Some of the packages I was looking at were "masked". And even if I type the exact name it refuses to download it. This is fine with me, if the people at Gentoo think it is unstable with their distro at the current point in time then so be it.
i use gentoo. you can get around the mask like this:
i want to install package "foo-bar".
emerge -p foo-bar
-p means "pretend". it'll list out all the deps, and show you if anything is masked. i always do pretend before i install, incase theres a shitload of deps, that i dont feel like compiling. if shit is masked, you can often do:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~`arch`" emerge -p foo-bar
putting ACCEPT_KEYWORDS with a tilde before your arch into the environment will allow emerge to look at the unstables. once you've got an `emerge -p` that has all its ducks in a row, you can drop the -p (and add in superuser privs).
often (too often actually), packages are available as stable or unstable on another platform (like x86), when they are quite stable on ppc. so i, more frequently than i probably should, i use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86 x86 ~ppc ppc". if you are fine with always using a certain keyword, you can add it to your make.conf in /etc. less through it, and search for ACCEPT_KEYWORDS. theres a paragraph about adding unstables. they warn you in caps not to use other archs in your accept_keywords, but i aint been burned yet. since ur on x86 it probably wont be an issue.
oh, and for the install, i did stage3. i figured, if theres anything in particular i find lagging, i can recompile it. and i often do. but i dont need to compile everything. but, as it turns out, i haven't used binaries since the install. and i gotta say, a personally compiled firebird is quite noticeably faster than the mosx, opendarwin, *bsd, debian, and ydl binaries i'd used. and i'm on a pretty shitty system.
The main reason that packages are masked is due to security. When a new update of a package is released it hasn't been fully tested and quite often there are security flaws attached. So having the latestest of the lastest software as it appears sounds nice but there are risks attached. Debian is the best example of this. If you look at their package line you'll notice it is way behind in the latest package, Debian will only include software that has been fully tested and all the flaws sorted out, this may be a few months or never it all depends on how active develpoment is on the said software.
As for being happy with a particular distro, You never will be. You've grown us to slackware, it's what you know and love and i can tell you now that no RPM based distro is going to make you happy. It may save you time in getting a base distro up and running but you'll be chipping it away bit by bit trying to fine tune and getting it secure. But what you have to remember that all Linux distro's are essentionally still what linux was made to be, A hobby.
I'm not having a poke m8, But with linux no matter what version you choose your going to have to take the rough with the smooth. If you wanted to pay for a distro then i would suggest you try xandross which is based on debian and is what corel started on but didn't finnish. Not only do you get apt-get which is similar to gentoo's emerge system but you can but not always use RPM's. The standard version is peanuts where the deluxe version comes with code-weavers plugin enabling you too use MS office, IE and internet plugins. In the end the choice is yours and i hope you find a balance some where
i use gentoo. you can get around the mask like this:
--snip-- ... if shit is masked, you can often do:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~`arch`" emerge -p foo-bar
putting ACCEPT_KEYWORDS with a tilde before your arch into the environment will allow emerge to look at the unstables. once you've got an `emerge -p` that has all its ducks in a row, you can drop the -p (and add in superuser privs).
Ahhh! I see. Interesting indeed. That's a great default setting but I wish they would make that clear in the installation handbook. BTW, the handbook did a great job of walking me through the installation. Someone new to Linux might be able to fallow it but might not understand what's going on... while I was really comfortable with it, I do remember how things were for me two years ago when I first started using Linux and a Gentoo install would have had me about to cry. I think they need more details on what exactly each command is doing, more so to ease the user when installing.
Quote:
Originally posted by thuh Freak
--snip--
oh, and for the install, i did stage3. i figured, if theres anything in particular i find lagging, i can recompile it. and i often do. but i dont need to compile everything. but, as it turns out, i haven't used binaries since the install. and i gotta say, a personally compiled firebird is quite noticeably faster than the mosx, opendarwin, *bsd, debian, and ydl binaries i'd used. and i'm on a pretty shitty system.
So you understand how Gentoo has such a great strength in this field. Like I said, if you don't compile it yourself then what's the point of using Gentoo over any binary package based distro besides personal preference? I did a stage2 install and find everything to be snappy compared to other distros... I might do a stage1 install before switching distros just to get an idea of how it works.
