emerge life
For the past week I’ve been working on getting Gentoo to work on my Dell 600m. All I can say is that I’ve never had so much fun with linux since the first time I installed Slackware about nine years back!
For the past year and a half I’ve been using Windows XP almost exclusively, all the while lusting for a Mac OS X computer, but never really being able to afford one. This was mainly because I was too lazy to setup linux so that everything was streamlined (procmail, fetchmail, fonts, etc etc…). Another reason is that Windows XP really is pretty stable (I have had months of uptime!)
Now I finally decided to give gentoo a shot. It is supposed to be more raw than slackware and debian, and had always caught my attention. The installation was took about a day, but that was mainly unattended. For the uninitiated, this is because gentoo compiles everything on the computer it is being installed on. This ensures best performance and no feature bloat. You simply decide what options you want to enable using the USE environment variable, and then start installing packages using the magical emerge command. It automatically resolves all dependencies, downloads the source code from the net, compiles, and installs the software!
Once you get the hang of it, it is really magical. You want to install firefox, for example; just type emerge mozilla-firefox. And the best of all, if you want to upgrade to the latest, greatest version of gentoo, simply type something like emerge sync; emerge -u world. This updates all the packages on your system to the latest. And it does this nicely in the background while you continue your work. No more re-installing from scratch, or even doing a traditional upgrade of the software - ever!
The next thing I realized is how much better Gnome is now. I’ve always been a KDE user, but Gnome has totally blown me away. It is kind of like the poor man’s Mac OS X 
That said, not everything works perfectly yet. I am still struggling to get the fonts just right. Suspend does not work on my laptop - ACPI support is still experimental. But its getting there…
Installation can take a long time - days of compiling on slow hardware. Tweaking the options can be hard for someone who is not already comfortable with linux. But for the brave, the rewards are amazing. Easily the best linux distribution. Perhaps even the best OS ever!
April 30th, 2004 at 7:27 am
Whats the current kernel version for gentoo ?
Any choices for kernel versions ?
I am still stuck with fedora/debian and pretty much
handmade stuff… cant schedule enough downtime.
I have a stupid toshiba laptop … none of the distros quite satisfied me in terms of ACPI, openoffice/staroffice and suspend support. Do provide some feedback if you make any significant breakthroughs in these areas.
April 30th, 2004 at 12:29 pm
There is a whole slew of chioces with gentoo. Look at the Gentoo Linux Kernel Guide for more info. I installed the gentoo-dev-sources series, which is 2.6.5 with a whole bunch of performance enhancing patches not available in the vanila kernel.
I think I have made some headway with ACPI. I think I got speedstep to kind of work, and also frequency scaling depending on whether AC power is connected or not. The suspend works in the sense that the system goes into power saving mode, but when I wake it up again, there is nothing on the LCD. I’ll post more on this later.
April 30th, 2004 at 10:53 pm
Ankit :
For the uninitiated, this is because gentoo compiles everything on the computer it is being installed on. This ensures best performance and no feature bloat.
Sayantan :
I have been exclusively on Linux for almost 2 years now. I have tried everything - Debian, Redhat, Fedora, SuSe, RedHat enterprise etc. etc. [mainly due to the fact that I am sys-admin in my research lab!]. I have “heard” a lot about the so-called efficiency which is obtained when compiling the software versus just installing the binaries. I have tried to investigate it to the extent that I have compiled KDE 3.x many times over with -O3 and all the compile switches suggested in newsgroups. [Mind you, gcc does have some _very_ aggressive compiling options !]. But frankly speaking, I have NOT been able to see a big difference in performance. Have you ? I would REALLY love to see some real proof of the performance gain [no, this is not a bait or a flame, just genuine curiosity !!!].
