On Wed, 08 Feb 2006 03:24:45 -0800, Hugh Janus wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have pretty much always been a Suse linux user. I initially first
> installed it simply to see what it was like but have since become a
> huge fan. I don't do any linux programming or anything particuarly
> technical with it other than listen to music, email, internet,
> documents, spreadsheets, MSN/AOL messenger etc. All the common stuff.
> Possibly the most 'advanced' thing i use is VMWare in order to run
> Windows 2000 for my .NET programming.

mono?

> I stayed with Suse because it
> was always the only distro to pick up and install and configure all my
> hardware without messing around. Also, because YaST is a superb tool
> to install new apps and configure the machine. The problem with Suse I
> find is that it is a little slow and so bloated, and since Opensuse 10
> came out, my wireless card (a Netgear WG311T with an Atheros chipset)
> is no longer detected. And no matter what I try with ndiswrapper or
> madwifi it will not work. So, I am still with Suse 9.3.
>
> I have always read about Gentoo being so quick and only having the most
> useful packages (the fact that it comes on 1 CD as opposed to a DVD is
> also a hint). So, I am considering switching to Gentoo. However, I
> have a few doubts that I am hoping people here can answer.
>
> 1.) Is it really faster or is that just a myth? My machine is an
> AMD64 3400 with 1GB of ram.

If you build from a stage one and optimize for your hardware it can indeed
be much faster. It is significantly faster on my mini-itx via epia m10k
than any out of the box distro. On the other hand, it took me about a week
following the via epia wiki to do the install.

> 2.) Is there a similar tool to YaST for installing new packages and
> configuring the machine? I understand the benefit of compiling from
> source but, where possible, I would prefer to avoid that and the
> headaches that come with it!

yes. emerge is the main tool for packages - I've used kpackage. What
headaches?

> 3.) I assume there are not the MP3 restrictions like with Suse now?

Not aware of that problem.

> 4.) How good is it at detecting hardware and has anyone managed to get
> a WG311T card, or something with the same chipset, working?
> 5.) Does it come with loads of delicious eye candy and customisations
> for KDE which look so cool!!!????!!
> 6.) Is it worth the change?

In your case, probably not. I'd suggest you look at some Debian
derivatives. I've been particularly happy with kubuntu (actually I did a
ubuntu install and then installed the kubuntu desktop since I prefer gdm
to kdm), and elive - if you want fast, try elive (it's available as a live
CD and can easily be installed to the desktop - uses enlightenment for the
desktop which is a bit of a change, but fast and efficient). The latest
Debian install DVD is quite easy to install.

>
>
> Thanks,
> Hugh

Stig Mogensen wrote:
> Hugh Janus wrote:

> But Gentoo switches profile once in a while.....like, from 2004.2 to 2004.3
> to....to 2005.1 and so on. But when that upgrade is relevant for you, you
> will either know what to do, or what to Google for.

portage will give a message how to upgrade the profile when it's time.


>> (i say breaking because I once tried a KDE update on fedora and my
>> entire sound system stopped working after the update :-( )
>
> There are no guarantees here either. But my KDE upgrades have all gone
> smoothly.

There are people who got problems with some updates that others hasn't, things
depends on USE options set in /etc/make.conf and the arch that been used. To
get a higher amount of packages that are stable and works well then use x86,
but of course that wouldn't give all the power from the amd64.


//Aho

>From Distrowatch.org talking about Gentoo...

"On the other hand, installing Gentoo and turning it into a full-blown
distribution with the latest graphical desktops, multimedia and
development tools is tedious and long - count on several days even on a
computer with a fast processor."

This scares me! Will it really take days to install Linux + KDE +
OpenOffice and all the usual common apps?

Hugh Janus wrote:
>>From Distrowatch.org talking about Gentoo...
>
> "On the other hand, installing Gentoo and turning it into a full-blown
> distribution with the latest graphical desktops, multimedia and
> development tools is tedious and long - count on several days even on a
> computer with a fast processor."
>
> This scares me! Will it really take days to install Linux + KDE +
> OpenOffice and all the usual common apps?

I don't know when this was written, of course if you install from stage1 you
will spend a long time to get your system up.

The default is to install from stage3, this goes a bit faster as yuo have the
base of the system precompiled, and to speed things up even more you can use
the second CD where you have the most common packages prebuilt. You can within
a hour or two have a running working system up. There are some packages in the
portage that are offered as prebuilts for x86/amd64 like OO, FireFox...

You have a quite fast CPU, you will maybe spend a day to get it up if you
compile from source, specially OO takes time and space to build. Keep in mind
that when you update something in Gentoo, it won't take those 30sec it did
with those prebuilt packages as in SuSe, as you have to build the binary
before you get to the install stage (this is done automatically, so you don't
need to do something extra). In this way Gentoo is a quite slow distro.



