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BTW, if you have more than one Gentoo node distcc will reduce compiling times considerably. And you do not have to sit and watch it, use screen to start the task and leave it running with low priority.
It wasn't too long along when I actually still had a 9600 bps dialup Earthlink account and a machine at a blazing 733 MHz equipped with 256 MB [sic] of core. Since I measure everything in terms of football, it was around the time that Colt McCoy was playing for the tu Longhorns -- maybe a couple or three or four years back.
I dreaded when I'd run emerge @world on Gentoo and see more than 15 new packages. The downloads alone were an all day affair and the build went well into the night. So I quit being a Luddite and moved into the the modern world with a high speed network and an i7-core with 32 GB of RAM. Just the other day when KDE 4.12.2 and some other things came out totaling 197 package, I took a dinner break. By the time, I gulped down the last bite of dessert, it was all done.
Among Gentoo-2.2, Slackware-current, FreeBSD-9.2 and my homegrown variant of Linux from Scratch, I really do like them all. I'm not a distro hopper since I stick with those but I do take a look at some others on occasion to learn new techniques. The only one I've really found wanting is Debian/Hurd but I realize it's still mostly a proof of concept and not yet meant for day-to-day use.
Over on the dark side, I may be the only one in this forum that actually likes what Windows 8.1 has become -- especially with Cygwin on top to keep things familiar with a few xterms running on that platform. Plus, with JP Software's Take Command shell, it's a very comfortable environment for this command-line guy.
BTW, if you have more than one Gentoo node distcc will reduce compiling times considerably. And you do not have to sit and watch it, use screen to start the task and leave it running with low priority.
I'm running a few distcc hosts in my office. Distcc is one of those "high geek factor" applications.
The moment a friend asks you to install Linux on his or her computer, you'll probably migrate back from Gentoo to Slackware. ("Hey, you don't mind if I stay at your house a couple days... you know, X.org, Firefox and Libreoffice are quite long to compile...")
I think I would end up installing something like Mint
And LibreOffice is outrageous, it takes longer than the whole installation/configurarion proccess lol
It wasn't too long along when I actually still had a 9600 bps dialup Earthlink account and a machine at a blazing 733 MHz equipped with 256 MB [sic] of core. Since I measure everything in terms of football, it was around the time that Colt McCoy was playing for the tu Longhorns -- maybe a couple or three or four years back.
I dreaded when I'd run emerge @world on Gentoo and see more than 15 new packages. The downloads alone were an all day affair and the build went well into the night. So I quit being a Luddite and moved into the the modern world with a high speed network and an i7-core with 32 GB of RAM. Just the other day when KDE 4.12.2 and some other things came out totaling 197 package, I took a dinner break. By the time, I gulped down the last bite of dessert, it was all done.
Among Gentoo-2.2, Slackware-current, FreeBSD-9.2 and my homegrown variant of Linux from Scratch, I really do like them all. I'm not a distro hopper since I stick with those but I do take a look at some others on occasion to learn new techniques. The only one I've really found wanting is Debian/Hurd but I realize it's still mostly a proof of concept and not yet meant for day-to-day use.
Over on the dark side, I may be the only one in this forum that actually likes what Windows 8.1 has become -- especially with Cygwin on top to keep things familiar with a few xterms running on that platform. Plus, with JP Software's Take Command shell, it's a very comfortable environment for this command-line guy.
Cygwin works plain and simple. No argument from me.
I've used Gentoo some years ago. But it took me too much time to (re)build all the packages when upgrading.
I'm using Linux for my work and need a distro which simply works, so I've always used Slackware for the work, Gentoo was only for fun. is a great distro, I've learned much from it, but otherwise my experience with Slackware was a great advantage when starting with Gentoo.
The moment a friend asks you to install Linux on his or her computer, you'll probably migrate back from Gentoo to Slackware. ("Hey, you don't mind if I stay at your house a couple days... you know, X.org, Firefox and Libreoffice are quite long to compile...")
There are pre-compiled binaries available for the larger packages. For example, I didn't want to wait so I installed the firefox-bin binary.
Firefox doesn't take much, it takes like 20 minutes.
Gentoo isn't that much time consuming as I thought it'd be. It took me an afternoon and a part pf the night to download/build everything I need. And that includes Kernel, X, XFCE, LibreOffice, etc. But only because I am still learning. I guess that for a gentoo expert it'd take much less (and, of course, with a better machine).
Used Gentoo for 4yrs then, I finally got to slackware this year. Handling my own dependencies was a learning experience that greatly enhanced my understanding of libaries, -fPIC, ldd, and the linking process. Now handling dependencies are fun and easy. Plus I know EXACTLY what's on my system and it's PURPOSE. But back to topic no use Gentoo no more. If I did it would probably be in minimal install environment.
I always seem to get hung up in the install process. So, so far I've only seen faint shades of what Gentoo is capable of. I mostly want to play with Portage, but not spend forever watching GCC output fly up the screen, so maybe my own patience is at fault. Maybe I'll look up some derivatives and see if there's anything a little more 'batteries included'.
I always seem to get hung up in the install process. So, so far I've only seen faint shades of what Gentoo is capable of. I mostly want to play with Portage, but not spend forever watching GCC output fly up the screen, so maybe my own patience is at fault. Maybe I'll look up some derivatives and see if there's anything a little more 'batteries included'.
Calculate is IMHO very nice and still pure Gentoo under the hood, unfortunately its updates and package management overall is painfully slow.
I always seem to get hung up in the install process. So, so far I've only seen faint shades of what Gentoo is capable of. I mostly want to play with Portage, but not spend forever watching GCC output fly up the screen, so maybe my own patience is at fault. Maybe I'll look up some derivatives and see if there's anything a little more 'batteries included'.
I reinstalled gentoo today and it took me about 4 hours to install/build a bare XFCE desktop (I started at 5pm and it is almost done - it is building the final XFCE packages)
EDIT: 3 hours and it is almost 8pm for me - forgot to say that.
Last edited by moisespedro; 02-10-2014 at 03:45 PM.
People installing Gentoo first time keep trying to use Gentoo install CD - which is a mistake. Gentoo liveDVD may be nice eye-candy, but in most cases it is not a good platform to install Gentoo. I personally have never used Gentoo install CD, first time I installed it I used Knoppix (it happened to be handy). Anybody who wants install Gentoo - I recommend use something that has good hardware support - like SystemRescueCD.
The LiveDVD works a lot better in my opinion, and it takes out a lot of the headaches. After that all you have to do is have portage start the update process and fairly soon, you're up-to-date and ready to roll.
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