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Gentoo goes Binary

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Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#251

Post by pxc »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #209
connorgutman wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I was being overly harsh. That being said, there is a certain philosophy of non-intervention which gives Gentoo a sense of freedom that other distributions lack. It’s not only about diverse support, it’s about allowing the user to choose upfront. Arch does this as well (mostly). It’s easy to choose your own bootloader, WM/DE, audio server, and etc. I just think that Gentoo takes this philosophy one step furth…

> there is a certain philosophy of non-intervention which gives Gentoo a sense of freedom that other distributions lack. While I was untangling update dependencies one day I had it uninstall libc. There was a big warning advising me not to do that, but it was allowed. Everything broke immediately, of course, but I recovered the system and the dependency problem really had been fixed, too! This gave me a permanent pos…

Debian and Ubuntu will let you do this, too. Pop_OS may have patched it out downstream, adding an additional barrier before you can uninstall 'essential' packages since Linus Sebastian unintentionally blew away X11 (in the face of a very dire warning, which he ignored) on camera.

Idr how this is handled on RPM-based distros, but on Debian it is part of the standard procedure for crossgrades.

(More impressive than this sort of flexibility, imo, is how NixOS and GuixSD sidestep this problem altogether.)

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#253

Post by [deleted] »

voidfunc wrote: post #181
moepstar wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to use Gentoo 20+ years ago; installing it was eye-opening. It helped me enormously to understand how Linux works. Same! Starting with a Stage 1 install was what got me (with some guidance of a friend and the perfect Gentoo Wiki) into Linux circa 2004 (IIRC). Now, some 20 years later, i much prefer to have not to deal with something as... dare i say.. fragile... anymore. Yes, much of the breakage i dealt wit…

The Gentoo to Arch pipeline is pretty real. I did Stage 1's as well around the same time but eventually got tired of doing that every so often or fighting Portage and switched to Arch. Then I got tired of dealing with Arch... and ended up on Fedora. I always liked Gentoo and Arch, but I don't have the energy to put up maintaining them anymore.

[deleted]

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#254

Post by gary_0 »

withinboredom wrote: post #248
bdavbdav wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a crossover point though where the effort to support it is larger than the supply of newer hardware coming through. With the last x86 deaktop chips coming out in ~2006, I would bet there are very few viable use cases left. That’s 6 3-year cycles past.

I have seen many Windows 98 machines in the last ten years. I saw one just last week connected to a giant robot in a factory. So, if you are looking for use-cases for 32-bit, there's the fact that some giant machinery relies on computers that will never be updated. Last I heard, even the last BlockBuster in the US is still using old PC's to run their DOS software. They harvest parts from old computers sold on e-bay.…

You wouldn't really want to mess with the OS in cases like that, though. If you did, a lot of the OS-included drivers would probably not work due to removal or bit-rot, or 3rd-party drivers might not work with a much newer OS. The only reason you might want to upgrade is if the machine is Internet-connected, in which case you're probably just going to need a whole new box (if you need the old software, you'd probably resort to a VM), otherwise the new OS will run too slow (especially with things like new crypto/security). Or you can keep the old box but put it behind nginx or whatever.

Point of sale or industrial control computers are kind of just an offshoot of "embedded"; not something you need (or want) to run a browser or a modern GUI[0] on. You stick it in a cabinet or a kiosk and hopefully you don't have to think about it again.

[0] sadly also a browser

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#255

Post by theamk »

gavinhoward wrote: post #250
theamk wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have machines which "just work"? Not a daily driver machine or server that you mess with every week, but something you set up long time ago and that has been working even since. Something that you may only log in few timers per year, if that. I stopped using Gentoo when I got my made my first "production" system: I made it, people started using it, and it was "done" - as in, there were no more any reasons to l…

I use mine daily and update them about weekly, yes. Leaving a Gentoo system is, as you say, not something you should do. I'm lucky that I don't have that.

Well, here is your answer why so few people use gentoo.

