because it's distributed world wide. A linux distribution is defined as a linux kernel with some userland tools. Even if it's just a kernel with vi on a floppy. So, gentoo is a metadistro that you use to build a distro. Even if the only consumer for that distro is going to be you. It's like writing songs. They are songs, even if no one ever hear them but you and your parents, or your girlfriend, or whomever. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 18:48, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Jesús Guerrero wrote: El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 14:19, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Sebastián Magrà wrote: Also, Gentoo is a great school. If you want to learn how a Linux system works, and really want to learn about Unix systems, then Gentoo is the best for you. I don't get that argument. I didn't learn how Linux or Unix works with Gentoo. I didn't even find my prior knowledge of Unix and Linux of much use either. Typing emerge package and dispatch-conf doesn't offer me much knowledge. It's as simple as Debian in this regard. If I wanted a learn Unix distro, I would be using Slackware :P Gentoo forces you to use linux in the sense that you need to do all the work by yourself to install it. What you describe is just the regular update/install process, which is simple enough as you said. It was very easy for me. The first I came in tough with Gentoo was with the 2007 DVD. I booted, double clicked the installer icon, clicked next a few times with checking some tickboxes too, and then emerged -e system and world and the packages I need. After that I was asking myself where the difficulty lies many people refer to when it comes to installing Gentoo. Seriously, I didn't learn anything. Maybe CLFAGS and USE flags. You used the installer. Which should never be used because it's buggy and crappy, it has caused lots of problems, and for me it spoils the whole gentoo thing because lots of newcomers that use it have nothing but problems. In addition, they don't learn the basic linux stuff we were talking about, and hence, they have problems administering their machines, dealing with packages, mixing software branches, creating overlays, configuring their systems and many more. Problems whose solution they wouldn't need to ask (spamming the lists and forums in the way) if they had used the handbook in first place. In my opinion that buggy livecd was in all sense a bad thing and should have never existed. Gentoo is installed by hand usually, following the handbook, and not clicking next. Once you read the whole handbook you can have an opinion if a new user would learn a thing or two by using it or not. A wouldn't have expected that a brave slacker would choose the graphical installer ;) -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 10:07 AM, James wirel...@tampabay.rr.com wrote: Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gentoo at gmail.com writes: One *BIG* difference is when the GPUs on video cards are used as co-processors on systems. ATI and Nv are working on making general purpose C languages for programs to take advantage of the power of the GPU. Look for Gentoo to beat the other distros, by the very nature of how it compiles code for everything. http://funroll-loops.info/ According to your logic, Nvidia and ATI(AMD) are ricers? http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cg_toolkit.html http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15886 Or maybe the folks at CMU are ricers? http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cil/v-source.html Surely these folks at StonyBrook are ricers? http://www.ecsl.cs.sunysb.edu/fir/ Not to mention these folks at Stanford, http://novembertech.blogspot.com/2006/10/stanford-atis-gpu-can-calculate-much.html And all of these scientists are ricers? http://gpgpu.org/ I count myself proud to be among this company of ricers as you put it.. James It's not my site... I was just putting it out there in case anyone hadn't seen it before. It's ld. I'm a happy Gentoo user for many years. :) Paul
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Wednesday 04 February 2009 19:48:27 Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Gentoo forces you to use linux in the sense that you need to do all the work by yourself to install it. What you describe is just the regular update/install process, which is simple enough as you said. It was very easy for me. The first I came in tough with Gentoo was with the 2007 DVD. I booted, double clicked the installer icon, clicked next a few times with checking some tickboxes too, and then emerged -e system and world and the packages I need. You should have been around in the days when stage1 was still supported. Now that was fun. For varying definitions of fun of course :-) -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Wednesday 04 February 2009 18:55:07 Momesso Andrea wrote: On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 03:59:44PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 15:31:26 Momesso Andrea wrote: My question can be put like this: Do binary distro's per package optimiziations override the benefit of having arch specific optimiziations that gentoo allows? That can only be answered with valid benchmarks on paper in front of you. Have you performed valid benchmark tests? Nope, if I had there would have been no reason to ask... :) Then your