As for being happy with a particular distro, You never will be. You've grown us to slackware, it's what you know and love and i can tell you now that no RPM based distro is going to make you happy. It may save you time in getting a base distro up and running but you'll be chipping it away bit by bit trying to fine tune and getting it secure. But what you have to remember that all Linux distro's are essentionally still what linux was made to be, A hobby.
You seem to be right about this so far. I am always tempted to go back to Slackware because most of the distros that I have tried just annoy me with their choices. Right now my top three is 1) Slackware 2) SuSE 3) DSL -- SuSE for its setup ease, DSL for its size/useability ratio.
One important statment I'll make is:
No matter how many times I look back at Windows, it seems that Linux will never leave my thoughts.
I remember when I first joined AI, I was quite pro-Windows, and pro-Choice(in platforms). Now I can't seem to "dig" Windows as much, Linux has taken over, much more interesting to play with. I still use Windows almost everyday between school and my clients (I fix computers) but as of this point on my home computer will not touch Windows again untill Longhorn comes out. And even then it will be just to poke around.
So you understand how Gentoo has such a great strength in this field. Like I said, if you don't compile it yourself then what's the point of using Gentoo over any binary package based distro besides personal preference? I did a stage2 install and find everything to be snappy compared to other distros... I might do a stage1 install before switching distros just to get an idea of how it works.
well, for me, gentoo makes the self compiling insanely easier. i dont have to become familiar with a package to compile it. the only other mostly-source distro i've used is opendarwin coupled with fink; not even close in source'dness i know, but well its the closest comparable thing i've used (well, i hit {open,net}bsd each for a bit, and was compiling a lot of stuff, but i didn't much like their make approach). fink, i think, is a great compiling utility. if you find a prog you want, you fink it, and it compiles. gentoo has a better system though, because you have a lot of configurability over compilation flags, and options. i'm relatively new to gentoo (only been with it a few months), and recently i discovered "use" flags. if you have a package, like mod_php, and you want mysql access in your php pages, you can fill the USE env var with "mysql", and pass it to emerge. emerge knows what configure flags and dependancies are necessary to hit it.
USE=mysql emerge -p mod_php
but, and a little cooler i think, emerge knows that i've already installed mysql. so, if i install mod_php after mysql, mysql is already in the use flag. so mod_php gets it, and any other packages i emerge grab it too. then, of course, if i decide that i dont want any php pages to hit mysql, i can emerge without that use flag:
USE=-mysql emerge mod_php
and wammo, the php module loses mysql access. if your curious what use flags any given prog has, you do:
etcat -u mod_php
as far as comparing gentoo to mostly-binary distros, well, i dont think they, in general, have as good compiling access when you want it. i used debian, and honestly didn't try any compile tools they might have had (is there a apt-src or something? apt-get --source?). i found myself grabbing a lot of tarballs, configuring manually, then discovering dependancy hell. i'd wiped it out to go back to mosx for a bit, then remembered why i went to gnu/linux. i figured at that point i should try another distro, and gave gentoo a whirl. i've loved almost every minute of it. another thing i like about gentoo, is 2.6 was available, and it wudn for debian. at the time i thought 2.6 would fix my ieee1394 issues, turned out i needed to do a little kernel hacking.
one thing i don't like about gentoo, and its probably b/c i haven't found something to do this automatically (yet, well aside from selfmade scripts), is it leaves the tarballs on the hd (in /usr/portage/distfiles). so after you emerge a lot, you have an assload of sometimes large files just laying around taking up space. whenever i'm low, i know i can free up like 500M or so from .../distfiles. i read that this was intentional, and it makes sense, so if u re-emerge a prog you don't redownload. with broadband the dl step aint such an issue tho, but hd space is.
Why not write a bash script to do the work?.. then run it as a cron job every few days.
USE is so useful. But don't worry if you have not been using a USE setting in make.conf... Gentoo detects most hardware for USE during the compile. I like it because you can tell it what not to compile for... like "-kde","-qt" and "-arts"...
I would suggest that you take a look at VectorLinux or Yoper. VectorLinux is Slackware based (and package compatible) and it sets up a nice desktop. Yoper is optimized for newer hardware and uses RedHat's Kudzu. I have used both and find them well done.
