[gentoo-user] Update or Install again? Testing vs. stable?

[Alan E. Davis]

I have questions (for one of my machines, running ~amd64) whether it
is worth it to update/upgrade or whether to reinstall from scratch.
Another machine that melted down three months ago is being rebuilt
with a new motherboard, and new technology; I am installing from
scratch for obvious reasons in this case; but I would like to solicit
comments about my plan to use only a straight stable version (with
single packages unmasked only).  I'll try to be brief, but I beg in
advance the indulgence of the list for an overlength posting.  And I
apologize for going over territory once again that has been covered
elsewhere.

My ~amd64 machine has an extremely large number of packages, many of
them for multimedia viewing, DVD burning, editing DVDs, graphics,
latex---a large variety of applications many of them which can be used
simultaneously at any given time.  The system is amazing, and I
suspect that any other distro would fall over under this diversity of
processes.  In particular, I have had good success editing videos with
avidemux---but only with the most up to date overlay!  The machine has
gotten tangled into a knot that seems to be almost impossible to get
all the way up to date at one time.  At least for me.  I received
amazingly clear and lucid advice on how to get up to date, upgrade the
compiler, and rebuild, revdep-rebuild, etc., etc.; but with my
unreliable connectivity over the summer, I was unable to get the
machine to an absolutely clean state to start that process.

It took a tremendous amount of time, months, to setup all of these
packages; maintenance of the system also demands not only a fast
network connection, but also a lot of time.  It's not going to be easy
to reinstall this system in it's current form.  Perhaps it's
necessary, however.  The usual advice about updating is something like
"it isn't necessary; there is no such thing as versions with Gentoo".
But with at least three major upgrade bugs to overcome (xorg-x11 /
nvidia-drivers; compiler upgrades; revdep-rebuild failures; changes in
network administration, to name a few issues) I wonder whether it
isn't just as easy to install afresh.

Because my time is taken up with teaching and science, I don't have
unlimited time for system maintenance.  I need to have access to
recent updates of some software packages, like avidemux, which only in
recent incarnations has been able to deal with the avi files my video
capture device generates.   So I am thinking to run a stable (amd64 or
x86) version, and only install the necessary packages as ~arch.  I
want to ask the intelligentsia how much difference will that make.  I
am afraid I have not been as useful to the group as I might have been
at reporting bugs, but I found a large number of packages able to run
amd64.

The same goes for the newly cobbled together machine with an amd64
processor, and a gateway laptop that has been running gentoo but I've
been running on Ubuntu because of trouble understanding the docs on
how to use WPA authentication on the school wireless network.  I am
going to either reinstall gentoo or (if I haven't buggered it yet)
upgrade, so the same questions apply.

I might add that my experience with Ubuntu, after running gentoo only
for 9 months, has been interesting: Ubuntu is pretty amazing, but it
has nowhere near the polish of Gentoo.  The newest betas are really
amazing---edgy eft knot2, and the new Gnome very interesting; however,
at almost every turn the Gentoo packages, out of the box with fairly
mundane USE flags, are MUCH more serviceable, the details have been
taken care of, and I believe Gentoo to be much more stable.

TIA,

Alan Davis
-- 
Alan Davis, Kagman High School, Saipan  lngndvs@×××××.com     1-670-256-2043

I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I
must share it with other people who like it.
                                          --------Richard Stallman
-- 
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