question is nonsensical and is best answered as: mu As so many others have stated, the mythical performance benefits of gentoo are no longer applicable in the main. When i386 was the standard optimization things were different, but no longer. The major benefit of Gentoo to most users is USE, not CFLAGS -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El mié, 04-02-2009 a las 22:24 +0200, Alan McKinnon escribió: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 19:48:27 Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Gentoo forces you to use linux in the sense that you need to do all the work by yourself to install it. What you describe is just the regular update/install process, which is simple enough as you said. It was very easy for me. The first I came in tough with Gentoo was with the 2007 DVD. I booted, double clicked the installer icon, clicked next a few times with checking some tickboxes too, and then emerged -e system and world and the packages I need. You should have been around in the days when stage1 was still supported. Now that was fun. For varying definitions of fun of course :-) The installation experience with the traditional method must be mandatory... That's why I think we are better now that GLI is deprecated... signature.asc Description: Esta parte del mensaje está firmada digitalmente
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Sebastián Magrí sebasma...@gmail.com wrote: El mié, 04-02-2009 a las 22:24 +0200, Alan McKinnon escribió: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 19:48:27 Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Gentoo forces you to use linux in the sense that you need to do all the work by yourself to install it. What you describe is just the regular update/install process, which is simple enough as you said. It was very easy for me. The first I came in tough with Gentoo was with the 2007 DVD. I booted, double clicked the installer icon, clicked next a few times with checking some tickboxes too, and then emerged -e system and world and the packages I need. You should have been around in the days when stage1 was still supported. Now that was fun. For varying definitions of fun of course :-) The installation experience with the traditional method must be mandatory... That's why I think we are better now that GLI is deprecated... I think my first attempt to install Gentoo was a stage 1, several years ago on a box with a network card not supported by the drivers on the Live CD... and of course the distfiles CD did not have the current versions since I was using a portage snapshot from that day. My printed install guide didn't help because i couldn't google when things didn't work the way it said they should work :) now that was a fun experience :) I, of course, realized it was fruitless and went stage2 instead... and did emerge -e world when it was all up running on the network. and the rest is history. I don't think I've ever seen the graphical installer for gentoo. I don't have a problem with a simple click here to have a working gentoo installation, I don't think installing an OS should be an educational experience necessarily, sometimes if you already know how Gentoo works you just want to get it over with. Of course if gentoo stores certain configs in unique places compared to other distros, and the whole portage system in general, having some early exposure could make it easier once it's all up and running, but someone who can read the manual should have no trouble either way. (assuming the installer works)
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Sebastián Magrí wrote: The installation experience with the traditional method must be mandatory... That's why I think we are better now that GLI is deprecated... That's not good. It hurts Gentoo's popularity if it's not easy to install. But since there are not enough devs left for the GUI installer, not much that can be done. Gentoo isn't unsuitable for a GUI installer. It's stage 3, after all.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 7:07, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Sebastián Magrà wrote: The installation experience with the traditional method must be mandatory... That's why I think we are better now that GLI is deprecated... That's not good. It hurts Gentoo's popularity if it's not easy to install. But since there are not enough devs left for the GUI installer, not much that can be done. Gentoo isn't unsuitable for a GUI installer. It's stage 3, after all. That's definitely good. It never worked and newbies came to Gentoo thinking that it as some kind of uberfaster ubuntu thing that could be installed by just clicking next. Then they ran away yelling how bad this gentoo crap is that doesn't work at all unless you do a lot of black magic on the command line! Because I want full control over my system, but only clicking next. The OS should read my mind! If we clear that from the beginning so everyone knows what to expect from gentoo AND WHAT GENTOO EXPECTS FROM YOU then that problem is gone. Some would call this a nazi attidute of mine, I would say that you can't drive an f-17 unless you are willing to prepare yourself to do so before. It's called realism. You need to learn before you can do. Even a child can understand that. Someone would argue that's too hard to start, but that's why we have excellent docs, mailing lists, forums and irc, with a very high traffic and lots of