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Gentoo goes Binary

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Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#121

Post by dagw »

toyg wrote: post #22
iamgopal wrote: post #3

Years ago, somehow, I wasted hours and days of computer and my time, compiling and fine tuning my gentoo system, god knows why, when next day I anyway format it to install newly arrived Ubuntu cd.

When every ounce of power mattered, fine-tuning your OS made sense. Nowadays most people are swimming in CPU cores and gigabytes of ram and terabytes of solid-state memory, so fine-tuning is a waste of time (unless you play bleeding-edge games). But it wasn't always such.

When every ounce of power mattered, fine-tuning your OS made sense

I used to believe that and was a huge Gentoo user for years back when it was initially released. Then one day I benchmarked Gentoo and a default RedHat install on every work load I cared about, and everything was within the margin of error.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#122

Post by globular-toast »

tmoravec wrote: post #83
globular-toast wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heat my home. The difference between heating via compiling my kernel and heating via whatever heating you use is almost certainly negligible. But I get a custom built system out of it too. I don't cool my home, though.

The difference between a heat pump and resistive heating is certainly not negligible.

Well, even if everyone did have heat pumps, let's think about it a bit. I upgrade my system about once a week. I reckon on average it's about 1 hour of compiling per week but let's say 2 to be safe. That's no more than 1 kWh per week. A fridge-freezer will use that in a day. An electric oven will use that in 15 minutes. An electric car will use that travelling 3-4 miles. Most households use something like 30 kWh per day to heat. Even if a heat pump made that like 10 kWh it's still a drop in the ocean. And don't forget the resulting binaries run slightly more efficiently because they are compiled specifically for my CPU, plus I enjoy it.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#123

Post by trelane »

adrian_b wrote: post #103
bee_rider wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next you’ll tell me there are optimization settings other than -mtune=native

I am not sure what you mean, but in the chrooted environment where you compile for a distinct machine you obviously use configuration options, including compiler flags, appropriate for the target computer, not for the host computer, so "-mtune=native" cannot be used. My point is that you do not need to setup a binrepo or any other complication like this. You can install easily Gentoo on a very weak computer, by perfo…

> not for the host computer, so "mtune=native" cannot be used.

Right, I am sure they intended it to be absurd in an amusing way.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#124

Post by Zambyte »

nottorp wrote: post #50
toyg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When every ounce of power mattered, fine-tuning your OS made sense. Nowadays most people are swimming in CPU cores and gigabytes of ram and terabytes of solid-state memory, so fine-tuning is a waste of time (unless you play bleeding-edge games). But it wasn't always such.

> so fine-tuning is a waste of time (unless you play bleeding-edge games). Unless you run javascript 'applications'. Games are already optimized.

> Games are already optimized.

What AAA titles have you played around launch in the last 5 or so years?

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#126

Post by zamadatix »

hylaride wrote: post #107
iamgopal wrote: post #3

Years ago, somehow, I wasted hours and days of computer and my time, compiling and fine tuning my gentoo system, god knows why, when next day I anyway format it to install newly arrived Ubuntu cd.

Same, but I learned so much while doing it. Eventually I got tired and moved to an arch and got most of the same without always fighting broken packages. But I still use the knowledge I gained dealing with random low-level issues when they crop up.

I had a similar experience with the Gentoos/Arches of the world. I'd never use Gentoo or a Gentoo-like as my primary OS for anything, likely for the rest of my life, but it still ended up being one of the most valuable operating systems for me to spend some time on.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#127

Post by Zambyte »

toyg wrote: post #22
iamgopal wrote: post #3

Years ago, somehow, I wasted hours and days of computer and my time, compiling and fine tuning my gentoo system, god knows why, when next day I anyway format it to install newly arrived Ubuntu cd.

When every ounce of power mattered, fine-tuning your OS made sense. Nowadays most people are swimming in CPU cores and gigabytes of ram and terabytes of solid-state memory, so fine-tuning is a waste of time (unless you play bleeding-edge games). But it wasn't always such.

I think the biggest case where Gentoo still makes sense is when you have a large fleet of identical machines. In that case, the effort put into tuning your installation will be multiplied across the number of machines it's applied to.

For a single machine home install, the biggest value Gentoo has to offer is the learning experience. I ran it for about a year like 4 years ago, and I definitely learned a lot in that time. Hopped around a bit and I've since landed on GNU Guix, and I'm probably set for life now in the GNU world.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#128

Post by goku12 »

the_af wrote: post #113
gavinhoward wrote: post #86

Wow...I feel weird. A lot of the comments are saying that they tried Gentoo or used to use it. And here I am, using it as my daily driver and server workhorse. I wonder what makes me different such that Gentoo is the best for me. And I am not going to enable binary packages.

> I wonder what makes me different such that Gentoo is the best for me. Ok, I'll bite: why is Gentoo best for you? (I'm not going to try to refute any of your statements should you reply, I promise. I'm genuinely curious.) I'll offer my own experience why Gentoo is not for me: I don't run my own server, and at work I use servers in the cloud (Ubuntu based, I guess? Or AWS-flavored). No compiling any kernels or whatno…

Not the same person you're replying to. But I have some ideas to share.

> Another common claim I found to be false (in my case): "I learned so much configuring Gentoo!"

This isn't true for everyone. My general plan with anything is to follow the script exactly at the beginning. If that works out, start making incremental changes until something breaks or until you're satisfied. Gentoo taught me a lot of things that way - especially the kernel compilation (which is important to me anyway, due to my profession). Before this, it was Arch. And a regular Linux distro before that. All of them taught me something with the same strategy during the initial phase. Eventually the struggle gives way to familiarity and learning rate starts to fade.

> Well, no. I mostly followed the recipes like almost everybody else, setting flags and touching config files I didn't really understand

I don't know about anyone else, but Gentoo config files were the easiest for me to understand. I feel very much in control with them. The Gentoo wiki doesn't just give you recipes - they always tell you the exact reason for a configuration or flag (This is true for Arch as well). I have also created packages for myself - so I have a reasonable understanding of USE flags. I've been thinking about migrating away from Gentoo - but I like USE flags so much. Sometimes they allow you to access application features that are not available on other distros (because they have to choose build flags that suit the majority).

Something that helps me with this level of control over the configuration is that I maintain them as literate org-mode files with explanations and even diagrams at times. This might seem like too much work for a desktop system. And often that is true. But this workflow suits my interests and profession really well. In fact, at least 3 custom programs are part of my desktop - configuring Gentoo to my liking is the least difficult part in it.

> Ok, I'll bite: why is Gentoo best for you?

Finally. I said this in another comment. The most attractive part of Gentoo for me isn't the custom compiled kernel or software (I use flatpaks for most desktop apps). It's the package management system. Portage is by far the best system I've experienced for creating system packages.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#129

Post by Brian_K_White »

iamgopal wrote: post #3

Years ago, somehow, I wasted hours and days of computer and my time, compiling and fine tuning my gentoo system, god knows why, when next day I anyway format it to install newly arrived Ubuntu cd.

Everyone please realize that just because you did something and no longer do that thing does not mean it was wrong to have done that thing.

All of us who at one point compiled our own kernels and now no longer do, are the killers that we are partly because we did things like that at least for a bit. It only makes sense not to now, after having done it.

It's not true to suggest (or to read these stories as a new bystander and come away with the idea that) "if I were smarter I never would have wasted time on that"

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