Would I benefit by trying Gentoo?

[mohapi]

I am still very green with Linux, but I am positively thrilled with Ubuntu. I'd like to learn more, and I hear digging in with Gentoo is a good way to get my hands dirty.

But I've also heard that Gentoo is quite a bit more complicated, and unless I'm prepared to spend quite some time learning and tweaking it, I might do better to stick with Ubuntu ... for a while, at least.

It sounds prudent, but my enthusiasm outweighs my prudence at the moment. Am I setting myself up for failure if I just dive in?

Thanks for the advice. :$

[seablade]

Setting yourself up for failure? Depends on who you are. If you are willing to stick with it then no. In fact this very forum has gotten several people thorugh their first Gentoo install and I agree Gentoo is one of the best ways to learn the down and dirty of linux.

If you NEED your computer right away though, what I might look at doing is setting up a specific partition for gentoo so you can play on that without endangering the rest of your computer. Especially on the first install getting a working Gentoo box can take a week at times, sometimes more depending on how much time you can devote to it. It still takes me about a day of hard work to rebuild a gentoo box to my specs(Typically dedicated to audio). On average I would say 2 or 3 days and you could have a very much working box you can tweak to your hearts desire, and MUCH More knowledge on linux in general, even if you dont make it thorugh the gentoo install(ABF wanna confirm this one for me?, hate to pick on you but yours was the first name I could think of that I knew still fit this bill, besides i am interested to hear your viewpoint on setting yourself up for failure as well)

If you do decide to go through with it before you begin post up, there are some things that will make your life easier(Like PRINTING the manual if you can afford the ink/paper) that people may be able to suggest.

Seablade

[adoroar]

Gentoo isn't as complicated as some people make it out to be, and the reason for that is because the documention is incredibly well done, almost anything you want to do you'll find a detailed step by step guide on the homepage.
And gentoo is alot of fun to since you get to customize everything the way you want it, if you really want a challange though, I suggest Linux From Scratch :dude:
Or if your lazy like me, just run debian and be done with it :alienhead

[abf]

......looks like this is the perfect thread for my reply.

as you can probably tell i am an ubuntu whore. what you might not have known is that i tried gentoo about 3 or 4 times. The last time i did it the install went great, i just now needed to set up my wireless, my video card, and i would be all set. i didn't go through with it.

Now i am back on ubuntu....well....sort of.

Here is a brief list of what happens on Gentoo (+ is good, - is bad)
+ Docs are very well done
+ Everything is just faster (if kernel is custom built, not genkernel)
+ Portage is one of (if not the) best package manager systems out there
+ The geeky "yep! i built that!" factor.
+ Forums are great. (....i'd say Ubuntu forums are in a not too distant 2nd)
- Just the base install will take a day or so. Maybe upwards to a week to set it up perfect
- You have to wait forever for packages to compile
- much like slackware, a lot of config is done by hand.

So.... are there merits from trying gentoo (even if you fail)... absolutely! You'll learn a ton from doing the install. Will you most likely fail teh first time around.... maybe evne second time around.... i'd say so.

Before you built gentoo make sure you KNOW your system (as in all the components and the modules you'll need).


------------------

if you wanna get kinda dirty without going into gentoo right away, i suggest you play around with your ubuntu setup. the forums have great info and great how-tos. For example ditch the restricted-modules-2.6.12-10-386 package and install your wireless (ipw2200) and video (nvidia) drivers from source. rebuild your kernel (remove useless modules, and features), tweak Gnome, or ditch it all together and install a different desktop (xubuntu-desktop for xfce, and kubuntu-desktop for kde), or better yet, enlighten yourself!

point is....gentoo is a great way to get down and dirty with your linux.... but so is just about every other linux.


and if you're wondering, i am running a pretty highly customized version of ubuntu right now.

[bigtrouble77]

Building a gentoo machine has been one of the most enjoyable computer things i've done in a while (and the help i've gotten here is one of the big reasons why). You really need to start off on a machine that's not critically needed because you're inevitably going to mess things up.