Comments
Originally posted by \\/\\/ickes
Some of the packages I was looking at were "masked". And even if I type the exact name it refuses to download it. This is fine with me, if the people at Gentoo think it is unstable with their distro at the current point in time then so be it.
i use gentoo. you can get around the mask like this:
i want to install package "foo-bar".
emerge -p foo-bar
-p means "pretend". it'll list out all the deps, and show you if anything is masked. i always do pretend before i install, incase theres a shitload of deps, that i dont feel like compiling. if shit is masked, you can often do:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~`arch`" emerge -p foo-bar
putting ACCEPT_KEYWORDS with a tilde before your arch into the environment will allow emerge to look at the unstables. once you've got an `emerge -p` that has all its ducks in a row, you can drop the -p (and add in superuser privs).
often (too often actually), packages are available as stable or unstable on another platform (like x86), when they are quite stable on ppc. so i, more frequently than i probably should, i use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86 x86 ~ppc ppc". if you are fine with always using a certain keyword, you can add it to your make.conf in /etc. less through it, and search for ACCEPT_KEYWORDS. theres a paragraph about adding unstables. they warn you in caps not to use other archs in your accept_keywords, but i aint been burned yet. since ur on x86 it probably wont be an issue.
oh, and for the install, i did stage3. i figured, if theres anything in particular i find lagging, i can recompile it. and i often do. but i dont need to compile everything. but, as it turns out, i haven't used binaries since the install. and i gotta say, a personally compiled firebird is quite noticeably faster than the mosx, opendarwin, *bsd, debian, and ydl binaries i'd used. and i'm on a pretty shitty system.
As for being happy with a particular distro, You never will be. You've grown us to slackware, it's what you know and love and i can tell you now that no RPM based distro is going to make you happy. It may save you time in getting a base distro up and running but you'll be chipping it away bit by bit trying to fine tune and getting it secure. But what you have to remember that all Linux distro's are essentionally still what linux was made to be, A hobby.
I'm not having a poke m8, But with linux no matter what version you choose your going to have to take the rough with the smooth. If you wanted to pay for a distro then i would suggest you try xandross which is based on debian and is what corel started on but didn't finnish. Not only do you get apt-get which is similar to gentoo's emerge system but you can but not always use RPM's. The standard version is peanuts where the deluxe version comes with code-weavers plugin enabling you too use MS office, IE and internet plugins. In the end the choice is yours and i hope you find a balance some where
Originally posted by thuh Freak
i use gentoo. you can get around the mask like this:
--snip-- ... if shit is masked, you can often do:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~`arch`" emerge -p foo-bar
putting ACCEPT_KEYWORDS with a tilde before your arch into the environment will allow emerge to look at the unstables. once you've got an `emerge -p` that has all its ducks in a row, you can drop the -p (and add in superuser privs).
Ahhh! I see. Interesting indeed. That's a great default setting but I wish they would make that clear in the installation handbook. BTW, the handbook did a great job of walking me through the installation. Someone new to Linux might be able to fallow it but might not understand what's going on... while I was really comfortable with it, I do remember how things were for me two years ago when I first started using Linux and a Gentoo install would have had me about to cry. I think they need more details on what exactly each command is doing, more so to ease the user when installing.
Originally posted by thuh Freak
--snip--
oh, and for the install, i did stage3. i figured, if theres anything in particular i find lagging, i can recompile it. and i often do. but i dont need to compile everything. but, as it turns out, i haven't used binaries since the install. and i gotta say, a personally compiled firebird is quite noticeably faster than the mosx, opendarwin, *bsd, debian, and ydl binaries i'd used. and i'm on a pretty shitty system.
So you understand how Gentoo has such a great strength in this field. Like I said, if you don't compile it yourself then what's the point of using Gentoo over any binary package based distro besides personal preference? I did a stage2 install and find everything to be snappy compared to other distros... I might do a stage1 install before switching distros just to get an idea of how it works.
Originally posted by cybermonkey
As for being happy with a particular distro, You never will be. You've grown us to slackware, it's what you know and love and i can tell you now that no RPM based distro is going to make you happy. It may save you time in getting a base distro up and running but you'll be chipping it away bit by bit trying to fine tune and getting it secure. But what you have to remember that all Linux distro's are essentionally still what linux was made to be, A hobby.
