really worth it's wreched inefficiency and terrible dependency management?

This is my first time messing with Gentoo, and I was simply amazed at how much longer it took it to fail at building the most basic environment than it takes my work-in-progress build system to do the same thing (albeit without the removal ability, as I was planning on having it migrate old configurations to new environments in lieu of reconstructing the environment)... and generally the lack of foresight evidenced by its design. Why does it, for example, download all of the portage headers (which takes a long time during which the processor is mostly idle blocked for network I/O), and then only upon completion of this reconstruct the cache?

I haven't actually gotten to the point of using the removal option on a running system, but is it anywhere near as unreliable as the install option? I made the decision to go with configuration migration as opposed to package removal in my own utility based on the understanding that managing the dependencies pre- and post- install for thousands of ever-changing packages would be unreasonably complex... I'd really like to know if they managed to handle that complexity, although intuition tells me that if it can't build a basic working environment from a release snapshot on a vanilla uniproc K7, there's no way they addressed the hard part of the problem correctly...

4/17/2006 12:09:48 AM

i've never had a problem w/ uninstalling something and i really like that feature a LOT as if you compile all software on your own, as you know, your system gets cluttered faster than windows

4/17/2006 12:11:33 AM

Changing stages seems to have made a big improvement in its ability to complete a build, but it's still pretty damn inefficient.

I'm guessing stage1 is intended for bootstrapping the stage itself, although I'm too lazy to actually read the docs to see. Not really sure why the fuck they don't mention that in the quick install guide or anywhere in the installation itself, seems like a pretty significant detail.

I remember why I quit using other peoples' linuxes now... if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself

4/17/2006 12:31:13 AM

i just do a stage 1 then compile everything else

the USE settings is a pretty big factor in getting your newly compiled software to be compatible with hardware and software you'll install.

4/17/2006 12:33:58 AM

Framebuffer consoles suck ass and should not be the default. I know they want to skeet skeet skeet their logo up on that shit but god damnit I don't like to be able to count newlines off as they are processed. If I wanted that 1980s-my-computer-can't-process-a-textual-interface-smoothly effect, I'd be installing NetBSD on that old Mac in the closet. GRR! ARG!

4/17/2006 12:52:00 AM

quit your bitching, you could always use slackware

4/17/2006 2:08:50 AM

I didn't realize that your use of the machine is installing packages EVERY DAY to warrant better performance out of this feature.

Just eat the inefficiency and forget about it.

4/17/2006 7:45:53 AM

Quote :

"I'm guessing stage1 is intended for bootstrapping the stage itself, although I'm too lazy to actually read the docs to see. Not really sure why the fuck they don't mention that in the quick install guide or anywhere in the installation itself, seems like a pretty significant detail."

While this was not the case in the past, installing from stage 1 and 2 is no longer supported (they are only used for internal testing and building now). The documents mention this but it might not be emphasized enough since you missed it.

As far as portage goes, basically Gentoo has rapidly outgrown portage and a complete rewrite has been underway for some time now. Obviously this does not help you currently. However, a rewrite of the cache has been backported to the 2.0 tree and is targetting to get into stable soon. It increases the speed by 35% on normal updates and by up to 65% on fresh ones. It is currently in the tree as 2.1 marked unstable.

4/17/2006 9:08:05 AM

^^ Being as I've already stated that one of my current projects is a package management / build utility, and considering that I have 4 physical machines and 3 virtual machines, plus another box in the works to serve as a VM server which will definitely result in an increase in the number of virtual machines... yes, I do install packages a lot, and it's hard for me to ignore the inefficiency when Gentoo takes something like 3 times as long to build mostly the same toolchain as my first implementation of a build system does.

^ Glad to know that improvements are in the works, at least. I'd contribute to the project if I didn't want to retain exclusive rights to my code and possibly capitalize on it at some point. That hippy information wants to be free shit doesn't float when your ass is broke

4/17/2006 5:26:09 PM

flippity fuck, I wish I knew where I put that Afterburner card for this Slot A system, I could really use those 250 extra mega hurts right about now. 7 hours and counting...

5/2/2006 7:28:25 AM

MOTHER FUCK GENTOO FUCKING SUCKS

after letting this build run for 2 days before checking the emerge log, I now realize that it has been caught in a loop, where it has been apparently restarting the --emptytree build after updating the portage package, but failing to use the new version of the package, repeat ad infinitum. UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE.

5/4/2006 5:35:00 AM

operator error

5/4/2006 7:31:55 AM

it's a shame gentoo doesn't have a dick for you to suck

5/4/2006 8:57:31 AM

ibtl

this thread is just trolling at this point

5/4/2006 9:20:22 PM

The only trolling I see in here is bous getting personal 'cause his *nix of choice sucks it hard. I have every right to complain about Gentoo's incomplete and inconsistent documentation, glacial pace, and simply tragic failure modes. Gentoo's own documentation recognizes at least two of these problems explicitly. Not really sure why you guys are taking Gentoo's failings personally, but that's nobody's problem but your own. That kind of Linux evangelism is half the reason people that bathe regularly don't want to fuck this shit.

For what it's worth, I took a tangent with this install to get distcc working before proceeding with the full install on this system 'cause this shit is so fucking slow. It's finally accelerated to a pace of merely slow. Not really sure how my half-assed scripts manage to bootstrap approximately the same tree, in half the time Gentoo is taking to partially bootstrap from a practically full install to a 15K SCSI drive, but I'm thinking about scrapping Gentoo and finishing the scripts if it finds any more creative ways to waste my time.

5/4/2006 10:23:12 PM

this thread is going to blow up with some bitching if I can't get comedi to compile

5/5/2006 8:49:00 AM

if this sucks THAT bad, and you hate it THAT much, why the fuck not move do a different distro?

5/5/2006 12:35:17 PM

on a different note...

gentoo (pre gcc3.0) bootstraps on a 233mhz pentium in about 23 hours. booyeah.

5/5/2006 10:23:32 PM

Quote :

"The only trolling I see in here is bous getting personal 'cause his *nix of choice sucks it hard."

lol the only distro i've used since slackware 3.0 -> 8.0 is mother fucking gentoo and i've had no problems.




operator error.

5/5/2006 11:00:58 PM