Talk:Gentoo Linux

Pro / Con section

This is amateurish. It's unsourced, and it's presented in a very defensive tit-for-tat manner. Chris Cunningham 16:27, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I consider myself, however, unable to rewrite this in a satisfactory manner. --oKtosiTe talk 08:15, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Security Vulnerabilities?

What's the point of this section? I'm going to move it into external links. Kelvie 11:45, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

"forked" versions of gcc?

"Daniel Robbins and the other contributors experimented with "forked" versions of gcc, finding a version that gave a 10% to 200% speed increase over the "official" gcc" <- I have been unable to verify this anywhere. I found some mention of a third-party (non-gcc based) compiler that was used until it was merged with gcc 2.95, which provided a "10% real-world performance increase", but no mention of any super-fast forks. I believe this can be removed, and as others have said, this article is seriously in need of cleanup. -amp_man 26 June 2007

The source for these statements is http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/articles/making-the-distro-p2.xml , which is sourced from http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-dist2.html . These two sentences are a summary of that article, and don't go into the whole history of the "forked" gcc project, known as [:EGCS:], or Cygnus, etc. The article supports an upper limit of 90% increases for some packages, so the 200% seems unsourced. JohnWhitlock (talk) 04:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

less secure & less stable than other linux versions?

"A disadvantage to this is that system administrators are forced to keep their system up-to-date to keep their system secure, which makes Gentoo less stable or less secure in comparison with most other Linux distributions."

sorry, but this statement is simply not true - the other distros also needs to be updated to be update-to-date & secure

even when using unstable (~x86, ~amd64) it is pretty stable (which of course depends on the knowledge of the user: e.g. which packages would rather be omitted / masked) . why should it be less secure ? -> take gentoo hardened (switch to hardened profile / use hardened tarball), in my opinion it is one of the most secure and stable systems available :) (pretty subjective - I know ;) ) Medwikier (talk) 22:12, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Reference to sparc port.

Hi,

I'm under the impression from the Gentoo community that the distro only officially supports sparc64, now. Using the word sparc in the article suggests that it is also maintained for 32 bit sparc. I think this should be checked and possibly altered.

Many thanks,

Chris.

Chris debian 23:23, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

it is no longer officially supported for 32 bit sparc. it can still be installed on 32bit sparc however (both architectures are roled into one release...) although i have no idea if any updates are being made to the 32bit part of it anymore.

Gaurdro 04:00, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

History deletion

Was there a reason the part in the history section detailing the recent join/leave of drobbins, and the subsequent part about him still being the legal president of the foundation was removed? The person who removed it only has that single edit to their IP, and though i could see how the second section might need some fixing up to make it less biased, the first part about the CoC wasn't biased in any way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gentoo_Linux&diff=150326571&oldid=149587219 is the edit in question.

58.28.136.130 08:48, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

References about Daniels employers are not relevant to the Gentoo project or foundation. Once he left, he has left, period. Who he went to work for is not part of Gentoo's history.

The CoC was not enacted as a result of a single developer joining or leaving the project. It was a result of unruly behavior on a list that was hindering productivity. The problem existed before a certain person came and left. That it was enacted some time after was just a result of problems over all. Not because of a single person. Note that there are no references to any Gentoo council meetings or summaries on the subject.

There was no controversy last year when the community found out about the foundational status not being updated with the State of New Mexico. If there was, there is no reference of the thread or threads. GWN news item regarding controversy or any facts to support the statement. The trustees did set in motion to correct that and did discuss plans to transfer things to the SFC. Unfortunately that process stalled and the goal was not accomplished. Speculative comments about user support again with no references.

Daniel Robbins always owned the trademark and copyrights of the foundation. Since he was never financially reimbursed for them. Nor has he been whiling to hand them over to the foundation for nothing more than his costs or for free/donation.

Links to blogs are not official Gentoo history. They are the point of view of an individual outside the Gentoo community. At best a Gentoo user, but not an active contributor, developer, or project member. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.199.248.121 (talk) 06:03, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Criticism Part

Errors

The criticism part isn't correct as you can easily check if anything depends on the package you are about to remove with the equery tool. It might be possible that this has been something someone was criticizing but then they were not knowledgeable in what they were criticizing. I think this whole article really is in the need of a serious clean up. The less secure part as someone mentions is also rubbish. By default Gentoo will run no services or daemons meaning the administrator will have better control about what excatly the computer is running. And keeping it updated, well, it's just like keeping other distros updated. I don't know where the person who wrote this had this idea from. Not true anyway. Gentoo hardened project actually gives you the possibility to make some of the tightest secured Linux servers you can have today. Selinux, pax, PIE/SSP, grsecurity, RSBAC and so on. All the tools are there. You here have the possibility with ease to make something secure out of this world. The only thing as good is OpenBSD. I don't have any problems with critics, but it is a good thing to stick to the facts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.203.71.213 (talk) 03:43, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Advantages?