Ofcourse, I am not talking about comparing performance of debug builds with custom builds … but more like comparing the performance of Debian binaries w.r.t. compiled stuff. [I know for sure that Redhat binaries are definitely not optimal … I saw some of their KDE compile switches]. So far, I see that Debian does the best job distributing binaries…
But really is the “emerge” feature something new ? I don’t know about Gentoo, but this was available as apt-get in Debian initially. Since Debian has been around for quite sometime [and that its totally open source], I kinda don’t see anything new, apart from the fact that it forces compile on users.
April 30th, 2004 at 11:18 pm
Sayantan, you have some really good questions.
Yes, I have seen speedups when comparing gentoo with other distributions such as fedore, and suse. One of the main reasons behind this is the architecture flags. A binary that is to run on any x86 processor can not make use of features like sse2, mmx, 3dnow etc. The second important advantage is the “USE” flag. Many applications have gui support for both gnome and kde, for example. By saying USE=”-kde”, the app gets compiled without KDE support. See this for more info on the USE flags. See some performance benchmarks here.
I have never tried Debian myself - never been a big fan of a distribution that forces its users to call it GNU/Linux… Sure, Debian has had apt-get for ages. I am sure it is pretty good. I’ve just never tried it. My other problem with Debian is their strict “free-only” policy. If my linux distribution cannot provide me with the nvidia drivers that I need, I would rather use a different distribution!
The last thing about gentoo forcing people to compile all apps is completely wrong. You can install the complete gentoo system without having to compile a single file! Then wait for the next “release” (one every 3-5 months), and emerge the precompiled binaries again to upgrade! True, if you want to live on the cutting edge, you have to compile. But it is just as easy as any other install. It does everything automatically. Just takes a while…
The other really cool thing about gentoo is its community. I found a similar community behind Slackware. It is hard to explain what sets it apart, but it is something I never found with other distributions (yes, including Debian).
One last thing - I initially decided to install the firefox binary (”emerge mozilla-firefox-bin”) instead of compiling it. I used it for a while, and then re-emerged it using “emerge mozilla-firefox”, which forced a re-compile. Not only did I get a faster browser, I also get full anti-aliased fonts!!
April 30th, 2004 at 11:31 pm
I have been lusting for Gentoo for quite some time now. There was another distro before, with a similar concept, I think it was called Sorcerrer Linux or something of that sort.
My biggest problem:
1. Time Required
2. Continious Connectivity.
Is there some way I can first set up a mirror on the network and from where all the people can set up Gentoo on their machines. Is it possible for this mirror to be updated on a daily/weekly basis?
Looking for a cheap desktop in Hyderabad, so that I can ‘play’ around with stuff. For one year or so my laptop will have to be dedicated to WINDOWS only.
Cheers,
Dhar
May 1st, 2004 at 8:23 am
Dhar, You can set up a mirror and have all updates come from there. Howevever, I would recommend doing a Stage 3 install, and use the Universal LiveCD, and Packages CD to get the latest binary snapshot of everything (this is about a week old, so it is all fairly recent). Think of this as the traditional “release”. If you need to upgrade anything, you’ll have to emerge it. In that case, I would recommend a “emerge -fetchonly packagename” to download all the code. You can then do a “emerge packagename” even if you disconnect.
See here for the installation instructions.
May 1st, 2004 at 10:20 am
Ankit :
The second important advantage is the “USE” flag. Many applications have gui support for both gnome and kde, for example. By saying USE=”-kde”, the app gets compiled without KDE support.
Sayantan :
Maybe most applications don’t even use both supports ! C’mon, if you were writing an application with support for various different platforms, your branch of execution would be based on a ’switch-case’ statement, wouldn’t it ? Agreed, that by compiling in support for only one platform (or option) can save you wee-little bit of space, but given the very aggressive methods of the loading binaries, you can be almost sure that those parts of the binary are never even loaded by Linux.