friendly people giving away their time for free to help you. So, whomever can't find a way is either too lazy or too shy to talk to the people around. Gentoo was never meant to win a popularity price. I prefer to stay without nothing at all that to have the lot of problems that the installer has been creating during 3 years of existence. It harmed the gentoo popularity (if you like that argument) much more than the lack of a installer. Besides that, there's no easy way that you will understand Gentoo if you are not going to read the handbook. And even then, it takes time to become familiar with the way that USE flags truly work (and I mean to understand it, and not just do -qt -kde +gnome +gtk blindly that most users do (or the other way around) without even knowing what's behind the scene and how USE flags and ebuilds relate to each other. Let's assume it: you are building a distro. It's easy enough as it is. Usability is good, but the only way that Gentoo could get easier is just by taking features away and lowering the degree of control that the users have. There are enough easy-to-use distros. Let us, masochists, live in peace. We love pain, why do people care so much about what we do with our privacy? :P [it's a joke, in case anyone didn't notice] There have been several attempts to make a decent installer. They all failed miserably and got abandoned. Why? Because to tell the truth, no one has an authentic interest in the matter. The simple answer is most probably the right one. By the way, did I already said that anyone that can read can also install Gentoo? Lost of people with no experience with linux did it with very little or no help. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thursday 05 February 2009 09:28:50 Jesús Guerrero wrote: There are enough easy-to-use distros. Let us, masochists, live in peace. We love pain, why do people care so much about what we do with our privacy? :P [it's a joke, in case anyone didn't notice] There have been several attempts to make a decent installer. They all failed miserably and got abandoned. Why? Because to tell the truth, no one has an authentic interest in the matter. The simple answer is most probably the right one. To add to you (excellent) arguments: There is no GUI admin tool for gentoo. You drive this puppy on the command line with tools like emerge, equery, genlop, layman and q. That's how it works, we are all comfortable with this, and this is good. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Jesús Guerrero wrote: By the way, did I already said that anyone that can read can also install Gentoo? Lost of people with no experience with linux did it with very little or no help. I used Mandrake 9.1 for a little while then tried to upgrade to 9.2. I installed Gentoo the hard way and have learned a lot but still have a long way to go yet. Hard to teach a old dog new tricks but if I can do it with the little knowledge that I had at the time, anybody should give it a good, honest, put in the effort try. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 05 February 2009 09:28:50 Jesús Guerrero wrote: There are enough easy-to-use distros. Let us, masochists, live in peace. We love pain, why do people care so much about what we do with our privacy? :P [it's a joke, in case anyone didn't notice] There have been several attempts to make a decent installer. They all failed miserably and got abandoned. Why? Because to tell the truth, no one has an authentic interest in the matter. The simple answer is most probably the right one. To add to you (excellent) arguments: There is no GUI admin tool for gentoo. You drive this puppy on the command line with tools like emerge, equery, genlop, layman and q. That's how it works, we are all comfortable with this, and this is good. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Does porthole count? I use it sometimes and it is well all right. I miss etcat myself. Just as I was starting to get used to it, it disappeared. Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
Grant Edwards wrote: Whenever I see a write-up of Gentoo, it's describe as a system similar to BSD ports where you build packages from source. The main benefit claimed for this approach is that you get better performance because all executables are optimized for exactly the right instruction set. Where did that bit of apocrypha come from, and why is it parroted by so many people? AFAICT, the performance benefit due to compiler optimization is practically nil in real-world usage. I get a bit of a performance boost in some corner cases, like encoding videos with x264. But these small stand-alone programs can be compiled from source with custom optimization options easily even in binary distros. So all in all, I agree. Using Gentoo is nowadays not so much a matter of performance optimization but of better control of how to build the packages and the rolling release nature (I'm tired of major updates every 6 months in the majority of binary distros.) I also like the USE flags which let me chose how to build something and get rid of dependencies I don't need. Administrative features like dispatch-conf are also very useful. A downside is that you'll need fast machines to comfortably build packages. I wouldn't use it on my Pentium 3 800Mhz for example. That would take ages to compile system/world with recent GCC versions. I guess GCC was much faster in the 2.x versions back then?