The amazing thing is that i've gotten so many things working that I've struggled with for so long in other distros, including ubuntu. The downside is you have to get those things working from the ground up. This means that everything needs to be configured manually, virtually nothing is done for you.

As a result, getting things configured can take an enormous amount of time, I can definately attest to that. I don't think most people would have the patience to go through what I've delt with in the past few weeks getting my gentoo box humming.

The one thing I always hated about linux when comparing linux to windows is that gnome/kde are very sluggish. Ubuntu, Fedora and SuSe (all the distros I've tried) are sluggish on even the fastest machines out there. Gentoo is blazing fast and absolutely blows all those distros and windows away when talking about responsiveness. Never thought that was possible and simply just a short coming of linux.

Finally, to get Gentoo configured it's imperitive you go to these places:
forums.gentoo.org, gentoo-wiki.com, gentoo install docs pages

[abf]

:yeahthat:

here is my experience with responsiveness.

generally speaking KDE is fatter than gnome, regardless of system.

in ubuntu, gnome is faster than kde
in suse kde is faster than gnome
in pclinuxos kde (the onyl desktop) is pretty fast, even faster than ubuntu gnome i'd say.

xfce, enlightenment, and blackbox blow kde and gnome out of the water in terms of responsiveness. a custom kernel, among other things, improves responce time even further.


what i am trying to say is that, no, my custom built xubuntu (ubuntu + xfce) is not faster than gentoo... but its sure hell of a lot faster than generic ubuntu.

[bigtrouble77]

That's interesting abf, I guess you'd know best being that you've tried so many distros. One thing I disagree about is needing to use a custom kernel in gentoo. I'm still using the genkernel and am getting phenominal performance in gnome.

Problem with ubuntu is that firefox is so slow. Since that's the one app most people are going to use it gives a false sense of unresponsiveness because most other apps aren't nearly as bad.

I've found that just about every app loads at least a full second faster in gentoo than ubuntu, and my gentoo box is a significantly slower machine. It may not seem like a lot, but those seconds add up quickly. Also, windows resize perfectly smoothly in gentoo. It's choppy in every other distro i've tried. These things just give the impression that it's a more stable and solid environment.

[abf]

i know the kernel is not the end of the world.... but if you're trully aiming for a custom system (thus the point of installing gentoo in the first place) you just MUST make a custom kernel. Genkernel is good and all, but it compiles a lot of crap you don't need, and that adds bulk which kills your ram, and takes a longer time to compile.

Agreed that firefox and ubuntu don't mix. Hope they fixed it for Daper. In xubuntu the first load of firefox takes a few seconds, but every load after that is much faster, although still not as fast as every other application. The alternative to this is to use Opera or Epiphany which do load faster than Firefox. In my case I am not installing either one because i am trying to keep a slim 1-app-per-task setup.


that said, to teh original poster:
-------------------------------
why not try LFS and TRULLY get your hands dirty?

[seablade]

ABF as I explained to BT when he was doing his setup, the Genkernel script can be used as a tool to compile your kernel and set up your bootloader all in one step, but you can still tweak your kernel to your hearts content if you want to by using the menuconfig option(Which also implies oldconfig for those not aware). It will be the exact same as if you built your own kernel from scratch, but if you use the --bootloader=grub option it will set up your bootloader to match as well. The only difference I have found is this way REQUIRES a ramdisk bootup, you can get it without one if you do it by hand, but honestly it is easier and half the time better to use one, at least on modern machines.

I would disagree with the gnome/kde argument on speed myself, but it has been a while since I have bothered with KDE, not only was it slower when I tried it, but it was also harder to work in IMO. But that was a while ago, so take it with a grain of salt.

