[CLUE-Tech] distro question

[Collins Richey]

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 18:16:29 -0600
Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com> wrote:

> Dale K. Hawkins wrote:
> 
> >OK.  I have played with many different distros over the years and
> >have recently been contemplating giving gentoo a whirl.  I am not an
> >idiot and I do so love to tinker.  It seems there is some experience
> >on the list with gentoo.  So, I just wanted to ask people's opinions
> >about gentoo.
> >  
> >
> 
> I got annoyed with it, quickly.  Knowing that a security-related
> emerge is available always made me want to just emerge everything at
> that point, and even on an Athlon 2500 that always took forever, it
> seemed... the constant siren call (on my play machine) of "hey there's
> new stuff available" every time the last compile finished... became
> utterly distracting for me.
> 
> Granted Debian unstable can be similarly crazy this way, but Debian 
> testing is a little bit slower.  Of course you're not guaranteed 
> security patches with Debian testing, so... Catch 22.
> 

<start of ramble>

You make your bed, and then you lie in it. Gentoo just happens to be on
the leading (not usually bleeding) edge of changes. The gentoo
developers just love to tinker, and if a new dot release of their pet
software doesn't break their test machines, they release it for testing
("you have been warned since it's in testing status."). After a few
weeks, if nothing goes bang, they release it to stable. Just as with any
other distro, what seems to be stable may have some unforeseen
deficiencies even after it has been marked stable (let me know when
bug-free software has been invented <g>).

For years I remained on the stable brach of Gentoo and let new available
packages age for a couple of weeks before doing anything. I would
even clone my system to another partition to provide backup before
applying updates.

Then, about 6 months ago I got a newer computer, so I decided to go all
out with the testing branch. I had already verified that 2.5/2/6 kernels
were stable for my desktop environment, so I installed my new system
with ~x86 (testing) set, enabled nptl, converted my /dev usage to udev,
and began to remain within a few days of current at all times. Only one
bleep in 6 months, and that appears to be a problem with nptl (more
below). udev/hotplug took a little bit of tinkering, but it is also
quite stable now.

I liked the setup so well, that I installed my laptop in the same
fashion, and it too has been rock solid stable. Except as noted below
and except for different cpu's, video cards, ethernet cards, and sound
cards, my two machines stay basically at the same maintenance level
(quite current).

The only problem I've encountered is with mplayer and mplayerplug-in
which appear to have a problem with nptl enabled systems. There have
been at least a dozen dot releases recently, and none of them work
reliably on my desktop system. The laptop had lagged a little behind in
maintenance when I discovered the problem, and mplayer works just fine
there. But even if I downgrade the desktop to the same levels as the
laptop, I can't get it to work. What happens is this: if I play a movie
trailer, the trailer (video and audio) plays successfully to the end;
then firefox craps out or hangs. Others have the same problem with
mozilla. People on the linux-users list claim that a recent mplayer dot
release fixes that very problem, but it doen't work for me. So I'm
playing a waiting game, monitoring the bugzilla entry. According to
bugzilla the problem disappears on non-nptl systems.

OK, back on track. When fixes appear, you are not bound to apply them
immediately, except for security related stuff. In any case, I am never
bothered by the compiles. I just let them chug away while I'm doing
email or browsing linux news. On 2.6 compiles never interfere with
interactive work, so I never notice them. When kde or gnome releases
come along, I just start them at supper time and they are done by the
next morning.

Some gentoo users with multiple machines go to great lengths to get the
compiles done ASAP. There is a function called distcc which allows you
to farm out the compiles in parallel on multiple machines. In this
fashion, you can complete a kde emerge in a couple of hours. Too complex
for me. I just let the compiles plug along.

</End of ramble>

-- 
 /\/\
( CR ) Collins Richey
 \/\/