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
Grant Edwards grante at visi.com writes: Whenever I see a write-up of Gentoo, it's describe as a system similar to BSD ports where you build packages from source. The main benefit claimed for this approach is that you get better performance because all executables are optimized for exactly the right instruction set. is practically nil in real-world usage. Not true. You can eliminate many non-essential portions of a compiled program, via use flag and the freedom you get to select software, as opposed to other distros. Smaller executables are usually always faster. One *BIG* difference is when the GPUs on video cards are used as co-processors on systems. ATI and Nv are working on making general purpose C languages for programs to take advantage of the power of the GPU. Look for Gentoo to beat the other distros, by the very nature of how it compiles code for everything. It's an approaching revolution, and thats is where AMD is going to slaughter Intel.. Bet on Gentoo, in this area, smoking even Microsoft! Cheers, James
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On 2009-02-04, James wirel...@tampabay.rr.com wrote: Grant Edwards grante at visi.com writes: Whenever I see a write-up of Gentoo, it's described as a system similar to BSD ports where you build packages from source. The main benefit claimed for this approach is that you get better performance because all executables are optimized for exactly the right instruction set. is practically nil in real-world usage. Not true. You can eliminate many non-essential portions of a compiled program, via use flag and the freedom you get to select software, as opposed to other distros. Smaller executables are usually always faster. You're right, that's another big advantage: you can control what features get included/enabled in an application. Leaving out features you don't use makes a big difference in many applications load/startup times and library dependancies. For example, leaving out the Gnome and/or KDE support in some apps makes a pretty big difference. If you only use mutt with mbox formatted mailboxes, you can leave out imap, ssl, pop, and maildir support. But that wasn't what I was talking about, and AFAICT that's not what reviewers are talking about when they talk about adjusting compiler flags to optimize performance. They seem to be talking about building for Athlon instead of P4 (or vice-versa). Perhaps I've always completely misunderstood the articles I've read, and they were indeed talking about USE flags that control options passed to configure and not about things like gcc's -march and -O options. One *BIG* difference is when the GPUs on video cards are used as co-processors on systems. ATI and Nv are working on making general purpose C languages for programs to take advantage of the power of the GPU. Look for Gentoo to beat the other distros, by the very nature of how it compiles code for everything. That would indeed be interesting. -- Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Wednesday 04 February 2009 01:48:34 Nikos Chantziaras wrote: So all in all, I agree. Using Gentoo is nowadays not so much a matter of performance optimization but of better control of how to build the packages and the rolling release nature (I'm tired of major updates every 6 months in the majority of binary distros.) I also like the USE flags which let me chose how to build something and get rid of dependencies I don't need. Administrative features like dispatch-conf are also very useful. This is the main benefit of Gentoo for me. I have to use SuSE or RHEL at work for the database machines - Sybase will not support any other other distro - and the 1G+ base install from those distros drive me nuts. Contrast that with the DNS caches which run FreeBSD, the difference is about a factor of 5 if not more. I also get sick and tired of installing postfix on a database machine purely to send nagios alerts, and watching the distro helpfully want to pull in PostgreSQL, MySQL, LDAP, SASL, Courier and some fancy MTA-switcher thingy. All because the maintainer enables those features and now I gotta have them. No thanks. Rather give me USE so I say what goes on the box. