Re: [gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[Alan McKinnon]

On 18/03/2016 05:03, Hunter Jozwiak wrote:
> Hello,
>
>
>
> After talking to a few diehard Gentoo fans at my local LUG, I decided I
> would like to give Gentoo another shot. Are there any good books that
> can supplement the Gentoo handbook as well as books that go more in
> depth than the Gentoo chapter on Portage? One of the main issues I faced
> with Gentoo when I first tried it is that I did not understand the power
> of package.use, and I put everything in to make.conf. However, I feel
> that given enough supplemental information, I can hopefully make Gentoo
> attempt 6 a more permanent thing, and, eventually, migrate my servers
> over to it. Any input is greatly appreciated.

I don't know of any books on running Gentoo. I strongly suspect any such
book wouldn't be much use though - Gentoo is a meta-distribution so you
can build anything you want. What you want and what's ain a book might
be very different things. Or, another way, let's look for a book called
"Dummies Guide to Using Bricks" - not really gonna work is it :-)

Understanding Gentoo involves using it and talking to the many good
awesome folks right here. Before long, you will start to understand more
and more. We'll help you out on the weak bits (like the bat-shit crazy
output portage tends to spew all over your screen sometimes....) and
it's strengths.

Things like package.use I don't think are really your problem, it's just
an example of one thing amongst many you don't quite understand yet, but
I'll answer anyway.

USE flags enable and disable features of software at compile-time. Take
for example a music player. Maybe it can store the metadata about your
music in flat files, in sqlite, in mysql or postgres. Now you must make
a choice where to put the flag. Maybe your music collection is HUGE and
postgres is the best fit.

If you add it to make.conf it becomes global and every piece of software
that supports postgres will now be rebuilt to give postgres support.
Maybe you don't need or want that.

A flag like that is best put into package.use where it applies only to
the package you list there. So postgres gets installed, the music player
gets support and your MTA does not.

Sometimes it's a grey area where to put a flag and you have to weigh
your choices carefully. But much more often it's kinda obvious, and more
familiarity makes it easier.

Stick around, many folks find learning Gentoo is well worth the effort.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com