Gentoo Talk

[ngms27]

A serious question.

I'm new to Linux and have just had a quick look at Gentoo.

Is Ubuntu better? If so why?

Thanks

JonnyT

[Dooglus]

A serious question.

I'm new to Linux and have just had a quick look at Gentoo.

Is Ubuntu better? If so why?

Thanks

JonnyT
Simple answer: yes, because it's easier.

Long boring rambling answer:

Back around 6 months ago I finally got sick of Mandriva Linux for various reasons and decided to try something different. I downloaded ISOs of both gentoo and ubuntu (hoary), having heard good things about both of them.

Figuring myself to be somewhat of a computer geek, I thought I'd try gentoo first, 'cos I had heard it was the more "interesting" of the two, from a geek point of view. Gentoo encourages you to compile everything for yourself, possibly resulting in a slightly faster performance, whereas ubuntu spoon feeds you with ready-compiled packages.

After struggling with the installation guidebook for a day I decided to give up and try ubuntu instead. Half an hour later I was up and running with my shiny new GNOME desktop, and haven't looked back since.

Maybe I'm missing out on great things with gentoo, but judging from the complexity of the install process and the rudeness I encountered when trying to get help installing it, I think I'll stay where I am for the time being.

[RagingFuryBlack]

Flat out, ubuntu is alot easier to install. As mentioned above, you're required to compile packages yourself which can be a hassle if you're an inexperienced linux user. Ubuntu provides precompiled packages, and a faster and more user-friendly install.

[aysiu]

I'm new to Linux and have just had a quick look at Gentoo.

Is Ubuntu better? If so why? Better at what? They're just different. Gentoo is slow and takes forever to compile and install software for. It also has many steps to it. However, Gentoo is probably more stable in the long run, and apparently it's dead-simple if you follow the documentation (this is just what I hear--I've never had the patience to try Gentoo, really).

Ubuntu does almost everything automatically for you.

Your pick.

[earobinson]

is coke better tha pepsi, diferent distro for each person,

[ngms27]

OK I want a stable platform to do the following:

1) Trade Financial products for a living
2) Must work well with Java

I've had a few major issues with Netbeans IDE when other Java apps are running. It can kill the machine. I cannot get Eclipse to run at all. All these are on Hoary.

JonnyT

[Dooglus]

[...] you're required to compile packages yourself [...]

I'm not sure if that's true. I think they provide binary packages if you want them (I never got far enough to find out for myself) - but then you lose the advantage that compiling the package yourself gives you, so you may as well be running ubuntu.

[btdown]

Have you ever tried to install gentoo? Try it...then you'll have your answer.

[ngms27]

No,

I'll try that next week when I've got a few hours to spare!

[rejser]

You set up Gentoo once, That once takes a while to do, but then you never touch it again.
If you are going to install a program just type
emerge *programname*
And it will build it according to how you have set up your system.
Packages in ubuntu doesn't care what you got, it installs the bundle with all the options.

[jimcooncat]

I ran a small Gentoo server for about a year before switching to Ubuntu. I've done probably four Gentoo installs total. I very much liked working with Gentoo, they have an excellent community and documentation.

Gentoo is very powerful, and there are folks like me that used it to make simple, stable systems. There is another subculture in their community that pride themselves on developing their system for responsiveness and gaming power. I've seen derogatory references to the performance-minded Gentooers (or maybe the machines they build) as "Ricers". I found it was important to pay attention to forum advice as to which kind of person it was who was talking.

I switched to Ubuntu as I found installation was much easier, and applications are simpler to install with decent defaults. With Gentoo, I definitely had to do my homework on application installation because of the wide range of choices available. I did find it difficult after a while to come up with a good set of USE flags that worked across the board for the applications I was installing. Probably the management of these flags has been improved since I last used it almost a year ago.

I had very little problems getting anything to work on my Gentoo system, but there is a time investment, especially on slow connections or hardware. I found myself starting installations and updates, doing something else for a while, and checking in on them later. Kind of a rhythm thing. I played with dcc and found huge improvements with compliation as long as I had spare hardware available.

I'm still a noob, but I wonder if you might not get many of the same advantages by compiling from source within the Ubuntu framework for those apps you're having difficulties with.

Last I knew, and that was a while ago, the Gentoo Foundation only provided application installations from source, although Portage has the ability to do binary installs as well. There were some third-party binary repositories around.

My advice would be to get on the Gentoo forums and ask around. The community's large and helpful enough you should be able to find someone with experience with your applications.

[ngms27]

But is it better than Ubuntu?

[jimcooncat]

I don't know about better, it depends on what you do with your computer.

It's easier to stay on the "bleeding edge" with Gentoo. It's easier to customize your applications with Gentoo. It's easier to destabilize your system with Gentoo, and sometimes to make it even more stable than Ubuntu's default. It's easier to dig deep in the guts of stuff with Gentoo if you're interested in learning -- though it doesn't mean that if you accomplish stage 1 install that you're a l33t d00d as some think.

It's easier to handle the startup environment with Gentoo with it's variables scheme and the way it handles init. I liked that with the server setup I had.

It's easier to do a server or desktop installation with Ubuntu, and much faster. It's easier to get a stable system with Ubuntu, but if something's unsupported you don't have as many simple choices. It's much easier to install applications with Ubuntu if you don't need to fuss with them more deeply than editing config files. Mostly, Ubuntu just works -- at least it does for me.

Oh yes, it's a hell of a lot easier to provide support for someone else's machine if they've installed Ubuntu (and haven't done anything wonky with it) instead of Gentoo. And it may be easier to find support from others if you're running Ubuntu.

Disclaimer: All of this still just a noob's opinion. No gospel here. Your mileage may significantly vary.

[dbott67]

A serious question.

I'm new to Linux and have just had a quick look at Gentoo.

Is Ubuntu better? If so why?

Thanks

JonnyT

Without trying to start a religious war, Ubuntu is probably more "suitable" for the average user's desktop ("better" is probably not the right description --- and for a server, well that's another holy war! :) ).

I've tried a number of distros but Ubuntu has certainly been the most friendly & intuitive distro to me. I still consider myself a newbie when it comes to linux, although I've used it on and off for 5 or 6 years, taken an advanced UNIX adminstration course, run an AIX box here at work. I've taught NT & Netware network administration at the local college for a number of years, but my comfort-level and "off the top of my head" linux knowledge is no where near that of my Windows knowledge.

If you're looking to get going with little effort, and perhaps learning as you go along, try Ubuntu. Gentoo requires more dedication and time on your part.

Just my 2 cents (Canadian) :)

-Dave

[mlomker]

But is it better than Ubuntu?

I'm surprised that you'd ask the question after reading this thread. Gentoo is only as good as you make it because you have to install and configure everything by hand.

A good indication of your skill level is this: Are you asking questions on the Ubuntu forums or are you answering them? If you are asking questions then you probably don't know linux well enough to install a Gentoo system (just my opinion).

[Ken.Lank]

But is it better than Ubuntu?


I think that "earobinson" put it best when he said:



is coke better tha pepsi, diferent distro for each person


It's a personal thing. Are the Yankees better than the Red Sox? Is a Chevy better than a Ford? Is Linux better than Windows? You will get people who feel very strongly about either side of any of the above arguments. You can ask why someone prefers a distribution, but the only way you can answer which is better for you is to try them.

[Velox Letum]

In my personal experience, I prefer Ubuntu. Why? Its easy, and fast. You click, it's done. Gentoo gives you more options, but they aren't always the fastest or easiest ways, though I must say I do like that it compiles everything. Try Gentoo. If you prefer it, use it. If you like Ubuntu better, use it. Its all preference.

[bsussman]

In theory, the gentoo model should produce a more efficient system since it is built to your spex.

In practice, ubuntu is easier to deal with.

The efficiency difference probably is not worth it unless you are pushing your hardware, which is not a great idea anyway - working without a margin of (error, power, etc) may be fun for a while, but it ain't a pleasure forever.

[jimcooncat]

If you are asking questions then you probably don't know linux well enough to install a Gentoo system (just my opinion).I wouldn't go that far, mlomker! But if I did another Gentoo install, it sure wouldn't be on my only computer -- or at least into a qemu session. The first time I rebooted into a kernel panic, I sure was glad I had another computer on my desk with the Gentoo Handbook open on it.

Then again, I didn't know what I was doing, either!