I made an ignoramus statement of Gentoo forcing compile … sorry about that. But I should point out that Debian has a “non-free” branch too. Just that its not in the default debian tree. If you want non-free stuff, just add that apt-line in /etc/apt/sources.list and that’s it ! You can use it just like before ! The idea behind Debian is that people who just do a default install SHOULD NOT get some proprietary drivers and thus be free of any legal problems. I agree that Debian people can be very over-zealous at times, but the quality of the distribution really amazes me, so I stick with it !
Okay, I didn’t believe the performance numbers on the Gentoo site. First of all, they didn’t mention what kernel was running on both of the machines ! Secondly, Mozilla load times can vary lots depending on preferences ! For e.g. if my preferences file is on NFS, then whatever Mozilla tries to optimize on startup is lost, since NFS takes most of the time. I believe I’ve seen differences in start time depending on options like Javascript, plugins installed etc. etc.
Also, I don’t buy the idea of “prelinking”. Its essentially putting all the libraries in the executable. This has 2 main disadvantages :
1. Binary can be arbitrarily large,
2. Recompiling software when libraries get upgraded.
I believe that it was the 2nd option which really made shared libraries popular. Ofcourse, prelinking might work for individual desktops of enthusiasts, but I’m not sure about enterprise systems.
Even after saying so many bad things about Gentoo, I am thinking of actually trying it out
Seems interesting … afterall, If I can get just Mozilla pre-linked it might be worth it !
May 2nd, 2004 at 4:30 pm
Sayantan,
You make some really good points there. The support of different platforms only increases bloat, and only increases load time if the application is well written. But in certain cases, enabling special GUI support might involve loading themes, setting fonts, and doing all the stuff you are never going to use. It would also seriously slow the app if it was poorly written.
I think you’ve completely missed the thing about pre-linking. No one is advocating the use of pre-linking over shared libraries - it would be stupid in most cases. But what gentoo gives you is the option of enabling it either on a per-app basis, or through the entire system if you so wish. It is giving you more choice, thats it. If you dont like it, dont use it.
Another thing is that with slackware, redhat, etc., I found that almost all new sutff I installed was from compiling source myself. Either it was a new version of an application that did not have an official package yet, or it was a new app that wasnt popular enough. What gentoo gives you is a neat, and organized way of doing this. It gives you a way of doing pakcage management if compiling from source is something you do often anyways (which is true in my case!)
Anyways, to each his own. I would not recommend gentoo, or slackware, or even debian to a newbie. But if you are brave and like to have some fun, give them a shot. Each distribution has its own strong points and week points. But I think I’ve found my perfect distribution!
January 4th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
As mentioned previously, there is a whole slew of choices with Gentoo. Its programs, its bootup procedures, its kernel versions, its display managers (gdm, xdm, kdm …) are all choices. I have used Microsoft’s XP and MAC OS-X, and several variants to the Linux OS in my lifetime. I must say, Gentoo is by far the most advanced OS to assemble and install. It is somewhere along the lines of installing Sun’s Solaris on a SPARC chassis (a truely painful process). For the novice Linux user, I would say if the installation is a success before the first 5 tries, then you’re truely a whiz kid!
It is not a very install friendly OS, nor is it meant to be easy. However, once it is up and running it is like the shinning light at the end of the tunnel. So many cool things can be done with Gentoo, game servers, ssh server, VNC server, (basically you can make it any kind of server you want) and it is capable of running just about any Linux platform program out there. In my opinion, although Red Hat and Solaris are the only two trusted OS’s in the world, Gentoo Linux is definitely the wave of the future.
It’s free, the programs for it are free, and the updates and support are free! What else could you want from a secure OS? This is something Microsoft hasn’t even dreamed of doing. Not only do you have to pay nearly $200 for the Windows XP OS, but if you want to do anything with it like typing a resume, well then you have to pay more (like another $150 more for the MS Office Suite). What a rip off!! Gentoo and Open Office do the same thing for free!
If I had the choice now between Bill’s P.O.S. OS (Windows), or Gentoo…..well I’ll just say, I’d rather be compiling!! It blows Windows off the map.