Seablade

[seablade]

OH yea might make a difference that the majority of the apps I work with are built on the GTK toolkit instead of the QT toolkit though;)

Seablade

[abf]

definatly.

there is one thing you can do to increase speed even better (i think), and its to keep it pure. That is, if you're going qt + kde....stay there! If you're going gtk + gnome (or xfce) then stay there! Try to not mix and match. It will give you a better overall system look and feel (apps will all look the same) and i believe it will work faster in the big picture. I could be wrong... just speaking from what i've seen.


As for genkernel.... hmm... i wasn't aware of that feature. I always setup everything by hand, even when using genkernel (on my first 2 builds). Although its true you can probably just use genkernel to save time and then rebuild later for the custom thing....oh anyway. beats me. really.

I might do gentoo again over the summer or something, when i ahve lots of time for tweaks. Can't do it over spring break since i'll be out of the country

[seablade]

As for genkernel.... hmm... i wasn't aware of that feature. I always setup everything by hand, even when using genkernel (on my first 2 builds). Although its true you can probably just use genkernel to save time and then rebuild later for the custom thing....oh anyway. beats me. really.


Well not really sure if you understood what I Was saying or not...

The command I use is

genkernel --menuconfig --bootloader=grub all

Or something very similar to that. That way I can still tweak my kernel to my hearts desire and get a custom kernel setup, and genkernel takes care of the annoyingness of setting up grub as no matter how basic that should be, it always seems to be the stumbling block for not only me but many others as well as it is probably the least(And concurrently worst) documented step IMO.

Seablade

[abf]

oh interesting.

i always setup grub manually, screwed up once, but then i got it and now i feel very comfortable around the grub.list

[mohapi]

Thanks very much for all the advice. I appreciate your opinions. I think, for now, I will stick with Ubuntu until I've mastered more of the details. I was quite excited the other night when I posted this thread, but now I have a better sense of my technical skills, and I think I would do better to stay the course for another week or so, until I feel more confident.

I still plan on trying Gentoo as a learning experiment. I have a feeling if I keep that mindset and don't dwell on the hurdles, I'll do all right.

When I do make the attempt, I'll let you all know.

Thanks again. :D

[seablade]

Have fun, ubuntu is definitly one of the better distros I have used.

Seablade

[drizek]

just want to say that before i used gentoo i was really afraid that it would take a really long time to compile stuff. however, with ccache it really cuts the time down a lot when recompiling a package(i did kdelibs in about 20 minutes today).

Once you have the system running, compiling pretty much becomes a non-issue. just open up a terminal somewhere and let it compile away while you go on using the system.

I started using gentoo mostly because i wanted to learn how to recompile my kernel so that i could undervolt. After seeing the dramatic speed increases i decided to stick with it. The more i use it, the more i love it. portage is just amazing compared to apt. Since the entire system is built around compiling your own stuff, getting something like E17 from cvs is a breeze compared to ubuntu, whre you rely on precompiled packages that are broken half the time. BTW, E17 really kicks ass, if you havent used it yet, try it.

[seablade]

BTW, E17 really kicks ass, if you havent used it yet, try it.


Agreed though some of the modules are still giving me occasional problems, I cant get snapshots with that module for whatever reason, and the engage module stopped working for me as well strangely. Mount I cant even see unfortunatly.

But the Window Manager is great, nice lightweight, eyecandy.... That shouldnt be possible.

Seablade

[tlo]

how do you get E17 in ubuntu, do you have to make your own package? the one on apt-get is E16, and unless i missed it E17 still hasn't been released yet, let alone stable enough for ubuntu

[seablade]

I believe I heard there is a package out for it, but you can always do a compile from source using the snapshots on freedesktop.org or from CVS if not.

Seablade

[abf]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=97199&highlight=howto+e17 <---howto e17 in ubuntu

personally i am pretty happy with xfce as of right now on my ubuntu :)

[bigtrouble77]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=97199&highlight=howto+e17 <---howto e17 in ubuntu

personally i am pretty happy with xfce as of right now on my ubuntu :)
If you install e17 use the way abf linked to above. There's another howto in ubuntu forums that is very unstable, but it's quicker to get running.