Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo is the best linux distro
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 22:17:43
Message-Id: 20120911001207.4d9aee88@khamul.example.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] Gentoo is the best linux distro by Chris Stankevitz
1 On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:46:14 -0700
2 Chris Stankevitz <chrisstankevitz@×××××.com> wrote:
3
4 > Gentoo is the best distribution I have used (I haven't used too many:
5 > ubuntu, fedora, gentoo). I love the USE flags. I love watching (and
6 > questioning) what is going to be installed. I love emerge.
7 > Supposedly gentoo lacks being able to have a system "just work"
8 > without thinking about anything. But in my experience on linux, this
9 > simply isn't the case anywhere. With ubuntu, for example, I had
10 > trouble with sound and ethernet cards that I could never figure out...
11 > and the kind of answers I get on their forums drive me insane ("my
12 > uncle once said that his cousin typed this magical command and it
13 > worked fine for a little while so maybe try that").
14 >
15 > And what's the deal with these "major release versions" of the other
16 > distros? Why do that?
17
18 They are binary distros so they have no choice. For the duration of
19 that version's life, all the packages shipped must all work together
20 and that is only possible if the ABI does not change.
21
22 The major version number is a way of recording what the hell you got:
23 look up the distro version somewhere and see what it says.
24
25 For the release to use new packages with their new magic features,
26 every other package using those packages must also be recompiled and
27 re-released to. You know about the current level of cluelessness on the
28 forums, imagine what would happen if there were 6 versions of every
29 package for every release.
30
31
32 I don't mean "foo-1.2.3-ubuntu-1" vs "foo-1.2.3-ubuntu-2" (which will
33 always be forward and backwards compatible), I mean "foo-1.2.3" vs
34 "foo-2.3.4" and a few bar packages that don't use foo anymore but do
35 use baz.
36
37 It would be a nightmare. The only sane way to deal with this is to peg
38 the packages at version levels and stick with it. Windows does this,
39 Mac OS does it, Solaris does it. And they do it because that's the only
40 thing that could work.
41
42 Gentoo has no need of major version numbers. It is source-based,
43 so it can do rolling releases. For any new package foo that changes
44 it's ABI, portage will find all packages bar that now need to be
45 updated, and then update them. This could never possibly work for
46 Ubuntu. Nothing else could possibly work for Gentoo.
47
48 Often when trying to understand why Gentoo works a certain way, it
49 helps to remember who exactly is the distro maintainer. Ubuntu has
50 maintainers that build packages for their Ubuntu versions and put the
51 binaries in a repo somewhere.
52
53 Gentoo also has such people: You
54
55
56 >
57 > Thank you to all the people who contribute to it... and to those who
58 > are giving great advice/solutions on this list!
59 >
60 > Chris
61 >
62
63
64
65 --
66 Alan McKinnon
67 alan.mckinnon@×××××.com

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo is the best linux distro Chris Stankevitz <chrisstankevitz@×××××.com>
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo is the best linux distro Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@×××××.com>