Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Mike Diehl wrote:
>
> On Saturday 21 March 2009 21:00:11 Dale wrote:
>
> > Mike Kazantsev wrote:
>
> > > On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:17:53 -0600
>
> > >
>
> > > Mike Diehl <mdiehl@××××××××.com> wrote:
>
> > >> Has Gentoo become such a moving target that it's no longer
> suitable for
>
> > >> normal, every day, usage?
>
> > >
>
> > > If you're prepared to update you system at least once a week and
>
> > > have up-to-date knowledge of all the installed stuff, so you can at
>
> > > least make a decision whether you need some functionality or not...
>
> > > Then yep, I'd suggest gentoo.
>
> > >
>
> > > If you don't care about either then I don't understand why you started
>
> > > using it in first place - red hat or debian-based distro would've been
>
> > > much easier and simplier.
>
> >
>
> > I don't know if this is still the case or not but Mandrake updates
>
> > seemed like a reinstall on top of itself to me. Sort of like when you
>
> > reinstall windoze. It doesn't delete anything, user wise anyway, but
>
> > just puts all the new stuff in there.
>
> >
>
> > You don't get the latest updates with Mandrake like Gentoo does but that
>
> > doesn't appear to be to important to you since you don't update very
>
> > often anyway. I suspect some other distro may better suite your needs.
>
> > I been using Gentoo for years and update at least weekly and I rarely
>
> > have trouble. However, if you let the updates pile up, you can have
>
> > issues that are difficult to deal with.
>
> >
>
> > Overall, I agree with Mike here. Update regularly or use some other
>
> > distro as he mentioned.
>
> >
>
> > Dale
>
> >
>
> > :-) :-)
>
> Ok, when I started using Gentoo, I remember a discussion about how
> often to do an emege world and the prevailing wisdom at the time was
> to do it when you needed a new feature, or fix. If the new wisdom is
> to update, say, weekly, I can live with that on the local machines
> here at the home/office. I'm a bit concerned about the servers I have
> co-located out of state, though. On the other hand, those are
> production machines and probably don't need to be upgraded many times
> during their lifetime.
>
> I've run several other distributions over the years and up until
> recently I've never looked back from Gentoo.
>
> I ran Slackware back when it came on 3.5" floppies. Of course it had
> NO package manager, so when Redhat hit the scene, I converted.
>
> Redhat, back then was built for a generic 486, so when Mandrake came
> along with pentium optimizations, I converted.
>
> But like you said, upgrading Redhat/Mandrake always seemed a bit
> windoze'ish to me. You really were simply piling the upgrade on top of
> the old system, like you said earlier.
>
> I used Suse on a project at work and hated every minute of it, and the
> help forums were mostly flamefests. Never even considered Suse for
> "real" work.
>
> Like I said, I've been using Gentoo for years now. When I met Daniel
> Robbins, I'd already been using Gentoo for several months. Gentoo is
> still the most customizable and optimize-able distribution available.
> Sometimes it's down right elegant.
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10106
>
> However, lately, Gentoo seems to have been plagued with problems.
> Circular blockers. 32/64 bit libraries. Package re-organization. Others.
>
> So here is the question: Are these just growing pains, or is this the
> trend with Gentoo? If I resolve to update frequently, will these
> problems become more rare?
>
> I'll start a new thread to seek help with my MythTV upgrade problem.
>
> Thanks for listening.
>
> Mike.
>

This is my opinion and I am not a dev by any means.  I think Gentoo is
having some growing pains.  I also think it is making huge leaps right
now and they are really making some serious improvements.  The newer
portage will handle most blocks without you doing anything.  There may
be some exceptions to that but I would say the vast majority of blocks
will be dealt with automagically.  They seam to have came up with a way
for portage to handle those blocks that is pretty seamless.  That said,
reading the elog or the messages after a emerge could be more critical. 
I read where someone may have missed a message and rebooted only to find
that something was screwy and would no longer boot.  I'm not sure they
were running stable but either way these things can crop up.  From what
they posted, they had to boot with the CD and fix it.  I sort of like
that part about Gentoo.  So, while portage may handle a lot for you, you
need to run etc-update or whatever you use to update configs after each
update or before you reboot at least. 

I run a single desktop machine here that runs folding and is my surfing
machine.  I could probably go a couple weeks between updates perhaps
even a month and be OK.  I think one to two weeks just seems to be a
sweet spot for me at least.  Long enough that you are not constantly
updating but often enough that you are up to date.  That would be
especially true with regards to Mandrake, or whatever it is called now,
and some others that take a while to update.  They may be doing more
testing or something but takes longer still. 

A lot of this is based on what you are doing and the time you have to
spend on it.  Some people from what I have read manage lots of servers
and I assume they are running Gentoo on them.  Some things may take
longer to upgrade so you may want to wait a little longer.  There could
also be a bug that you need fixed before you upgrade.  Gentoo usually
has a easy option for this while some other distros may not.  You can
always unmask a package if it is a bug fix and is known to work.  Some
other distros may not have it available for a while until some internal
testing is done.

If it were me, I would try updating every couple weeks for a bit and see
how that works.  You may still run into a issue on occasion but as long
as there are a lot of others running into the same thing, then it is not
your upgrade timing but just a serious change upstream.  If you rarely
run into trouble then maybe you can go longer between upgrades or if you
still have issues then do them a little more often.  I would suspect
that you would find that sweet spot somewhere close to a couple weeks to
as much as a month.  I do think this will make things a lot easier. 
Keep in mind, the devs upgrade their rigs a LOT.  I doubt they ever have
to update a machine that has not been updated for several months so it
would be very difficult for them to test updating from say a 2006
profile.  I doubt they even have a machine running that outdated.  Well,
x86 anyway.  There may be some running some old hardware that out of date. 

A little long winded but I hope that helps and I'm sure some other gurus
will chime in as well.

Dale

:-)  :-)