[mlomker]

I wouldn't go that far, mlomker! But if I did another Gentoo install, it sure wouldn't be on my only computer -- or at least into a qemu session.

I suppose I should have said asking more questions than you are answering but I generally stand by my statement that it is for people who have been working with linux for a while.

I started on Linspire and moved to Ubuntu. I think there is a natural skill progression and that skipping all of the intermediate steps will leave people miserable. I've found the Gentoo how-to's to be well written, but technical. I also don't find very many linux forums to be newbie-friendly...I think a newbie running Gentoo is just asking for trouble.

[NeoSNightmarE]

It's a personal thing. Are the Yankees better than the Red Sox?
Yes.

But as for the question asked, it's a personal preference. As far as things go with Gentoo, there is a lot of time that it consumes when setting up and also with some compiling. I had Gentoo for a while on my XBOX and also seeing others use it and helping them set it up for servers or even Desktops, it's not my cup of tea at this time. Right now, all that I'm looking for is a simple distro that I can mod and do what I want with. And I agree with a lot of the other members who posted, better isn't the right word as each have their strong points.

[bored2k]

Debian/Ubuntu is better suited for (this is an opinion not a statement) server installations and production environments while Gentoo is better suited for home desktop systems or learning purposes. Gentoo needs a lot more care than Debian/Ubuntu/Ubuntu and if you want a system that works right after install, or you don't want to spend time figuring out your system or fixing it, steer away from Gentoo.

Both Debian/Ubuntu/Ubuntu en Gentoo are great distro's with their own merits, and both have an excellent package management system, but while Debian/Ubuntu/Ubuntu is a rock solid workhorse you'll never have to look back at, Gentoo gives you the power and control you need to try out all kinds of things.

Gentoo's portage downloads the sources off a mirror and compiles them for your system, automatically solving dependencies. Debian/Ubuntu/Ubuntu on the other hand has apt, which also solves dependencies for you, but uses binaries instead of sources. Gentoo's portage allow for gcc optimization flags and "use flags", both have an influence on your system and this flexibility makes Gentoo harder to troubleshoot. These kinds of settings in Gentoo allow you to optimize your system to the extreme, but if you're not carefull you could also break it seriously.

If you run into a problem with a Debian/Ubuntu package you can almost certainly find the answer on the net. The solution will talk about the same versions of packages you are using etc. But on Gentoo if you have a problem it depends on what use flags you are using, which version of gcc and such. So while in Gentoo is a lot more interesting to solve problems in Debian/Ubuntu it's usually done quicker. OTOH, on Debian/Ubuntu it's a lot more hassle to try out new gcc's or compile your glibc with NTPL support for example (or install the latest KDE for that matter).

While Gentoo offers more packages than Debian/Ubuntu, their packages are also more up to date and most of the time you can choose between multiple versions of a package. This also means that Debian/Ubuntu's packages are a lot better tested and reliable than Gentoo's, especially in combination with other packages (if you don't install deb's from all over the net).

While Debian/Ubuntu or any other distro might be a better choice in a production environment, Gentoo still is a lot more fun and excitement on a box where you want to tinker and get to know your system and such. In Gentoo you can emerge beta's, cvs versions, recompile your packages with or without support for a feature and more of those goodies. In Gentoo you get a lot more power and control, but you also get the power to mess up your entire system. In Gentoo you configure a lot more manually than in Debian/Ubuntu and it generally takes more commitment than Debian/Ubuntu.

Gentoo is the greatest distro to learn about linux, to play with linux, to tinker with computers, ... But if your installation serves another purpose, go with another distribution.I think we all have to take three steps back and try to be more rational on this endlessly discussed issue. We can not really say Gentoo is better or worst than Debian/Ubuntu because they do not share the same north. Ubuntu strives to be a "plug and play" distribution that works while having the user stay out the most out of a terminal window ("2Pacalypse Now"). On the other hand, Gentoo wants you to experiment, to document yourself, to be curious and to customize your computer in a way that you can be sure you are the only person in the world with that kind of setup ("Paid Tha Cost To Be Da Boss"). Ubuntu is a three and a half year old German Sheppard ready for prime time that you can just pick it up and start patrolling/sniffing the streets with it. Gentoo is the pure breed puppy that requires you to make it behave and look perfect, or not.

Deep down, it's up to the user to decide what his nature allows him to try out.

[drogoh]

No,

I'll try that next week when I've got a few hours to spare!


You'll need more than a few hours if you're doing Gentoo proper, trust me on this. For kicks I tried Gentoo on my Pentium D 820 and it took 24 hours to go from stage 3 to being able to run Firefox; 48+ from stage 1.

[MetalMusicAddict]

is coke better tha pepsi, diferent distro for each person,
Best answer. ;)

[majikstreet]

I am at my wit's end when it comes to threads like these. Isn't this obvious? Come on, we are in an Ubuntu forum here. Pretty much everyone will say Ubuntu is better.

Try asking at a gentoo forum, they will say Gentoo is the best.

Seriously, compare the distro's features and decdide which one YOU want. I am a huge computer geek, but gentoo is NOT for me. Maybe it is for YOU though.

If you really want help, ask at a general linux forums such as www.linuxquestions.org
They have people from ALL distobutions.

Just my $.02 cents.

[Stormy Eyes]

A serious question.

I'm new to Linux and have just had a quick look at Gentoo.

Is Ubuntu better? If so why?

If you're a newbie, stick with Ubuntu. Gentoo is for power users.

[bored2k]

You'll need more than a few hours if you're doing Gentoo proper, trust me on this. For kicks I tried Gentoo on my Pentium D 820 and it took 24 hours to go from stage 3 to being able to run Firefox; 48+ from stage 1.
What is the problem with that? It takes a while because they compile everything. Gentoo does not want precompiled packages. That is NOT a problem, that is just preference. If we are going to kick and scream about the time it takes to install (forgetting what it is doing), let us just install VLOS aka VidaLinux which is Gentoo with the Anaconda installer and precompiled packages, which takes about 15 minutes to install.

[Qrk]

I'd say if you have to ask, use Ubuntu
I used Gentoo for about a month... it was pretty fast, but emerge was a pain. I thought I had to use a source based distro because I have a K7 type processor, but I never noticed a big speed difference with a i386 distro. Add to that I use the k7 kernel from the repos. So Ubuntu is just fine unless you are really really anal about speed.

[papangul]

If one has a fast computer, the performance gain of having a optimised Gentoo is negligible.
If one has a slower machine, for small programs it does not matter and for massive packages like Openoffice, one does not feel like compiling.
Students of computer science might be interested in Gentoo, but then, there is LFS or slackware for them.
Also I have noticed that, though Gentoo documentation is good and the forum is helpful , there are many "issues" about Gentoo which are revealed only when one maintains gentoo for a reasonable time period. A "simple" upgrading can get to be the most tricky business.
I beleive the Operating System is for me, and not the other way round. The OS should just work, transperantly, without getting in my way. So, personally I'll rather invest in a faster proc, than investing al the huge amount of time to get an "optimised" system.

[drogoh]

What is the problem with that? It takes a while because they compile everything. Gentoo does not want precompiled packages. That is NOT a problem, that is just preference. If we are going to kick and scream about the time it takes to install (forgetting what it is doing), let us just install VLOS aka VidaLinux which is Gentoo with the Anaconda installer and precompiled packages, which takes about 15 minutes to install.

I didn't say I had a problem with Gentoo or even compiling programs. I'm a FreeBSD'er for the most part and I utterly abhor their packages, so I have become accustomed to one or two day long portupgrade sessions over the years. To be honest, I don't see anything about "kicking and screaming about the time it takes to install". I was merely stating that it takes more than "a few hours", not whining about "oh my god, the messages are still going". If I were going to go into a jeremaint about the time it would take to install package N, I would probably have stopped at about the first time I compiled a program or so, or never even made the venture into the world of Unix.


I do sometimes play as a Unix Systems Administrator for a living, therefore I do actually pay attention to those screens of messages rolling by and don't exactly "forget what it is doing". I simply let it do its thing, come back in a bit, fix the program *if* it fails and repeat ad nauseum.


Note: If you take any offense to the above post, it wasn't intended. I don't exactly sleep much so I've been known to come across a bit strong.

[poofyhairguy]

But is it better than Ubuntu?

Better is a hard term for things that don't directly compete.

