1 |
Chrome OS is made by Google to run specifically on the Chromebooks. I |
2 |
don't think it is intended for general computing and there is no |
3 |
enthusiast community around it like around other distros. |
4 |
|
5 |
The closest cousin to Gentoo would be Funtoo. It used to be that Gentoo |
6 |
Portage could only use rsync, while Funtoo Portage could use git which |
7 |
is much faster, but since then Gentoo Portage has also gained the |
8 |
functionality to use git for this purpose. |
9 |
|
10 |
My biggest problem with Gentoo was not so much the time needed to |
11 |
compile huge ebuilds like Firefox, Thunderbird, or Chromium, but that |
12 |
say if you neglected doing updates for a while and then decided to start |
13 |
again, then you'd have serious problems. This is because, at least the |
14 |
way I understood it, after some time old ebuilds would get deleted from |
15 |
the Portage servers to conserve space there, but some of those now |
16 |
deleted ebuilds would still be needed as dependencies to do iterative |
17 |
updates. The sure-way to resolve this problem would be to re-emerge the |
18 |
whole @world set, which of course would take way-longer than just |
19 |
Firefox, and might work differently because the '/etc/' configuration |
20 |
schema might have changed. |
21 |
|
22 |
In my case I had some weird problem either emerging some ebuild or |
23 |
keeping an old version of an ebuild to keep the functionality or the |
24 |
'/etc/' schema removed in the new versions. I just let things sit, and |
25 |
moved on to other projects. But when later on I tried to go back to the |
26 |
original issue, I had even more trouble because now I was even further |
27 |
behind @world, and more ebuilds would not upgrade because of deleted |
28 |
dependencies. |
29 |
|
30 |
So to sum it up, my problem with Gentoo was that you could not just do |
31 |
iterative updates after long periods of inactivity. You pretty much had |
32 |
to emerge daily and if you had some problem then drop everything and fix |
33 |
it right away, or else you'll fall even further behind and eventually |
34 |
might have to rebuild @world. And so because constant attention |
35 |
intervention and trial and error was required you could not just compile |
36 |
huge ebuilds overnight and go about your life during the day. |
37 |
|
38 |
The distro I would recommend to look at now is NixOS -- it is also |
39 |
source-based, but if you have problems with one package that will not |
40 |
prevent you from keeping the rest of the system up to date. Upstream |
41 |
changes are pulled pretty regularly. And even though it is |
42 |
source-based, you download most packages pre-compiled. However if you |
43 |
want to you can tweak the source and re-compile locally. You can also |
44 |
keep multiple versions of the same package. You also do not mess |
45 |
directly with the '/etc/' files for individual packages, instead you |
46 |
specify a global configuration "recipe" in |
47 |
'/etc/nixos/configuration.nix', which is used to generate the |
48 |
package-specific '/etc/' files. This layer of abstraction improves |
49 |
reliability and allows easy config cloning across machines. |
50 |
|
51 |
The down-side is that NixOS has a radically-different paradigm that |
52 |
takes a while to wrap your head around, requires learning the Nix |
53 |
Expression Language (which is radically-different too), and is not yet |
54 |
that "mature" so theoretically things can break, but I would still |
55 |
recommend it over Chrome OS. |
56 |
|
57 |
|
58 |
-- Marat |
59 |
|
60 |
|
61 |
On 6/7/21 1:10 AM, n952162 wrote: |
62 |
> I'm looking for a gentoo alternative and am surprised to see that google |
63 |
> chrome os is based on gentoo. |
64 |
> |
65 |
> Does anybody have any experience with this? |
66 |
> |
67 |
> Do they support multi-media and basic modern desktop capabilities? I |
68 |
> see that there's some concentration on a special browser, but I'd be |
69 |
> running Firefox and FVWM anyway. |
70 |
> |
71 |
> Do they use /portage/ and source packages? |
72 |
> |
73 |
> Do they push down every single upstream modification, like gentoo does, |
74 |
> or maybe have a bit of hysteresis? |
75 |
> |
76 |
> I updated on May first and built firefox 78.10.*0*. 2+ days of |
77 |
> building. I updated on June first and built firefox 78.10.*1*. and |
78 |
> spent 2+ days building. I updated today because of the same old slot |
79 |
> collision problems I've run into over a year |
80 |
> |
81 |
> dev-python/setuptools:0 |
82 |
> dev-python/setuptools_scm:0 |
83 |
> dev-python/toml:0 |
84 |
> dev-python/certifi:0 |
85 |
> dev-python/jinja:0 |
86 |
> dev-python/markupsafe:0 |
87 |
> |
88 |
> and now, on the 7th, I'm building firefox 78.11. I just don't have the |
89 |
> time for this. It impacts my machines too much. |
90 |
> |
91 |
> Yes, I know, there are binary versions, but if I wanted to use binary, I |
92 |
> wouldn't use gentoo. And anyway, there's always rust and gcc and ... |
93 |
> |
94 |
> |