//Aho

Hugh Janus <my-junk-account@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> From Distrowatch.org talking about Gentoo...
>
> "On the other hand, installing Gentoo and turning it into a full-blown
> distribution with the latest graphical desktops, multimedia and
> development tools is tedious and long - count on several days even on
> a computer with a fast processor."
>
> This scares me! Will it really take days to install Linux + KDE +
> OpenOffice and all the usual common apps?

Yes. Unless you're a pro with a very fast box, count on at least a full
day, and probably more if you pull in some big apps.

Regards,
--
*Art

Hugh Janus wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have pretty much always been a Suse linux user. I initially first
> installed it simply to see what it was like but have since become a
> huge fan. I don't do any linux programming or anything particuarly
> technical with it other than listen to music, email, internet,
> documents, spreadsheets, MSN/AOL messenger etc. All the common stuff.
> Possibly the most 'advanced' thing i use is VMWare in order to run
> Windows 2000 for my .NET programming. I stayed with Suse because it
> was always the only distro to pick up and install and configure all my
> hardware without messing around. Also, because YaST is a superb tool
> to install new apps and configure the machine. The problem with Suse I
> find is that it is a little slow and so bloated, and since Opensuse 10
> came out, my wireless card (a Netgear WG311T with an Atheros chipset)
> is no longer detected. And no matter what I try with ndiswrapper or
> madwifi it will not work. So, I am still with Suse 9.3.
>
> I have always read about Gentoo being so quick and only having the most
> useful packages (the fact that it comes on 1 CD as opposed to a DVD is
> also a hint). So, I am considering switching to Gentoo. However, I
> have a few doubts that I am hoping people here can answer.
>
> 1.) Is it really faster or is that just a myth? My machine is an
> AMD64 3400 with 1GB of ram.
> 2.) Is there a similar tool to YaST for installing new packages and
> configuring the machine? I understand the benefit of compiling from
> source but, where possible, I would prefer to avoid that and the
> headaches that come with it!
> 3.) I assume there are not the MP3 restrictions like with Suse now?
> 4.) How good is it at detecting hardware and has anyone managed to get
> a WG311T card, or something with the same chipset, working?
> 5.) Does it come with loads of delicious eye candy and customisations
> for KDE which look so cool!!!????!!
> 6.) Is it worth the change?
>
>
> Thanks,
> Hugh
>

Hugh,

As everyone else (with more experience than me in Gentoo) has already
answered your questions rather well, I'll add my two cents worth.
Here's what I can answer. . .

1. Yes, it is faster, especially on older hardware, when it is
installed a certain way. Use the stage 3 built for your cpu
architecture Also, use the packages CD that corresponds to your
architecture. This is the best speed to time-to-install ratio I've
found. You can squeeze more juice out of the speed orange by compiling
everything, but as others have noted, this takes quite a bit of time,
and can introduce bugs with improper USE flags.

4. Genkernel worked well on my older computers. Haven't gotten around
to switching my newest one over yet (I'm still experimenting) to comment
on new hardware. I compiled my own kernel on both my old systems. It's
worth the time on older hardware, especially if you turn the system on
every time you use it. It does make a difference in boot time because
it doesn't have to detect the hardware each time, and it doesn't load
drivers it doesn't need.

5. Eye candy. Not a Gentoo issue. But I can say this. Other distros
do add in some of their own customizations and utilities into the GUIs
that they ship. If you're looking for speed, I'd recommend going away
from KDE, as it is a system hog. Gnome is a little better. But to
stick with a KDE style interface that's lightweight, I'd give XFCE a
try. It's fairly lightweight, has a 'lauchpad' at the bottom of the
screen, and an open window bar at the top of the screen. Maybe take a
look at Fluxbox as well. Both have themes that are readily available on
the web that may satisfy your taste for candy

6. You be the judge if it's worth the change. So far, I like it. I'm
probaby going to switch from my Red-Hat install to Gentoo. I'm just
giving it a little more time to figure things out before I totally
commit. I'd recommend the same approach to anyone.

Lastly, I'll add one more recomendation. I've installed Gentoo about 10
times in the past month. Tried a variety of variations each time.
Sometimes, I just screwed it up. I eventually made a set of bash
scripts and saved them to a floppy. Now when I install Gentoo, I use
the scripts. If something goes wrong, or is not how you like it, you
can go back and look at what you did. It also serves as a great
disaster recovery tool if you need to reinstall Gentoo the way it was
before. I can post my scripts here in a day or do, if anyone is interested.

"Hugh Janus" <my-junk-account@hotmail.com> writes:
>This scares me! Will it really take days to install Linux + KDE +
>OpenOffice and all the usual common apps?

Probably not more than a day on your box. I did two installs a little
over a year ago, both on Athlon 64 3200 boxes from Stage 3, and
neither needed more than 8 hours for compiling all the stuff we wanted
to install (this included a bunch of stuff, but not KDE, not sure
about OpenOffice).