To me the biggest difference is in the package format. Gentoo's packages are easy to make (meaning sometimes Gentoo gets the best OSS first after a release) but you have to compile them yourself and they might have a lower quality. Ubuntu packages are harder to make (have any of you tried to make a decent deb? I did- no wonder you see many less third party Ubuntu packages then you would think its popularity warrents) but they have a general high quality from official sources and they are precompiled.

The Gentoo community is great and knowledgable and their wiki is used by myself often. There forum is sometimes the only way to find info on tweakish stuff that only a nerd would care about ("how do I make my mouse faster?") and its users can be very nice.

Its a great distro. A cornerstone of Linux. A former Unix admin's best dream. Yet it has a different goal than Ubuntu.

[kanem]

People are saying that Gentoo isn't for the newbie, but I disagree. It just depends on how much effort you're willing to put in and how much you want to learn. My Linux experience started with Gentoo. The install was long and, for me, sometimes frustrating. But the documentation is great. Half the time I didn't know why I was typing something, just following the directions. But eventually I learned. Not just about the install, but about how Linux systems, and computers in general, work. You're not going to learn as much as I did with Gentoo using Ubuntu or Mandrake.

There have been many times since coming to Ubuntu that there was something I wanted to do or fix that wasn't documented by Ubuntu, and certainly didn't have any GUI for. But because of what I learned using Gentoo I could bypass the GUI and really get into the system.

But if learning about the inner workings of the system isn't very important, then it would probably be more beneficial to go with Ubuntu. Also, I just got tired of the compile times.

[majikstreet]

Better is a hard term for things that don't directly compete.

To me the biggest difference is in the package format. Gentoo's packages are easy to make (meaning sometimes Gentoo gets the best OSS first after a release) but you have to compile them yourself and they might have a lower quality. Ubuntu packages are harder to make (have any of you tried to make a decent deb? I did- no wonder you see many less third party Ubuntu packages then you would think its popularity warrents) but they have a general high quality from official sources and they are precompiled.

The Gentoo community is great and knowledgable and their wiki is used by myself often. There forum is sometimes the only way to find info on tweakish stuff that only a nerd would care about ("how do I make my mouse faster?") and its users can be very nice.

Its a great distro. A cornerstone of Linux. A former Unix admin's best dream. Yet it has a different goal than Ubuntu.
I agree with you.
Before I installed Ubuntu, I was looking at Gentoo. I read their forums a lot, and I was suprised on the helpfulness of the people. But then I tried to install it, and it was hell.
Then I came to Ubuntu....

[vrln]

Interesting topic. This is something where I could add my 0.25 cents I guess.

I've used Gentoo for around a year, perhaps a bit more. I've used Ubuntu Hoary before, but I quickly switched back to Gentoo. Last week, however, I switched to Ubuntu Breezy and so far I've been absolutely thrilled. I can assure you guys that the "distro-switching traffic" actually goes both ways.

Before I start, I'd like to emphasize that I personally believe both distributions are good, and I have a lot of respect for the developers of both platforms.

That said, I personally decided to make the switch to Ubuntu, and as things currently look, I'm not switching back to Gentoo any time soon. While Gentoo is a highly customizable system, I'm not really sure if I even want to customize everything. You could probably categorize me as a "power user" - assuming you mean a person who likes to tweak things, try out the different window managers out there just to know how things are in other systems. I'm interested in Linux purely as a desktop system - I'm not a system admin nor do I intend to become one. Gentoo has plenty of good things, I'm not trying to paint a black picture about it - but Gentoo, in the end, is simply not what I am looking for.

So how exactly does Ubuntu satisfy my needs, even when it's much more "closed" customization wise compared to Gentoo? Because Ubuntu's default configuration is exactly what I need and want. I've always been a huge fan of Gnome and GTK software in general. I don't like KDE, neither do I like the look of QT applications. I've used Enlightenment DR 17 for the last year or so as my main window manager though, but inside it, I only run Gnome/GTK software, with the lone exception of K3B. In other words, Gnome and E17 has been my choice for ages already. Ubuntu provides, in my opinion, the best and most "modern" integrated Gnome/GTK solution. The default install is not too slim, neither is it too bloated either. It's the perfect balance. E17, while not actually available yet in Ubuntu, is easy to install with one of the various CVS installation scripts out there.

Let me get to the actual reasons. There are quite many. To start with what I disliked about Gentoo, there are a few that stick out: compiling and use flags. I've never understood the point of use flags - sure can be useful in some cases, but as a whole I found then more or less useless for the things I use Linux for. I do not want to make an ultra-slim system that has support only for the handful of libraries and applications I use. I want something that's an elegant solution, and frankly, I do not care if I am not able to specify what exactly I want a certain program to support. In Ubuntu in most cases everything supports everything. This is completely fine for me. I probably won't have to explain why I don't like compiling - it is obvious.

This point however, is related to one of the things I often see in the Gentoo community (which is great, don't get me wrong, I think it's one of the best Linux communities around) - the much hyped "speed" factor. I've always found it non-existant. I cannot notice any speed difference between Ubuntu or a custom compiled Gentoo - if you ask me, I'd say that the whole phenomenon is purely psychological. If you've spent 2-3 days compiling your system, it "has" to feel faster - it is very easy to make oneself believe it, even if your only actually fooling yourself in the end. This doesn't mean compiling doesn't have its benefits though; the Gentoo package selection is the best there is, and personally I think this is because of the ebuild model. That said, distributions like Ubuntu aren't that far behind in this, and Ubuntu seems to be actively addressing these problems (ie, by accepting backports as an official project & the formation of the masters of the universe group).

There are many other factors that bring me to Ubuntu: the philosophy is something I feel attracted to for example. But the basic reason is that Ubuntu provides exactly what I'm looking for: a system that both gives me freedom to tweak things, and also at the same time handles the things that I do not want to handle. I used to think highly of distributions that require everyone to specify what modules you want to load and so on - and in a way I still do, but I've that's simply not what I'm looking for. In the end I do not want to tweak everything, only certain things - and I have actually come to appreciate the integration work in many distibutions. Ubuntu (I'm running Breezy) is a fine example of this: the integrated firefox/open office 2 and so on is simply exactly what I'm looking for. And nothing is stopping me from using Enlightenment DR 17 and recreating the "Ubuntu feel" there.

Anyways, I guess this post got a little bit too long. In the end, both distributions are fine, and I wish the best of luck to Gentoo. It's often mentioned that "getting out of the users way" is the reason people use Gentoo - for me Ubuntu actually gets more out of my way and simply lets me use Linux the way I want, without me having to dedicate much time or effort to the core distribution itself. In a nutshell, I personally believe Ubuntu is the perfect balance between "tweakable" and a "fully integrated solution" like SuSE (which doesn't give much "freedom" to the user).

[TravisNewman]

Here's the thing. I was a relative newbie when I first installed gentoo. It's not a quick process, but it's not hard either. The install documentation (and ALL their documentation for htat matter) is the best I've ever seen for any distro anywhere. If you follow the installation guide, installing the base gentoo OS and any programs you want is really a breeze. It just takes more time and committment.

It's easy, and it teaches you a lot. If you have the time, I'd suggest installing both Ubuntu and Gentoo. Use Ubuntu when you want to just USE the computer, and boot up Gentoo when you want to follow fantastic documentation to really learn a lot about Linux and widen your perspective.

[FaBi3ttO]

Use Ubuntu when you want to just USE the computer, and boot up Gentoo when you want to follow fantastic documentation to really learn a lot about Linux and widen your perspective.

I think here's the point. I moved away from Gentoo because it requires too much time in configuring and resolving problems. I was searching to use my laptop to do something, not only for learning how to upgrade programs without breaking the systems. For a normal user I think Gentoo it's not the right distro.
I moved away from Gentoo because I don't want to waste time trying to resolve emerge problems or upgrading .conf files for every little program I want to install, but I want to use my system.

Now with Ubuntu I feel comfortable, everything works like a charm with an acceptable amount of time invested in configuration.

[jimcooncat]

Not quite off-topic, but meta-topic:

I just want to say that I think this thread is a helpful comparison of two popular distros. The lack of bashing, item-for-item pros and cons, and user anecdotes with lack of generalization is great. I wish the other posters in this forum would use this thread as a behavior example. Thanks!

