Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: How much value does llvm provide for a low-use laptop?

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote:
>
> Mark Knecht posted on Mon, 24 Apr 2017 08:36:43 -0700 as excerpted:
>
> > I certainly could chroot a specific copy of Gentoo and build on my
> > machine. I might also be able to build binary packages on my fast
> > machine and then do an emerge -k type install and see if it works.
> >
> > However, in the end how much do I gain for all that work vs installing
> > Kubuntu?
>
> There's some advantage in learning one distro, learning it well, and
> using it on everything.  That's what you gain, assuming you're keeping
> everything else on gentoo, as you then don't need to keep track of the
> many distro differences.
>
> I learned the difficulty of dealing with multiple distros here with my
> current router, still an old Linksys wrt54gl (which as I said I intend to
> eventually upgrade to an amd64, so I can build for it at the same time as
> the rest of my systems, can configure it using the same methods and
> tools, etc.), running openwrt.
>
> I had a horrible time trying to configure its networking system the way I
> wanted to, basically having to read a bunch of its init system scripts
> and config to figure out what started what, in what order, what and how
> to modify that to my liking, etc, pretty much just to figure out what
> config file to edit to change a few settings I wanted to change.
>
> Even then, I felt like I wasn't getting the most out of it, because in
> ordered to do that I'd have had to read and understand pretty much the
> entire init system.  So mainly I just stuck with the defaults instead of
> really getting it to work how I wanted, and I never did really /truly/
> understand it.
>
> Now that version is now long outdated, but I don't want to update or
> indeed, to really change the config as I set it up back then, because in
> ordered to do so I'm going to have to dive back into things and figure
> all that stuff out again.  But I'll only be using it on that one thing;
> the info and skills gained won't really transfer to anything else, unless
> I decide to standardize on openwrt for everything, including my main
> machines!
>
> By contrast, if it was gentoo, I would have already known the basics and
> could have gotten right to the task at hand.  And I could have and likely
> would have done far more with it, because I really do understand the
> openrc setup (this was before systemd went mainstream).
>
> These days of course most distros are standardized on systemd for init,
> so learn it once, use it on all.  And that's one of the reasons why I
> eventually switched to systemd on gentoo.  Except, particularly for that
> old thing with its extremely limited system image and RAM sizes, I don't
> think systemd would fit.  Which is probably a good share of the reason
> that last I heard anyway, openwrt wasn't switching to systemd.
>
> Between my dissatisfaction with not being able to truly master the openwrt
> system in the time I was willing to devote to it as a one-off, and my
> dissatisfaction with having to build separately for my netbook, even if
> it was gentoo, I resolved, as I explained, that next time I upgraded
> things, I'd standardize on amd64 (Intel or AMD chips either one), and try
> to keep things similar enough that at least for most packages, I could
> use the same C(XX)FLAGS and USE flags for everything, and just do binpkg-
> only emerges on systems other than my primary, for most packages.  That
> way both the packages and the setup would be the same across everything,
> except where I had actual reason to make it different.  And I'd really
> understand both that setup, and how to change it to accomplish what I
> wanted to do, if necessary.
>
>
> Now I'm into customizing enough that I've never met a desktop that I
> liked as it was shipped, and I expect I never will.  And at least as I
> envision things, even if I'm 80 (30 years from now as I just turned 50
> this year) and in a nursing home, if I'm still of sound enough mind and
> body to be running computers, now that I know the level to which I can
> efficiently customize gentoo, I really can't see myself being happy
> within the limitations of a normal binary distro an longer.  It's not as
> emphatic a "won't ever happen" as the idea of me switching back to
> something proprietary like MS Windows or Apple OSX, but for me it would
> certainly feel like going in the same direction, and would thus feel like
> defeat.  At that point, if I can't any longer do gentoo or at least arch,
> I may well simply turn in the keyboard and mouse, and if I do that, I
> can't imagine I'd have much else to do to keep me happy, so
> realistically, I might well wither and die within a few months, figuring
> I have little to nothing remaining to live for.
>
>
> Now I'm /not/ saying the answer has to be the same for you.  Far from
> it!  In fact, the above sounds like you may be tilting the other way,
> toward making everything (k)ubuntu, and giving up on gentoo.  If you're
> satisfied with (k)ubuntu, standardizing on it would equally as
> effectively solve the problem of having to deal with two different
> distros with wildly different ways of doing things.  And that may work
> very well for you.
>
> But it definitely wouldn't work for me.  I couldn't be happy on (k)ubuntu,
> or fedora, or...  I left those limitations behind in 2004 when I left
> mandrake for gentoo, much as I left the limitations of proprietaryware
> behind in 2001, when I left MS as eXPrivacy crossed a line I couldn't and
> wouldn't cross, for the land of Linux freedomware, where I'd not be
> /asked/ or /expected/ to cross such a line in the first place.
>
> Of course doing a split across multiple distros is possible too, but it
> does have its negatives, which I'm trying to point out here, and for me
> anyway, those negatives were high enough that while I lived with them
> while I had to, I resolved that when I got new hardware, I wouldn't have
> to any longer.
>
> But of course perhaps that too you'll find less of a problem than I did.
> I just don't like being jack of all distros and master of none, is all,
> and would prefer to master one distro, ideally a really flexible one like
> gentoo, knowing it well enough to comfortably make it do what I want, and
> use it everywhere.
>

I probably should trim this response but I won't.

1) Honestly, I don't disagree at all with your views about the problems
of running multiple distros. I wish I wasn't getting pushed that way.

2) You seem to have discounted the problem that on this i7 laptop it
simply takes too much time to build KDE. I don't think most of the rest of
Gentoo is too bad, and maybe I can convince my wife to use something
else like XFCE. That would likely require a profile change, which is study
time, but the answers are probably in the forums somewhere and would
allow me to keep Gentoo on that machine.

3) Respectfully, I'm not sure your answer encompasses the problems
and frustrations of having to maintain OTHER people's computers. I don't
hear you speak of that very often. The problem with KDE is on my wife's
computer. When it's building KDE it's unavailable to her. In the past 2
weeks I've had two massive builds that each took about 24 hours. That
amounts to about 15% downtime on her machine, which personally I don't
care about other than I'm the target of the gripes about 'When's my computer
going to work again', etc., and truly, what's she really getting with these
updates? Answer: Almost nothing, or actually nothing.

4) In the case of my wife's machine using Kubuntu means (to me) that I
won't do updates. (Or not many) If it works when it's installed then that's
mostly what she gets. Chrome, LibreOffice, VLC. I'm not sure she uses
anything other than that anyway. It's just a PC.

   And, no, I'm not thinking of moving my machine away from Gentoo (for
now) but I can honestly say that if I had a major hardware failure I don't
think I'd just jump in an put Gentoo on a new machine. Neither MatLab nor
NVidia Digits are perfectly happy on Gentoo but are fully supported on
Ubuntu.

Cheers,
Mark