I can count at least 6 linux computers in my household (this includes stuff like work laptop(s), fileserver, my family member's PCs, and that raspberry pi which only acts as a camera server for my 3D printer). And the life is just easier if all of them run the same, or at least very similar, systems.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#256

Post by gryn »

starttoaster wrote: post #238
paldepind2 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say systemd is the "one place" where Arch has an opinion. Quite the opposite, Arch is just as opinionated as the average distro. On Void Linux you can choose between musl and glibc, on Arch you're forced to use glibc. On Gentoo you can choose your init system, on Arch you're forced to use systems. On Debian you can have `/bin/sh` be any POSIX shell, on Arch you're forced to have it be Bash. On nixOS you ca…

My experience using Arch has very much been "it's just like all the other distros, except now you have at least 4 package managers to go through if you want to install any particular thing and you will almost certainly need to install utilities that convert packages from other package managers over to PKGBUILD." Other than that, it's felt very similar to just using something like Debian. Which is fine, and Debian is…

Your experience sounds weird. Reading it remind me of people who come from programming paradigm X try paradigm Y and only use methods from X only to conclude that Y sucks.

Why would you use 4 package managers to do 1 thing ? Most people who use arch use 1 and it does the job. All of them are built around pacman + smth for AUR packages. Personally I use pacui. Why would you convert package from other distro, if another distro has it then it most certainly exists in the AUR, never once had to touch another distro's packaging.

I don't know about the "the modder's distro" part but I personally had much less headaches with it than I had with Ubuntu,fedora,debian, and CentOS.

The only thing that sucks for me (regardless of distro) is Nvidia updates.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#257

Post by gavinhoward »

theamk wrote: post #255
gavinhoward wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use mine daily and update them about weekly, yes. Leaving a Gentoo system is, as you say, not something you should do. I'm lucky that I don't have that.

Well, here is your answer why so few people use gentoo. I can count at least 6 linux computers in my household (this includes stuff like work laptop(s), fileserver, my family member's PCs, and that raspberry pi which only acts as a camera server for my 3D printer). And the life is just easier if all of them run the same, or at least very similar, systems.

Oh, I know people don't, and shouldn't, use Gentoo.

What's weird to me is that it works for me. And it's weird because I see how Gentoo is just not a good fit for most things, so fitting it feels weird.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#258

Post by BenjiWiebe »

theamk wrote: post #245
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.

Do you have machines which "just work"? Not a daily driver machine or server that you mess with every week, but something you set up long time ago and that has been working even since. Something that you may only log in few timers per year, if that. I stopped using Gentoo when I got my made my first "production" system: I made it, people started using it, and it was "done" - as in, there were no more any reasons to l…

Oddly enough, on my family's farm, we got a DeLaval voluntary milking system, i.e. milking robot. Very pricey piece of gear. And several of it's embedded computers for some reason run Gentoo.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#259

Post by nixgeek »

oniony wrote: post #237
voidfunc wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Gentoo to Arch pipeline is pretty real. I did Stage 1's as well around the same time but eventually got tired of doing that every so often or fighting Portage and switched to Arch. Then I got tired of dealing with Arch... and ended up on Fedora. I always liked Gentoo and Arch, but I don't have the energy to put up maintaining them anymore.

Arch is literally the easiest thing to maintain. I've been running it for over fifteen years, update maybe once a year at most and 99% of the time it's a case of running pacdiff and updating a handful of config files.

In 1998, Debian was a great option for SPARC and Alpha, and that’s really where I cut my teeth with Linux.

Around 2004, I was building Gentoo up from stage1 just like many other commenters.

For 2024 and personal stuff I’m back on Debian and it’s safe enough I pull security updates daily - entirely automated and no review on my part. It essentially never causes a problem. Updating once a year sounds terrifying to me given the rate of vulnerability discoveries of late.

As ever your mileage may vary and your systems aren’t my systems, but Debian truly is a wonderful OSS project and as of August 2023 it celebrated its 30th anniversary!

Gentoo going binary feels weird :) I’ve still got a soft spot for Gentoo and what it enabled me to do 15 years ago when I had more time for personal hacks.

Re: Gentoo goes Binary

#260

Post by airhangerf15 »

pabs3 wrote: post #247
connorgutman wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really the point I was trying to make. Gentoo still fully supports obscure architectures such as IA64 and PowerPC 32-bit while Debian dropped both back in 2018 and 2020. Hell, not only does Gentoo still support them but the handbooks are still updated regularly. When that unspecified point in the future comes knocking for 32-bit x86 Gentoo will continue to be a rock for fun devices like my Lenovo x60 with librebo…

The Linux kernel just deleted IA64, so that support won't last for long, unless Gentoo keeps ancient kernel versions? Debian still has unofficial ia64 and powerpc ports too.

It doesn't, but the kernel also isn't package managed, just the source. You can keep around the ebuilds for older kernels in an overlay, or someone might maintain an enthusiast overlay just for IA64 kernel support.
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