[Juippisi]

If someone asked "Why should I install Ubuntu and not Gentoo", I'd paste this post to him.

You got some really good argues about both distros, and I agree with some.

I personally have used Gentoo for an year and Ubuntu for ~6 months. I really like them both and I'm also using them both. Gentoo on my machine (sorry to cause disappointment) and Ubuntu on my littlesister's.

I once used Ubuntu on my own computer, but I'm that "I need everything optimized for my needs and to my hardware" -type of person. Yes, I like Ubuntu and I use my sisters computer maybe more than my own ;-).

Nowadays, I have seriously thinked about rm'ing Genpoo (;-)) and installing Ubuntu to my machine as well, again. Maybe that will happen, when Breezy comes out. I almost hope for that to happen :-D.

Yes, Breezy gots newest gtk+ and cairo, when portage/Gentoo gots those as hardmasked. I already installed hardmasked gtk, pango, glitz and cairo, and my GTK-apps menus broke. So I downgraded my GTK. pango and glitz, but I cound't downgrade my cairo. So now I have old GTK and I don't have cairo at all.

One bad thing about Ubuntu is that I'm a KDE-user. Yes, I know we have Kubuntu, but that is a one mans project, so I bet Kubuntu is buggy as hell (Sorry dear Kubuntu-packer if you are reading this).
EDIT: so, it isn't a one man project anymore. Sorry guys and go Canonical :-).

Lastly I want to say, that I believe that some day near I will rm my Gentoo and install Ubuntu again, because I'm really getting tired of all this compiling and configuring and when Gentoo really isn't that much faster than Ubuntu. Nowadays I really don't have that much of time either, because of my school. I want to make it more easier and faster to use, upgrade and maintain my system and Gentoo can't do that.

So, I'm really waiting for Breezys release, how about you :-).

[magomago]

I had done an install of both. Ubuntu I can install and start flying immediately. Gentoo you have to spend forever to setup things, and get stuff like automount, etc. working.
In fact in Gentoo I spent more time in shell (not counting compling time...2 hours for X , about 6 for Gnome :) :) ) than anything else! when I wanted to access a CDRom I didn't click on the icon, I mounted it and did it. When I wanted to mess or install something I ALWAYS went to shell. Gentoo takes a LOT of time to get it prepared. In Ubuntu after 5 minutes I already had my themes going on, and everything done the way I want it. Because Gentoo was so slim, often I had to emerge different things.

With that said though, I feel more comfortable on the Gentoo box than my main ubuntu box. With my ubuntu box it feels like Windows (despite being skinned like a Mac ;) ) whereas Gentoo gives me the more raw Linux feeling. In gentoo I understand where a LOT of things are. If something wasn't mounting right, I'd just check /etc/fstab. Setting up videocard is insanely simple. Even recompiling the kernel is nothing big. When something occurs, most likely I will know what happened...I felt like I had a lot more control over my system. When I booted up, only a few things loaded up...not like Ubuntu where i get fifty things that load up (and I never understood what it was doing until I used Gentoo and started to realize how much useless junk I have).

Basically, I was at home with Command Line in Gentoo....but for simple functionality I go with Ubuntu. I am actually excited for 5.10 to come out, so I can reinstall ubuntu from scratch and hopefully cut out a lot of what I dno't need.

But Gentoo really taught me about Linux, and I'm sure I'll use it more later on

[adamb10]

Too me Gentoo has 1 big flaw. Is it the difficulty of the install? Hell No. Read the guide and in a few hours you'll be booting.

The big problem is the compile times. It takes roughly 6 hours to compile Xorg and 12+ hours for Gnome. Don't even ask how long a kde compile does. You'll be wasting your time compiling more than actually using the OS. The shortest thing to compile in Gentoo is probobly the kernel.

[joelito]

I usually don't advertise other distros here, but...

There's a Gentoo derivate named VidaLinux, the free version will install you a basic gentoo gnome desktop, from there you could follow the remaining management from Gentoo.

You could check it out at http://desktop.vidalinux.com

Of course I find Ubuntu to be more complete out of the box than the free version of VidaLinux

[nocturn]

A serious question.
I'm new to Linux and have just had a quick look at Gentoo.
Is Ubuntu better? If so why?
Thanks
JonnyT

Gentoo is a from-source distribution. It has nice features, but it takes a long time to install and much more time to maintain. Every update has to be compiled and in the case of Gnome2 or KDE3, this can take quite while.

Gentoo is bleeding edge though, you get the latest Gnome/KDE/* the day it is released (after compiling). Ubuntu remains stable for 6 months, at that point you can upgrade.

I have run Gentoo for 1.5 years and Ubuntu since the first version, Ubuntu has much less breakage while I do get new stuff every couple of months.

[nocturn]

No,
I'll try that next week when I've got a few hours to spare!

Not to put you off because Gentoo is a great learning experience, but set aside a lot of time, especially computer cycles (use a distcc cluster if you can).
A complete Gentoo setup can take a couple of days if you do not have sufficient compile power.

[Knome_fan]

Not to put you off because Gentoo is a great learning experience, but set aside a lot of time, especially computer cycles (use a distcc cluster if you can).
A complete Gentoo setup can take a couple of days if you do not have sufficient compile power.

Well, that's not the whole truth. Simply use grp packages and you'll be running in no time. Especially if you also use the new installer (though I can't really comment on it, as I never tried it)

Also, gentoo isn't as bleeding edge as some people seem to think, even if you use ~x86. For example, if you want up to date Gnome releases, your best bet is probably to use Ubuntu.

Anyway, as many people have already said, there is no better in this matter, the distributions are just different, though gentoo sometimes does very, very stupid things imho:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-384368.html

[John Nilsson]

I might as well add my thought on this too.

I'm now running Breezy after switching to Hoary a few months ago. Bfore that I had been using Gentoo for roughly 5 years.

I noticed Ubuntu thorugh the ship-it program which I've utilized since warty to shove down peoples throats. :rolleyes:

After another disapointing change to ~x86 (getting tired of the gigantic package.kewords file I maintained) I thought, what the hey, lets give Ubuntu a chance. After that I was sold, I didn't realize how easy it could be before that...

The thing is that Gentoo is a meta-distribution. In practice that means that Gentoo is the base and the tools to build a distribution that is streamlined and optimized for you. It means that you as a system administrator also do the distributor job of integration, configuration, QA, compiling and all the other chores. The end result is a system that is exactly tailored for you.

The problem is that it doesn't scale very well. Usually, in a distribution such as Ubuntu for example, the bigger the community gets the more work gets done that the whole community benefits from. Call it network effects or ecomonmy of scale if you will. In gentoo however it isn't possible to leverage this work as every system in the community is a uniqe target and thus has it's own uniqe problems and sollutions. Even if Portage and other Gentoo tools are excelent att minimizing this work.

I would thus say that Gentoo excells in environments with sufficently uniqe requirements and an administrator prepared to do the hard work.

It is also ad every one have stated an excellent way to learn the inner workings of a gnu/linux system. I currently have 1347 packages installed in Breezy. If you want to know what each and every one of them does on your system, how they are configured and how they relate to eachother: Gentoo is your system.

Ubuntu on the other hand, "Just Works(TM)".

[asimon]

Although there are some things I like very much with Gentoo for me personally Kubuntu is better than Gentoo because with no loss of productivity I have to spend less time with Kubuntu to maintain my systems then with Gentoo. This has mostly to do with the low level of automation (hey, that's why we use computers, isn't it?) on Gentoo's site and a lesser package quality.

I see it like this: if you _really_ have the need for Gentoo's mighty configurability (and no, compiler flags play no role here) than go that route. For all other users (and that is the big majority) there are more convenient distributions.

[iced-tux]

Gentoo ROCKZ ;)
BUT it's a b*tch to install if you don't follow the documentation to the word.
Also it takes a lot of time... BUT you learn a lot about your system and how to optimize it.
Personally I installed 4 stage 1 and the number of tries ..... omg ;) As I said b*tch to install.
But if you succed to install it, you'll have a fast, stable and very flexible system.
Also the community is VERY GOOD. There is no question that was not answered in about a day.
Negative point though, if you go to the forum uninformed, mostly you get the answer RTFM or STFF *search the f*cking forum* ;)

Ubuntu .... well it's just so easy to install and to configure, You need no greater knowledge in linux. And the basic configuration e.g. laptops is excellent.
So I will push Breezy onto my laptop....