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 01:48:34 Nikos Chantziaras wrote: So all in all, I agree. Using Gentoo is nowadays not so much a matter of performance optimization but of better control of how to build the snip I also get sick and tired of installing postfix on a database machine purely to send nagios alerts, and watching the distro helpfully want to pull in PostgreSQL, MySQL, LDAP, SASL, Courier and some fancy MTA-switcher thingy. All because the maintainer enables those features and now I gotta have them. No thanks. Rather give me USE so I say what goes on the box. I'd have to agree. The main advantage of Gentoo over binary distributions is that it is a great deal more configurable than any of the major binary distributions. *I* choose, through USE flags, what I want to be pulled in, compiled and merged. I have tried Debian, *BSD, Ubuntu, SuSE, RedHat, Fedora Core, and others. I have found them to be bloated and slower, compared to Gentoo (any time you have to pull in over 500 binary packages to install a single package, there is definite bloat). I will mention that the performance optimizations for Gentoo mainly lie in the kernel configuration (the binary distributions compile just about everything you can imagine into their kernels), and in fine tuning the USE flags, so you you don't pull in anything you neither want nor need, thus limiting bloat. JMHO. Regards, Chris -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJJiUNdAAoJEIAhA8M9p9DApqoP/0HN0uJHfbjQ63yq0lwubW6k NqLrchH9/xzczxuK2Vj/cat7xtxK4BdDHq92Hur5M+zj2qd3sOIroVxQLNp/K6Qo gy8efsI5HGoWSFLhLdXJp3xuncD5EL0kERFqQ0TSa9ugRVK2b0M2dukMQ08D5lMg 0lBLa5kZKnaYy7QJhAAwRMgHjkr/tIDn2KcPMaC39xwcxWh/iDKa8kVODYsmt6gX yvTuaLJMpUWLhAYAf9tWSo7zE29wNRoBQCE0K8m1A25hf+dZ5+Iw+poM7qAPkssE eD/FDqyl21LfpILQgp8SwqXOKNnVZ8sU/fRihlsixYfA2UDNtscjk6DmNRfq8r5L UrhcU3BFCExu5Yg180Q3G8WcmCs1WgE9tEY95DTyuE7p4KH9fkIi/fUMSSnLdYmP NCO75iq+HTOFImMHdsaYP5l4QJp5ktVJzyxzEZKo3lbkiKODRovj8IQOkzltGgIS rbfhbiyTG0xAbK3IlhzR+tH4ncYyNWOTql+bbXgD35P4awolR/zWVaTSsiCwDsQg XWfoN/J+XoasjJd363PpwHCFe8G+4dM75dUQkri6lgMcRrrVeLCpNdr5ae3AXEMb CHRMZt9OlTaam6VjQGGTDahWoU8dFIy4GYLF2bMaOnU0VrPOu/ENoEjECXm4mjiq OcwGvpSdLX6Mvan0iX9l =vtJv -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Wednesday 04 February 2009 09:27:31 Christopher Walters wrote: I will mention that the performance optimizations for Gentoo mainly lie in the kernel configuration (the binary distributions compile just about everything you can imagine into their kernels), and in fine tuning the USE flags, so you you don't pull in anything you neither want nor need, thus limiting bloat. Gentoo is also great if you want to run it on any out-of-the-ordinary hardware, or if you have niche needs. I personally don't view Gentoo as a distro in the traditional sense. To me, it's a build system, an app - portage or paludis - and the devs that make cool input files for that app. Building a distro from scratch for embedded devices is a painful process if you don't have an automated build system. It's not quite a trivial exercise, but portage does make it a whole lot easier. With overlays and ebuilds I write myself, I get all the benefits of compiling from source, plus all the benefits of a sane package manager, without any of the downsides of trying to combine them. I've tried to include third party rpm repos on RHEL, it was a disaster. 4 years later I still can't make head or tail of what the heck urpmi wants me to do. But an ebuild, well that's just a simple bash include file. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
