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On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:15:49 -0500
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David Relson <relson@×××××××××××××.com> wrote:
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> I used the Gentoo LiveCD when I started with Gentoo in 2006. Prior |
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> Linux experience covered 8 or so years with Slackware, RedHat, and |
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> Mandrake. |
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> |
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> The installation was not smooth. My recollection is that the GUI |
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> installer asked for the same information multiple times and there were |
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> problems installing packages from the CD's. I ended up with a partial |
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> install that needed manual fixing. The process was painful, not |
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> smooth, but I was able to get Gentoo up and running. |
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> |
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> When I upgraded from 32-bits to 64-bits, I started with the minimal CD |
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> and did a manual upgrade. The process worked well though it was time |
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> consuming (since I used my old world file to ensure I had 64 bit |
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> versions of everything). |
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> |
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> By contrast, I've done multiple Mandrake/Mandriva installs, most |
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> recently about 6 months ago (on an old laptop). The Mandriva install |
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> was dead simple and it was up and running within an hour. |
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> |
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> IMHO, for new users to Gentoo having an easy to use installer and a |
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> current LiveCD (no more than 6 months old) is very important. |
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> |
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> Regards, |
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> |
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> David |
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IMO, comparing a source distro with a binary distro in terms of installation
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time is a bit unfair.
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There are a couple of other things you also have to look at:
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* Binary distros vendors need to optimize for compatibility. Take i686 as an
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example, the same binary might be running on Pentium III, Pentium 4, Athlon and
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a series of other hardwares. The advantage is quite obvious, if you ask for
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vendor support, they know exactly how the software is compiled, what compiler
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flag they used, what patches they applied. The disadvantage is also obvious,
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say a particular compiler flag can increase the performance of the software on
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your architecture, but breaks compatibility of the binaries with other
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architectures, do you think the vendor will have that flag set?
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* Source distros, on the contrary, lets you control how you want your software
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to be build, what flags to use etc etc, at the price of much much longer
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compilation time and much harder for vendors to support you. In someway, you
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can even think that source distros lets to you imprint you personality onto your
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system, you can go for aggressive -O3, or just optimize size for -Os, you can
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- -mfpmath=sse if you know you have the hardware.
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Back to the installation CD issue, undoubtably, having a nice working
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installation CD for gentoo is desirable, but is it really needed? We are here
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to do what we are best at.
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LiveCD creators, Knoppix, for example, are good at creating liveCDs and keeping
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hardware support on those CDs up-to-date etc etc, we should take advantage of
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it.
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Gentoo has a huge package repository, I'd much rather see the devs focus on
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making that better, cos that's what they are good at.
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There's no need to look at different distros with borders and boundaries and
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have you mind bound on the concept that "I need to use a gentoo CD to install
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gentoo".
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All these distros/liveCDs are here to help us get the job done, isn't that what
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free software is about? Isn't that what choice is about?
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- -- Joe
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- --
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A computer scientist is someone who, when told "go to hell", considers
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the "go to" harmful rather than the destination.
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