In short:
Gentoo if you like to know your system inside out and optimize the hell out of it.
Ubuntu if you like an easy to use and install non-Suse distro with an excellent default config.


iced-tux

[asimon]

Gentoo ROCKZ ;)
Yes, but so do other distros too. :)



BUT it's a b*tch to install if you don't follow the documentation to the word.
Also it takes a lot of time... BUT you learn a lot about your system and how to optimize it.
It's a fact that you can learn everything about linux with every distribution. Just following some "documentation to the word" teaches you not much. People type commands but don't understand them. We have seen that all in the forums and on #gentoo. Learning needs first and most the will to learn not the enforment to type commands from some document into your shell.

In my eyes that "with Gentoo you learn so much" as a myth. Actually some of the most knowledgable people I ever met use distros like Fedora or SUSE, distros where much is automated because those people want to spend their valuable time on more interesting things than doing stuff on Gentoo which is automated somewhere else.

And I met only a hand-full of Gentoo users or developers who really know how to optimize a system. Most of the time the most imporant thing when one does optimizations is missing. Benchmarks. I guess it's also the missing benchmarks that let people to be lazy and waste time with replacing -O2 with -O3 and the like when they could do much more worthwhile modifications like preloading, optimizing the boot sequence, etc. Have a look at SUSE, it's compiled with rather concervative compiler flags, but it boots much faster than on Gentoo. And with their cool preloading starting kde or gnome is again much faster. (I speak here of dimensions of 15 seconds and more). Of course everything of what was optimized in SUSE could be done on Gentoo too, but it's not there. And one really has to ask, if Gentoo is about optimizations why is so much of that cool stuff which happened lately on Fedora, SUSE, Mandiva, etc. missing on Gentoo? It looks like for many Gentoo users, Gentoo is just about ubercool compiler flags (which they don't benchmark most of the time too).



But if you succed to install it, you'll have a fast, stable and very flexible system.
Well, Gentoo's QA is not as good as it's on the other big distros. This is the biggest single disadvantage with Gentoo. Fast? Well SUSE boot's much faster and starts my most used apps much faster then Gentoo. Of course I could waste a week doing benchmarks and optimizations (and no, just cool gcc flags are not enough) to have something similar. But on the other hand I could just install SUSE or Kubuntu, save a week and start working, making money, or whatevery you do with your system. I could read some good books in the while too. ;-)

I am with you when you say it's flexible. That's actually all I see about Gentoo. If you need this flexibility then Gentoo is your friend. But in most cases people need only to customize a rather small number of packages. In that case you're better served with an other distro as base and just customize those small number of packages. At least that's how I see it. For example Andreas Girardet took SUSE as a base and was able to do with that in one single month what he couldn't do with Yoper (he is the founder of yoper and now projekt lead of suse super) in three years.


Also the community is VERY GOOD. There is no question that was not answered in about a day.
The community is one of the best, but I suppose it were your own questions which were not answered in about a day. On the main Gentoo forum page, there is a (small) link to do a quick search for "unanswered questions". Do it! There are many hunderds of unanswered questions. Many are many months old.



Negative point though, if you go to the forum uninformed, mostly you get the answer RTFM or STFF *search the f*cking forum* ;)
Still better than getting some wrong answer from the ricer kind.



Ubuntu .... well it's just so easy to install and to configure, You need no greater knowledge in linux. And the basic configuration e.g. laptops is excellent.
So I will push Breezy onto my laptop....
Yes, I too saved a lot of time since switching from Gentoo, and I mean not only the installations. Maintainance on Gentoo has a higher cost too.



In short:
Gentoo if you like to know your system inside out and optimize the hell out of it.

But in that case ignore the ricers on forums.gentoo.org and do benchmarks, benchmarks, benchmarks.



Ubuntu if you like an easy to use and install non-Suse distro with an excellent default config.
Yes two absolutely great distros. Nowadays we have some really great distros to choose among. It's quite pointless to make general statements like Gentoo is better than Ubuntu or vice versa. For some people Gentoo can be indeed the best choise, others are better served with some other distro. And the often heard newby to Ubuntu, gurus to Gentoo attitude is unfounded too. At least I know more gurus using "works out of the box" distros than Gentoo or LFS.

[John Nilsson]

In my eyes that "with Gentoo you learn so much" as a myth. Actually some of the most knowledgable people I ever met use distros like Fedora or SUSE, distros where much is automated because those people want to spend their valuable time on more interesting things than doing stuff on Gentoo which is automated somewhere else.


I don't think you learn that much in Gentoo because of documentation (I had better luck with www.tldp.org and groups.google.com than Gentoo documentation). It's becaus if you don't your system won't work. You are simply forced to learn if you wan't your system to work.



And I met only a hand-full of Gentoo users or developers who really know how to optimize a system. Most of the time the most imporant thing when one does optimizations is missing. Benchmarks. I guess it's also the missing benchmarks that let people to be lazy and waste time with replacing -O2 with -O3 and the like when they could do much more worthwhile modifications like preloading, optimizing the boot sequence, etc. Have a look at SUSE, it's compiled with rather concervative compiler flags, but it boots much faster than on Gentoo. And with their cool preloading starting kde or gnome is again much faster. (I speak here of dimensions of 15 seconds and more). Of course everything of what was optimized in SUSE could be done on Gentoo too, but it's not there. And one really has to ask, if Gentoo is about optimizations why is so much of that cool stuff which happened lately on Fedora, SUSE, Mandiva, etc. missing on Gentoo? It looks like for many Gentoo users, Gentoo is just about ubercool compiler flags (which they don't benchmark most of the time too).


When I speak of optmimizations in Gentoo I mean need optimiztions not speed optimizations. Customization might be a better word...
The compiler flag nonsense in Gentoo is actually one of it's worst designed features. If Gentoo want to survive this has to change though, bugzilla is just overloaded with clueless "ricers" or what you call them. It wouldn't be impossible to design a scalable QA ensuring compiler flag system.



Well, Gentoo's QA is not as good as it's on the other big distros.


As I said before, the design of Portage more or less requires the user to handle QA. It's very hard to hava scalable community based QA in the current incarnation. Even this could be improved with some redesigning.

I think Conary will replace Portage when it comes of age. I think it is a much better design to accomplish roughly the same service.

[zenwhen]

If you're a newbie, stick with Ubuntu. Gentoo is for power users.

I wouldn't say that. Anyone with a little time can install Gentoo. It is a matter of "copy and paste". True, CFLAGS can provide some flexibility, but when I used Gentoo, even after reading up on CFLAGS and portage for quite some time, I couldn't find much that portage could do for me that apt could not.

The only thing I really had offered to me that I didn't have before was having my packages compiled with some crazy optimizations that didn't make anything feel faster at all. I could use CFLAGS to change the front end on a few applications, but in the end, there weren't many more customization options than I had with Debian or Slackware.

[feven]

Hello !

Gentoo is a great distro for anyone who wants to learn a lot about Linux(even UNIX) systems. It was the first distro I really used. I just had a Mandrake installed before, but never used it.

Beginners can easily install Gentoo, if they follow the guides-howto (easily found on gentoo.org) and have a ... lot of time. First time install : about 2 days (counting sleeping time).

Philosophy of Gentoo is : You know your hardware better than the distro company, why don't you try to build everything up at your needs ?

After building the base system, Gentoo is relly easy to use. Just one word ... "emerge" ... When you want to install some software, just run a terminal and type "emerge software". Then, it acts like apt-get, the gentoo-way: downloading the sources, compiling them, and finaly install them.

Now, I switched to Ubuntu and I am enjoying it at lot. Now that I learned a lot with Gentoo, Ubuntu is a great distro to simply use ... just use. I don't think I never could learn as much as I learn with Gentoo using Ubuntu. Ubuntu is stable, much more quickly than Gentoo is. It is not so much more user-friendly ... when you don't have the right hardware, the right usage of it, I found it much less easy to tweak it. Now, everything is okay using forums of community.

As full of people already said : two distro, two tastes.

[asimon]

Gentoo is a great distro for anyone who wants to learn a lot about Linux(even UNIX) systems.
I still think that Fedora, SUSE, Ubuntu, etc. are all better suited for learning everything about Linux you want. Why? Because with the later distros *you* decide what to learn and when. You're not forced to learn how to configure grub or how to use fdisk if you don't want to. This stuff is handled much more convenient by other distros but if you want or need you can still learn everything about these things with the "works out of the box" distros and do everything by hand. But you don't have to waste time on many things if you would rather want to spend your time learning kernel topics or LDAP. Much more convenient for learning. No I see no reason why Gentoo would be better suited for learning.