Concerning running speed: you won't see any speedup from compiling for
your CPU model with 64-bit code, because the binaries of binary
distributions are also compiled for the Athlon 64. The main speedup
you will se is if you are using lean applications instead of bloated
ones, but that's mostly distribution-independent.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html

On Wed, 08 Feb 2006 07:54:55 -0800, Hugh Janus wrote:

> Thanks everyone. This has given me a lot to consider! I think i'll
> give it a try anyway to see how it fits in with me.
>
> I especially like the fact of Gentoo that there are no version updates
> for it. Instead, I can just execute "emerge --sync && emerge -uDN
> world" it seems and have the system brought up to date. Does anyone
> know if this includes the latest version(s) of KDE etc? i.e. If I
> install now, can I use "emerge" to upgrade to KDE4 when it comes out
> without breaking the whole system?
>
> (i say breaking because I once tried a KDE update on fedora and my
> entire sound system stopped working after the update :-( )

I have recently done some installs and upgrades with (k)ubuntu - installed
an old version and upgraded with no difficulty. Debian is like that.

Hugh Janus wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have pretty much always been a Suse linux user. I initially first
> installed it simply to see what it was like but have since become a
> huge fan. I don't do any linux programming or anything particuarly
> technical with it other than listen to music, email, internet,
> documents, spreadsheets, MSN/AOL messenger etc. All the common stuff.
> Possibly the most 'advanced' thing i use is VMWare in order to run
> Windows 2000 for my .NET programming. I stayed with Suse because it
> was always the only distro to pick up and install and configure all my
> hardware without messing around. Also, because YaST is a superb tool
> to install new apps and configure the machine. The problem with Suse I
> find is that it is a little slow and so bloated, and since Opensuse 10
> came out, my wireless card (a Netgear WG311T with an Atheros chipset)
> is no longer detected. And no matter what I try with ndiswrapper or
> madwifi it will not work. So, I am still with Suse 9.3.
>
> I have always read about Gentoo being so quick and only having the most
> useful packages (the fact that it comes on 1 CD as opposed to a DVD is
> also a hint). So, I am considering switching to Gentoo. However, I
> have a few doubts that I am hoping people here can answer.
>
> 1.) Is it really faster or is that just a myth? My machine is an
> AMD64 3400 with 1GB of ram.
> 2.) Is there a similar tool to YaST for installing new packages and
> configuring the machine? I understand the benefit of compiling from
> source but, where possible, I would prefer to avoid that and the
> headaches that come with it!
> 3.) I assume there are not the MP3 restrictions like with Suse now?
> 4.) How good is it at detecting hardware and has anyone managed to get
> a WG311T card, or something with the same chipset, working?
> 5.) Does it come with loads of delicious eye candy and customisations
> for KDE which look so cool!!!????!!
> 6.) Is it worth the change?
>
>
> Thanks,
> Hugh
>
Gentoo CAN be faster when built to take advantage of the
features offered by a particular processor. This is most important
though, for older cpu's that need all the help they can get.
Check out the JackAss variant of Gentoo, it is built with
some insane settings and makes the best use of the 3.4.4 gnu compiler.

On Wed, 08 Feb 2006 03:24:45 -0800, Hugh Janus wrote:

> 1.) Is it really faster or is that just a myth? My machine is an
> AMD64 3400 with 1GB of ram.

Because Gentoo compiles from source, everything about it can be precisely
customised to your particular system. It can be made to take full
advantage of the extra instructions provided by the AMD64 processor.

Of course, the downside to customisation is that you have to DIY. This
take time and some level of expertise. If you don't have either then
Gentoo probably isn't for you.

> 2.) Is there a similar tool to YaST for installing new packages and
> configuring the machine? I understand the benefit of compiling from
> source but, where possible, I would prefer to avoid that and the
> headaches that come with it!

If you don't want to compile from source then there are other Linux
distros better suited to your needs. Try ubuntu <http://www.ubuntu.com/>.

> 3.) I assume there are not the MP3 restrictions like with Suse now?

Afaik, there are no patent-based restrictions in Gentoo. Users contribute
ebuilds, and Gentoo accepts them (if of decent quality).

> 4.) How good is it at detecting hardware and has anyone managed to get
> a WG311T card, or something with the same chipset, working?

Whilst the LiveCD detects hardware pretty well, you're encouraged to
compile your own kernel so you need to know what's in your computer. That
said, you can easily use the LiveCD to find out.

> 5.) Does it come with loads of delicious eye candy and customisations
> for KDE which look so cool!!!????!!

Customisation is what Gentoo is all about!

> 6.) Is it worth the change?

Depends. It'll probably take a few days of your life to learn
enough about Linux to install. If you're willing to learn, then the
customisation Gentoo offers is well worth the effort!

Hth,
--
Ben M.

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