In addition to the "Drawbacks" section, which is very important in the case of a distro such as Gentoo and Slackware, I think that an "Advantages" section may be in order. Dotancohen (talk) 23:29, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Name: Criticism vs. Drawbacks

Is there any justification for calling this section "criticism" vs. "drawbacks"? I believe "drawbacks" is more accurate: "criticism" suggests that the use of gentoo is more a matter of personal taste, or that one could argue that gentoo is universally "good" or "bad". I think "drawbacks" is more accurate--that gentoo is appropriate in some situations and for some users, but not for others. I'm going to change it back; please discuss here if you want to change it back. Cazort (talk) 00:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Versionless documentation

Compared to "versioned" linux distributions, Gentoo has a disadvantage: documentation is harder to maintain because the system evolves continuously (and so the documentation should). With "versioned" disto (such as Ubuntu or Fedora) it's easy to write procedures as far as softwares are "froze" and packaged into a version clearly identifiable. The procedure with stay valid for the distro versions it has been tested on, which is not the case for Gentoo. I think this should be added on the "Drawbacks/Disavantages" because gentoo documentation can quickly become depreciated.-- Nicolas.cuissard (talk) 16:29, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Generally incorrect. The "versioned" documentation you refer to covers things like installing. Gentoo certainly has versioned install documentation that is maintained forever. SpanKY (talk) 11:37, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Internet Connection

Shouldn't this be edited a bit. Some packages, The kernel, and GlibC and such are big but alot of packages seem to be alot smaller download as source rather than binary distributions. The initial install would take a long time on a dialup connection being you would have to build packages that would normaly come with a precompiled system.

When you install it in a desktop PC you need to download, the kernel, glibc, KDE or Gnome or the Desktop enviroment of your choice, xorg, etc, in that machine and the connection it has. With a binary distribution the difference is that you can download the OS, with the packages precompiled, somewhere else, not taking into account the OS, you just need a CDRW or maybe a USB drive, with gentoo, since it installs diferent packages with different patches, you need to use portage to download them the way portage is gonna use them to patch the sources and install them. --QuicksilverPhoenix (talk) 19:42, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Circular Dependencies triggerd by Use-flags

Portage ist unable to solve circular dependencies triggered by use-flags I think this is a major Drawback! Example:

gamin and glib and the fam Useflag:

You have to build glib without fam. Then build gamin. Then rebuild glib with the fam flag. It's very annoying that portage is unable to do this itself.

Version history

Can we compile the version/release history into a similar table?

the table is listed under the releases section at Ubuntu Altonbr (talk) 03:26, 25 February 2008 (UTC) ~~ Gaurdro (talk)

Well, I think the Gentoo releases system is different from Ubuntu's one, so the table has to be adapted... But why not. I suggest you make a draft in a [[User:Altonbr/subpage]] and give its link in here, so we can have a better opinion of it. btw, maybe you should not copy/paste the above table but rather give a link to it, it blows this Talk: page :p -- skiidoo (talk) 21:03, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

What is that? Gentoo has no true "Release Cycle" like that. Things update as needed. There are no "Default Packages" such as COmpiz Fusion. How dose this even apply to this page? The closest you can get. Date 2006.0 released. Date 2006.1 Released. Date 2007.0 Released. This doesn't accomplish anything with how Gentoo is built and updated. All it determines is how many packages you have to emerge once up. Nice only because the pre-builts such as GCC are up to date. A convenience so you don't have to update 113 packages immediately.

They're releases are similar in 2 per year (typically) but it would be fairly difficult to create a similar table to the one for Ubuntu. The updates are only to the stage tarbells and livecd, the packages are continuously updated to the current version instead of being held back with a more traditional release cycle.Gaurdro (talk)

--84.56.220.172 (talk) 10:28, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Currently there is an example in this section:

For example, if a system was installed from a 2005.0 CD, then when version 2005.1 is released an emerge update of the system
effectively upgrades the installed Gentoo system to what would result from a fresh installation based on version 2005.1.

Why does this section mention such old versions like 2005.0? This is no good advertisement for gentoo, i think.