You seem to be right about this so far. I am always tempted to go back to Slackware because most of the distros that I have tried just annoy me with their choices. Right now my top three is 1) Slackware 2) SuSE 3) DSL -- SuSE for its setup ease, DSL for its size/useability ratio.
One important statment I'll make is:
No matter how many times I look back at Windows, it seems that Linux will never leave my thoughts.
I remember when I first joined AI, I was quite pro-Windows, and pro-Choice(in platforms). Now I can't seem to "dig" Windows as much, Linux has taken over, much more interesting to play with. I still use Windows almost everyday between school and my clients (I fix computers) but as of this point on my home computer will not touch Windows again untill Longhorn comes out. And even then it will be just to poke around.
Originally posted by \\/\\/ickes
So you understand how Gentoo has such a great strength in this field. Like I said, if you don't compile it yourself then what's the point of using Gentoo over any binary package based distro besides personal preference? I did a stage2 install and find everything to be snappy compared to other distros... I might do a stage1 install before switching distros just to get an idea of how it works.
well, for me, gentoo makes the self compiling insanely easier. i dont have to become familiar with a package to compile it. the only other mostly-source distro i've used is opendarwin coupled with fink; not even close in source'dness i know, but well its the closest comparable thing i've used (well, i hit {open,net}bsd each for a bit, and was compiling a lot of stuff, but i didn't much like their make approach). fink, i think, is a great compiling utility. if you find a prog you want, you fink it, and it compiles. gentoo has a better system though, because you have a lot of configurability over compilation flags, and options. i'm relatively new to gentoo (only been with it a few months), and recently i discovered "use" flags. if you have a package, like mod_php, and you want mysql access in your php pages, you can fill the USE env var with "mysql", and pass it to emerge. emerge knows what configure flags and dependancies are necessary to hit it.
USE=mysql emerge -p mod_php
but, and a little cooler i think, emerge knows that i've already installed mysql. so, if i install mod_php after mysql, mysql is already in the use flag. so mod_php gets it, and any other packages i emerge grab it too. then, of course, if i decide that i dont want any php pages to hit mysql, i can emerge without that use flag:
USE=-mysql emerge mod_php
and wammo, the php module loses mysql access. if your curious what use flags any given prog has, you do:
etcat -u mod_php
as far as comparing gentoo to mostly-binary distros, well, i dont think they, in general, have as good compiling access when you want it. i used debian, and honestly didn't try any compile tools they might have had (is there a apt-src or something? apt-get --source?). i found myself grabbing a lot of tarballs, configuring manually, then discovering dependancy hell. i'd wiped it out to go back to mosx for a bit, then remembered why i went to gnu/linux. i figured at that point i should try another distro, and gave gentoo a whirl. i've loved almost every minute of it. another thing i like about gentoo, is 2.6 was available, and it wudn for debian. at the time i thought 2.6 would fix my ieee1394 issues, turned out i needed to do a little kernel hacking.
one thing i don't like about gentoo, and its probably b/c i haven't found something to do this automatically (yet, well aside from selfmade scripts), is it leaves the tarballs on the hd (in /usr/portage/distfiles). so after you emerge a lot, you have an assload of sometimes large files just laying around taking up space. whenever i'm low, i know i can free up like 500M or so from .../distfiles. i read that this was intentional, and it makes sense, so if u re-emerge a prog you don't redownload. with broadband the dl step aint such an issue tho, but hd space is.
[wow, i write too much]
USE is so useful. But don't worry if you have not been using a USE setting in make.conf... Gentoo detects most hardware for USE during the compile. I like it because you can tell it what not to compile for... like "-kde","-qt" and "-arts"...
Originally posted by \\/\\/ickes
I would suggest that you take a look at VectorLinux or Yoper. VectorLinux is Slackware based (and package compatible) and it sets up a nice desktop. Yoper is optimized for newer hardware and uses RedHat's Kudzu. I have used both and find them well done.
You were right, hehe. Vector Linux rocks.
Originally posted by Barto
You were right, hehe. Vector Linux rocks.
Glad you like it...
To bad it's not more up to date... but hey that's what the full compatibility with Slackware 9/9.1 is for, just use Slack's more updated packages.
I hope they get some new blood soon, for it looks like they have been asleep for a bit.
Either way it runs great on older hardware... a P133 will fly with VectorLinux.