Philosophy of Gentoo is : You know your hardware better than the distro company, why don't you try to build everything up at your needs ?
Well, I give you my personal reason. Because the packages from Ubuntu, SUSE, etc. work just as fine for my needs (and for most other people) and I rather spend my time fixing some bugs in my projects? :)

And regarding performance, well compiling everything with a new -march=xxxx doesn't do much. The stuff SUSE, Fedora, etc. are doing with their preloading or boot optimizations or linker development, etc. does orders or magnitutes more than recompiling stuff. Gentoo is not longer exciting, nowadays I see it mostly as a place where they package stuff, but no interesting development is happening any longer. I still think it's a great distro, but for most of my applications other distros are just a better choice, and I think the same is true for most computer users.

Cheers

[ar0d]

I came from gentoo and different distros have pros and cons. These sort of topics are stupid. Gentoo takes alot more time to install, very secure, and you learn a hell of alot more of the inner workings of linux then ubuntu. ubuntu is easy to install, good repositories. I use ubuntu for desktop, gentoo for servers.

[chris_andrew]

Hi,

I really like Ubuntu, but am attracted to Gentoo's great documentation resources.

The downside of Gentoo is the installation time (my last effort on a Sparc took several days). Invariably with Gentoo, I get to the end of the install and then something doesn't work on first boot. I then say "f*ck this" and throw Debian/ Ubuntu, or some other distro back on.

Does anybody have a good reason to use Gentoo on a home workstation?

Thanks,

Chris.

[ofek]

Yes, you can configure it to be anything you like and to work in the fastest possible way for your computer. You would probably learn alot about linux and about your hardware by doing this. Gentoo is a great tool for understanding linux.

[twowheeler]

It is true that you will learn a lot from gentoo, mostly because you have to learn the innards of the system to make things work. Some people claim there are speed benefits, but I never saw that personally. Maybe there are speed benefits from using extreme compiler flags, but then everything tends to break quite dramatically. Developers also tend to get impatient with help requests from people with weird flags.

I found it to be kind of fun as long as I had unlimited amounts of time to tweak and configure and fiddle. I have gotten that out of my system though, and I have a life, so I use ubuntu instead. :)

[twowheeler]

You set up Gentoo once, That once takes a while to do, but then you never touch it again.


I'm sorry but I disagree. The emerge command is only the beginning. In two years of running gentoo I very rarely had an emerge run cleanly w/o collateral damage of some sort. Things would break for no obvious reason, forcing a deep dive into the packages, the configs, whatever.

What attracted me to gentoo was very simple. I liked the idea of having a complete build environment on my machine at all times. If something did not work right, I could fix it and reconstruct the executable on the spot. With time however I found that that happens so rarely that it is not worth the trouble.

[Biased turkey]

I dual boot: Ubuntu 5.10 32 bits and Gentoo AMD64.
I installed Gentoo just to prove to myself that I can do it. I did it the "lazy way" ( stage 3 ) lol.I succedde at the 2nd trial, it takes several hours to install, but it works if one follow exactly the installation manual.
I was attracted to Gentoo because I was tired of reinstalling Fedora Core from scratch every 6 months ( upgrading Fedora never worked well for me ).
Then I heard about Ubuntu ,this fall I installed 5.04 and was really impressed. When 5.10 came out I installed from scratch because I didn't have much data to save. I'm looking forward to the next release of Ubuntu to see if upgrading really works with Ubuntu just by editing a few URLs in the sources.list file
I'll keep both, but I use Ubuntu most of the time on a day-to-day base.
1 think I really like with Gentoo is that their documentation is excellent.
So, Coke or Pepsi ? nah, for me it's Guinness :)

[jpmkm]

I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd throw in my experience anyway. I'm a long-time(3+ years) gentoo user who just started using Ubuntu(hard drive failure and I couldn't afford for my main workstation to be out of commission for a few days while reinstalling gentoo). I used to really hate Ubuntu(and still do to an extent), but I'm quickly getting used to it. I just feel more at home on the console, and I can usually get get so much more done much easier at the console than with gui tools, and that's one of the reasons I like gentoo so much. Perhaps it'll just take some getting used to, but I just feel like I'll completely bork my Ubuntu install if I go editing config files and init scripts and stuff without using the gui tools. I'm even kinda afraid to do something as simple as compile my own kernel out of fear that it'll **** everything up. With gentoo I'd just download a kernel, apply whatever patches I want, config and compile, and install it.

Another reason I like gentoo is I always know what is going on. From the very beginning, I only install the programs I want. I can selectively merge or delete configuration changes when I add or update programs. I don't use gentoo so much for the speed/optimization aspect; I use it because it doesn't sugarcoat everything. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying sugarcoating is bad or anything. I'm just saying that I personally don't like it. I've got a small distcc cluster set up to help with compile times, so that's not much of an issue. Besides, it's not really all that inconvenient to do an 'emerge world' before I go to bed and then an 'etc-update' when I wake up.

Anyway, all my other computers run gentoo and I'm probably going to switch back to gentoo on my workstation at the end of the semester. For the time being, though, I'm using Ubuntu, and I'm enjoying it. I must say these forums have been a wonderful source the past couple days. The default Ubuntu install is pretty far from where I like to be, but I've found all the answers I needed here.

btw, I'd like to commend everyone for the level of civility displayed in this thread. I'm impressed.

[siimo]

is coke better tha pepsi, diferent distro for each person,
more like homemade lemonade vs. 7up or something, since gentoo is built from scratch by the user ;)

[phen]

hello!

if you don't understand the differences between gentoo and ubuntu, ubuntu is better for you. If you stick to linux, and get more knowledge, you might want to change to gentoo. Gentoo is very well documented, and certainly installable for newbies, too. but i think in the beginning, you should start with a binary distro.

[otake-tux]

I used gentoo for a year and just recently switched to ubuntu. The problem with gentoo is that you if you break your system beyond recovery (like I did) the reinstallation takes 5 hours and thats just to get a command promt. Compiling KDE can take more than 5 hours.
Another thing is, gentoo installs packages for you, other than that gentoo does not do anything else. If you have a lot of spare time (like I use to) managin config files for hours wont be a problem but if you dont have that much time, unless you already know a lot of stuff, youll spend hours configuring stuff.

Here's an example: To be able to get normal users to shut down the computer in Gentoo you have to right several bash scripts or else each time you want to shutdown you need to log out of the window manager then at the command prompt type su , enter pw and type halt then entr, same process for rebooting. In Ubuntu this is much easier. Just click shutdown. maybe you have to sudo but since every user knows he/she own pw thats not a problem.

[Gideon]

I use both, have used both and will use both in the future.

Gentoo's main downside is compile-time. It's main upside is package choice, configurability, ability to produce a phenomenally lightweight system (eg for servers) and some truly nice unique bits of software, oh, and bleeding edge-ness.
Another gotcha: for example, if you want a MySQL client under gentoo, because there is only souce code, and no seperate dev packages, you have to install the whole MySQL package to get the required libraries.

Ubuntu's main downsides: Mostly stylistic. Most people transferring from another distro will take a while to get used to the "sudo" philosophy. Alsorts of nonintuitive packages being run (for example, I don't use evms or its ilk, why is ubuntu starting it?), (a personal gripe, I know you can reset this later on, so its not that big of an issue) install-time option to boot to command line please? Also, do lets try and keep up with current kernel releases a little better, shall we? Upsides include the ease of use, the fact it doesnt take 2 days to get a desktop running, the fact that it "just works" and other niceties.

Deep down, it's like comparing your showroom-bought sports car to a custom, kit-built car. You might end up with similar road-performance, but the steps to get there, and all the under-the-hood stuff is different. Like most people say, your call.

[leimus]

The quirk that makes Gentoo harder than Ubuntu is that Gentoo comes bare bones. After installing Gentoo you have nothing except drivers, kernel, and portage (Gentoo's package installation system). Everything else you have to install and configure.
On the other hand, Ubuntu comes with a slew of GUI stuff, scripts, control panels, etc. This is great for the inexperienced because they don't have take the time to install, solve problems, or tweak, but a pain for really power users who want to tweak everything or don't want all that bloat.
So the simple analogy I make is, if you're the kind of person who likes to drive a reliable, minimal maintenence, automatic car like Honda or Toyota, use Ubuntu.
If you want a high maintenence, but also high performance, tweakable to hell, stick shift Ferrari, use Gentoo.




