gentoo profile 2008.0 vs desktop

dannyk1 · 02-06-2009, 02:07 AM

Hi. Quick question about gentoo profiles.
Is there much difference between the different profiles?

Quote:

eselect profile list
Available profile symlink targets:
[1] hardened/x86/2.6
[2] selinux/2007.0/x86
[3] selinux/2007.0/x86/hardened
[4] default/linux/x86/2008.0 *
[5] default/linux/x86/2008.0/desktop
[6] default/linux/x86/2008.0/developer
[7] default/linux/x86/2008.0/server
[8] hardened/linux/x86

The above are all the options (I am using 4 as you can see).

At the moment, my machine is up to date, but if I change profile to 5 and re-run emerge -auvND world, it wants to reinstall 70 odd programs as well as add some more!

Is there much advantage changing to desktop for my everyday machine?

Pearlseattle · 02-07-2009, 08:56 AM

Hello
No.
I have as well the 2008.0 profile selected on all my machines - doesn't matter if server, notebook or workstation. This because you'll anyway set up your own "/etc/make.conf".
You can have a look at those profiles - e.g. "less /usr/portage/profiles/targets/desktop/make.defaults" or "less /usr/portage/profiles/targets/server/make.defaults".
Greetings.

dannyk1 · 02-07-2009, 06:41 PM

It strange that with "[4] default/linux/x86/2008.0 * " and I do

emerge -auvND world

it is up to date.

But If I change to "[5] default/linux/x86/2008.0/desktop" it suddenly wants to install some new packages and reinstall 70 packages.

When I change back (without continuing with the reinstalls) it is up to date.

i92guboj · 02-07-2009, 08:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dannyk1

It strange that with "[4] default/linux/x86/2008.0 * " and I do

emerge -auvND world

it is up to date.

But If I change to "[5] default/linux/x86/2008.0/desktop" it suddenly wants to install some new packages and reinstall 70 packages.

When I change back (without continuing with the reinstalls) it is up to date.

It's not strange at all.

Amongst the things that a profile sets up are the default USE flags. And different USE flags mean most times different features, which in turn mean different dependencies. The desktop profile is usually tuned for a tipical desktop, which assumes that you will want things like gnome and kde, and also most media support, and this means that your programs will be compiled to support those features, hence they will need to link against additional libraries and stuff like that.