Default User Interface

Nor Console or Framebuffer are types of User Interfaces, they are Command Line Interfaces, besides I dont see a point in having it because every linux distribution has CLI and GUI. --QuicksilverPhoenix (talk) 17:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Wrong a Command line interface is User interface (it allows the user to interact/control, it interfaces), it's just not a Graphical User interface. But I think you meant "Console or Framebuffer Are nor GRAPHICAL user interfaces" right?. But mandrake Linux before 10.0 or so was CLI only .. i think. Oxinabox (talk) 11:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

No, I meant that Framebuffer and Console are not CLI, CLI can have Framebuffer and It is a console(Console is just a physical way of controling a computer, wich means I can have only buttons that do a specific task and it is still a computer console, or you can connect it to a mainframe or a server computer and use the console to have a user interface). Any modern linux distribution or UNIX based OS, like FreeBSD and MacOSX, even Windows, has a CLI. I dont know about Mandrake, I've never used it before, but that you have a CLI and a compiler, means you can install Xorg, or Xfree86, wich in the end means you get a GUI. Gentoo offers two ways to install, which is a LiveCD with minimum packages to install any linux distro, not just Gentoo, you can even BSD, and a LiveCD with a GUI interface, with an installer, that is still not very functional IMO, Gentoo doesnt have a default user interface since you can even use a LiveCD that is not the gentoo's one, for example... Ubuntu's LiveCD can be used to make a fresh gentoo system. And by the way, when I readed the first post I made... It is full of contradictions and I apologize for that. --QuicksilverPhoenix (talk) 11:14, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The promise of optimization

Optimization doesnt mean speed. Just means a cleaner, and stable system in your way. I dont see anywhere in gentoo.org that they promise you more speed. --QuicksilverPhoenix (talk) 02:38, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Optimization means the binary it produces uses all the features available on the system, so it produces more efficient code, which does run faster. To a user, the speedup is normally not noticeable. Gaurdro (talk) 16:24, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Merging some sections

I'd like to move the information under the two sections in "Drawbacks" in "Installation". My reason for wanting to do this is that they are both quite closely related to installation.

Also, I think the information contained in that section can be condensed and updated. For example, there are no longer binary packages of KDE available (at least from official sources), and the time required to compile most packages has been reduced considerably with faster computers (basically most machines less than 2 years old).

Basically, if no one objects, I'll make the changes in the coming days. Baeksu (talk) 08:56, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The drawbacks are there even after the installation, when you need to update, for example openoffice, if you use the source package, you need to recompile it all over again, same goes for new versions of Gnome, and new versions KDE (that now compiles really fast for KDE4). I agree that they are really close, but when you have a working installation I think it still has those drawbacks if you want to keep Gentoo up to date. --QuicksilverPhoenix (talk) 11:03, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Portability, the first to support PowerPC 970 (G5)?

While trying to clear up citation needed concerning the PowerPC 970 under Gentoo_Linux#Portability Portability, I didn't find a conclusive answer as to whether or not Gentoo was the first. Believe me, I'd be the first to leave it there if there was sufficient documentation to back the claim up, but I find it inconclusive. I found the following:

• On Slashdot and Gentoo.org, a working LiveCD was announced on November 11, 2003.
• The claim that Gentoo was running on PowerPC 970 came a couple of months earlier on forums.gentoo.org.
• Yet, further down the aforementioned thread, devs are doubting whether the claims are legit.
• In the end, the thread turns into more of a distro war and no claims have been backed up.
• Based on claims that it was just a rumor/hoax on the net and in the aforementioned thread, I'm inclined to believe that Gentoo was not really the first.
• Also, several reviews of the PowerPC 970 architecture mention Gentoo, but do not at all mention it being first. Just one of the first.

Would it be wise to remove the line from the Portability section until anyone can back the claim up with conclusive evidence? Feel free to investigate further based on my findings. Ewald (talk) 10:21, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to remove it for now, if someone comes up with some evidence please put it back in. Gaurdro (talk) 16:26, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Future and Long term goals

Anything about this side? Sdudah (talk) 02:25, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Citation needed for logo and mascots?

QuicksilverPhoenix added tags for Larry the Cow and Knurt. I don't know if these are strictly necessary tags, as:

• Larry the Cow is prominently featured in Gentoo Branded Artwork, as well as in the Gentoo Wiki

• Knurt the flying saucer is used as part of the sidebar graphics throughout the www.gentoo.org site.

I don't know how to add those as citations, and anyway, I believe the tags are unnecessary. Baeksu (talk) 05:46, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I added the tags because, I don't see why they are unofficial mascots, not if they are mascots or not. QuicksilverPhoenix (talk) 05:59, 3 July 2008 (UTC)