Here's an example: To be able to get normal users to shut down the computer in Gentoo you have to right several bash scripts or else each time you want to shutdown you need to log out of the window manager then at the command prompt type su , enter pw and type halt then entr, same process for rebooting. In Ubuntu this is much easier. Just click shutdown. maybe you have to sudo but since every user knows he/she own pw thats not a problem.

This is the long way. If you install sudo, you can shutdown/reboot with one command. All I type in a term for shutdown/reboot is:

sudo poweroff
<root password>

Even if you don't have sudo, just sign in as root using su, and then type poweroff. No need to quit the window manager.

[siorai]

As pretty much well a complete Linux n00b, I did a Stage 1 Gentoo install. It took pretty much well the whole weekend and wouldn't have been possible without the use of my roommate's computer to use the forums easily. But, even after the frustration and hours upon hours, I felt it was worth it. I learned a fair bit by doing it. That being said, I'm not overly keen on doing it again. Not that it would be that difficult to do it again, I just don't have the time. That's why I like Ubuntu. It's dead simple to install and within a half hour or so, I'm totally functional with sound, network, video, etc. I'd much rather have a slightly less optimized system, but have it up and running right away than have a totally optimized system, but have to spend a weekend getting it that way.

Basically I look at them like this:

Gentoo: Great for the tweakers out there and is a great learning experience. Takes a long time though do to the initial compiling, especially if doing a Stage 1 install.

Ubuntu: Great for those who want a system up and running with minimal hassle. You can then spend that time you saved not compiling everything and just simply use and learn the system from the get go.

[otake-tux]

This is the long way. If you install sudo, you can shutdown/reboot with one command. All I type in a term for shutdown/reboot is:

sudo poweroff
<root password>


But you also have to configure sudo for that to work. It may be easy but its still more time spent configuring stuff.

Even if you don't have sudo, just sign in as root using su, and then type poweroff. No need to quit the window manager.
But what if you have other users. You would not give everyone the root password. YOu would have to install/configure sudo.

[UbuWu]

I'm looking forward to the next release of Ubuntu to see if upgrading really works with Ubuntu just by editing a few URLs in the sources.list file


It is even better, work is currently being done on making it as easy as a few mouse clicks. No more manual editing of text files.

[bionnaki]

I always hear the gentoo is faster than, say, ubuntu.
is it really that much different?

ubuntu runs plenty fast on my machine.

[leimus]

But you also have to configure sudo for that to work. It may be easy but its still more time spent configuring stuff.


Frankly, after emerging sudo, I spent about 10 seconds opening up a config file and adding one line to it so my account could use sudo.

[nalzan]

Once installed,Gentoo has the best package management system that I've encountered and because it compiles everything from source there are almost no dependency problems with any software.Tried them all and IMHO Gentoo is simply the best!

[blanky]

This is a great example of one of the best things (this post) about ubuntu, it's community. Usually this type of post would be flamed or wouldn't receive input, but look, nice people actually responded.

Hey man, asking what distro is better is like asking if pepsi is better than coke, it's opinion. Unless you specify what type of 'better' (stable, faster, etc.), but it doesn't mean that even if it might be 'better' in the way you say, that you should use it. It's not about who's 1337 caus3 j00 us3 th3 b3tt3r distro, try gentoo, you'll see yourself running back to ubuntu, and I can make that judgement by your action of posting this type of thing (not my intention of flaming, please dont take it this way)

[prizrak]

I have to say I dislike Gentoo and a good number of the users. They have been called "ricers" and for a good reason. I got a Gentoo user friend who looks down on me for wanting to have a GUI to configure my ACPI as opposed to spending 2 days figuring it out and doing a very ugly hack to get to what I wanted (basically disabled the script). My gripe with Gentoo is that it toutes(sp?) itself as a super customizeable distribution but forgets about other ones. There is the GNU/Debian, LFS, Slackware to name a few of the top of my head. They will run better, faster, and more stable than a Gentoo box for just about any application, and they can be customized to death. GNU/Debian has often been named the best for server installs because it can be setup to have very little overhead and will not break easily. I would advise agains using Gentoo, if customizing is your thing go with GNU/Debian or Slackware those are the real hardcore customizers. Also there is a myth going around about Gentoo being fast, well it's simply not true, if you do nothing but CLI you will not see any difference with any distro. GUI is what makes a difference, Gnome/KDE are full featured heavy weight desktop managers. They WILL take alot of resources no matter what is being used. The percieved speed difference mostly comes from the fact that Gentoo'ers tend to run lightweight window managers since they rarely use the GUI for configuring their systems (or have the ability to).
Ubuntu is a great distro (I used alot of different ones, I prefer Ubuntu) it just works out of the box. It is still highly customizeable, it's still a Linux and in effect it is GNU/Debian with some tweaking ;).
Customization is one thing that gets me, every Linux distro is customizeable it is the nature of the beast, all OSS comes with sources and can be compiled on the spot. I'm sure that even SuSE can be customized with some effort.
In conclusion if you want to do a completely custom install go with GNU/Debian, Slackware or Linux From Scratch. If you want to use your computer in as little time as possible go with Ubuntu, Mandriva, SuSE. Stay away from Gentoo it is a false prophet! :)
P.S. Please don't flame me it's just my opinion.

[asimon]

They have been called "ricers" and for a good reason.
Yes, they are a very annoying (and misinformed) group. But there are some very reasonable Gentoo users out there too. Not every Gentoo users is a rice.



I got a Gentoo user friend who looks down on me for wanting to have a GUI to configure my ACPI as opposed to spending 2 days figuring it out and doing a very ugly hack to get to what I wanted (basically disabled the script). My gripe with Gentoo is that it toutes(sp?) itself as a super customizeable distribution but forgets about other ones.
The original philosophy as set by the founder of Gentoo was "... a distribution ... which doesn't get in your way". Sadly this seems to be forgotten by some Gentoo developers and users. For example everytime someone brings the topic of the graphical installer or gui tools into their forum there is a big outcry that Gentoo should not be for noobs etc. It's mostly that very vocal ricer minority (or so I hope).



I would advise agains using Gentoo, if customizing is your thing go with GNU/Debian or Slackware those are the real hardcore customizers.
I have a different oppinion. Gentoo is far more easier to customize than Debian (I have no expierience with Slackware). With Debian you have the source too, thus you can generally do everything with both distros. But Gentoo's use flags make compile-time costomization very easy and convenient. At least I am quite faster that way as when I have to modify debian packages. And ebuilds are also extremly easy and quick to modify (for example in the case you want to apply some additional patches). Gentoo is great if you have a lost of packages which you want to customize. Binary distros usually have an advantage if the number of packages you want/need to customize is rather small.



Also there is a myth going around about Gentoo being fast, well it's simply not true, if you do nothing but CLI you will not see any difference with any distro.
Yes, Gentoo's strength is not speed. (which doesn't mean that it's slow in any way)



Ubuntu is a great distro (I used alot of different ones, I prefer Ubuntu) it just works out of the box. It is still highly customizeable, it's still a Linux and in effect it is GNU/Debian with some tweaking ;).

Yes, Ubuntu is one of the best distros. But if customization means for example to change the default config-flags of Mozilla, enable some special patches for gcc, disable gnome support for some packages, enabling some obscure options which are disabled in the standard package, etc. then Gentoo's packages are much easier to modify.



Customization is one thing that gets me, every Linux distro is customizeable it is the nature of the beast, all OSS comes with sources and can be compiled on the spot. I'm sure that even SuSE can be customized with some effort.

As long as you have the source you can do everything. The question is how much effort is it. For me setting some USE flags or editing an ebuild is much quicker than modifying and rebuilding debian packages (and this is also true if it comes to updating customized packages). But then there is much room for improvement when it comes to my debian packaging skills.



In conclusion if you want to do a completely custom install go with GNU/Debian
You mean first installing the standard debian packages and then downloading the sources, modifying files in /debian, rebuilding the debian packages and then installing the costum packages (and maybe rebuild reverse dependencies). Well, yes, that is a good way if their number is rather small. But if you "custom factor" is big, the Gentoo way is more efficient.



If you want to use your computer in as little time as possible go with Ubuntu, Mandriva, SuSE. Stay away from Gentoo it is a false prophet! :)

Gentoo itself doesn't want to be a prophet (although some users may claim this, you know you find fanatics in every distro's community). Depending on your requirements it can be a better choise. There just is no single distribution which is the best solution for every possible use.

If you want/need Gentoo's customizability, then use it. If not then there are more appropriate distros for you. For most people I usually recommend Kubuntu (okay, sometimes Ubuntu too) or SUSE Linux. But a friend of mine with some highly specialized requirements for some digital video and satellite tv stuff was much better suited with Gentoo. He had a hell of time trying to customize many multimedia and vcr packagas with Debian or SUSE (many standard packages in this field are highly 'crippled' because of legal issues or not packaged at all). With Gentoo it was quite easy to do.

[Biased turkey]

Gentoo is for ricers:
http://funroll-loops.org/

[prizrak]

Asimon:
You changed my mind about Gentoo, you are right there are some instances where it would be perfect. I guess that's why we have so many Linux distros everyone can find something for themselves :)

[Inf3ctedFx]

Gentoo, Slackware, Debian, Fedora.. all of them are pretty good in their way.. Ubuntu and Debian are easy to use and install, also easy to install packages or programs.. some ppl like to lear on linux using "the harders distro" like Gentoo or Slackware.. but ALL of them are pretty good.. all are LINUX :)

[otake-tux]

well gentoo does boot a lot faster than ubuntu. then again, installing kde takes 4 or 5 hours in gentoo while in ubuntuit takes ....15 minutes?

[llbra]

What do you want from Linux?

- Stable, Optimized, Custom system (Altough requiring experience and no big facilities)?
Choose Geento

- Relatively Stable, Good but not excelent Optimization, Fast, Realtively Custom, Very easy to use but still powerfull?
Choose Ubuntu


Resumming, choose Gentoo if you want to have full control of all, taking all power of Linux, but this will cost you more time (you manage all parts of the system( and a lot more experience.
Otherwise, choose Ubuntu.

I want efficience, but I don't want to wast time mounting stuff, managing things that can be managed automatically, and I still have all Linux power at my side.

[pharaoh]

I learned a lot from installing Gentoo. I have it on my fileserver & desktop at home, but I changed my laptop over to Ubuntu to get some experience with the apt-get world. I'm having some trouble with some things that I know I could just handle in the kernel myself on Gentoo (getting madwifi drivers to work with this pcmcia card). If you want to know more about what goes on under the hood & get some troubleshooting experience, go with Gentoo. Just make sure you have a separate box to use for web access until you get it running ;) And I find the Gentoo forums & community to be very helpful, including the IRC channels.

[el3ktro]

I have used Gentoo for almost 2 years, and I must say I'm really thankful for having used this distro, because I really learned a lot about Linux, computers, compilers, the Bash, the directory system etc. I think Gentoo is perfect when you really want to learn about Linux. You have to partition your hard drive manually, choose a filesystem, install this, find out about your hardware, configure & install your own kernel, install every single system tool for your own. Well it was really fun I must say and sometimes I still look back to Gentoo with a tear in my eye.

But it happened that I just didn't have time for Gentoo anymore. Well when you've once set it up correctly, it's rock-stable and you'll never have to touch it again, but I coudn't let my fingers off of it so I always had to fix some little things. Well I heart about Ubuntu and it's now my default distro on all my computers. It installs so easily, has everything I need, is almost maintenance-free, has a great community (which Gentoo had too imho, the Ubuntu & Gentoo forums are the best I know!).

Gentoo might be more fun to install (at least when you're into computers) but Ubuntu definitely makes it easier. So well it's just up to you.


Tom

[yasenov]

to the question if ubuntu is better than gentoo i will give you the right answer.If you ask us(the ubuntu forums)we all will say that ubuntu is better,if you go ask the gentoo men,their forum you will be told that gentoo is better.

my opinion is that gentoo is not suitable for noobs and not that suitable for desktop as ubuntu is.

[Xian]

Here's the real answer:
Either is better for the person who enjoys one over the other.

Nuff said and move on.

[John.Michael.Kane]

@ngms27 if you really want a linux distro fited to your needs then try this http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/... every premade distro has it's upside and downside. linux is not one size fits all it. you may have to try two or three distro's to find one the fits your end needs..

Just my thoughts....

[cybermatthieu]

I was using Gentoo for the last year and 1/2. It's a great distro to learn how linux works. I was was a noob when I started on gentoo, and now I feel more confident in Linux.

I just installed Ubuntu this week. It's nice to have a system working in less than an hour! (Gentoo can take a while (1 day or two) to install, compiling xorg and all...) I find this distro so easy! Of course there's still some problems like every distro has (Those *$&% Ati drivers! ;) ) But the overall experience is nice.

In my opinion I find that Gentoo is a sweet OS but it's a bit costy on the maintenance. And that's why I'm going on Ubuntu for my desktop (not my server yet, still Gentoo there!) But when your a developper and whan to build some new apps you don't want to be slowed down by your distro.

[darkmatter]

hmmm Ive always been more of a Slack, LFS, Gentoo guy...

The reason I switched to sid then to uby was simply convenience.... though I really miss my babies ;)

So... to me... Gentoo is superior to Uby... but thats just my opinion... to each their own :)

[bjweeks]

What car are you going to like better a ford or a homebuilt?

[adamb10]

Gentoo is for those who want to know what they are putting in there computer. Ubuntu is good if you want a operating system with everything in minutes. Gentoo lets you pick what goes in and out.

[dbunder]

In short, ubuntu is easier to install, but gentoo's packages are actually up to date, while the majority of ubuntu packages I've seen are versions and versions behind.

If you run gentoo, expect a lot of maintenance. If you run ubuntu, expect to just use your computer and not have to worry about much.

I like both a lot. I used to be a gentoo faithful. Then I decided it was too much trouble and wanted something that'd install and give me a nice desktop out of the box - and here I am with ubuntu.

For a server, I'd choose gentoo, hands-freakin-down. For a desktop machine, it's all about ubuntu and kubuntu, imo.

[Bandit]

What car are you going to like better a ford or a homebuilt?
Huh, Silly question. BMW of course :-D

[DigitalDuality]

The difference between Gentoo and Ubuntu... really comes more down to..

Fake-tough guy Ricers vs Softy-humanitarians.

In terms of community anyways.

Jokes aside, i really really tire of seeing Ubuntu maliciously bashed on digg.com, /. and a multitude of other sites out there by the Gentoo crowd. It's obnoxious.

[Perfect Storm]

Jokes aside, i really really tire of seeing Ubuntu maliciously bashed on digg.com, /. and a multitude of other sites out there by the Gentoo crowd. It's obnoxious.

/signed

and most of the reason they give are ridicules ones. But some people uses the bashing to feel superior. Rather pathetic if you give it a thought.

The good thing that there's diffrent distros is they aim at diffrent people and diffrent needs.

[h4lfl1ng]

Do gentoo and compile it from scratch if you want to learn alot about how linux works. If you dont, and you just want something up and running fast..then ubuntu is the way to go. I use both. :D Gentoo as a game server and Ubuntu (dapper) as a desktop.

[Al3xanR0]

Gentoo scenario

You go to the car dealership and purchase a shiny new car, only before you drive it you must assemble it piece by stinking piece.

Ubuntu scenario

You go to the car dealership and purchase a shiny new car, you purchase some accessories/ enhancements then take them home and install them yourself Instead of paying for rediculously over priced labor costs.

Windows scenario

let's not go there...

Al3xanR0

[Stormy Eyes]

So... to me... Gentoo is superior to Uby... but thats just my opinion... to each their own :)

I too prefer the greater control that Gentoo offers, but the time investment is no longer feasible now that I'm married. My Catherine tries to be patient with me when I get the urge to tinker, but I can tell she's making an effort.

[briancurtin]

Gentoo scenario

You go to the car dealership and purchase a shiny new car, only before you drive it you must assemble it piece by stinking piece.

Ubuntu scenario

You go to the car dealership and purchase a shiny new car, you purchase some accessories/ enhancements then take them home and install them yourself Instead of paying for rediculously over priced labor costs.
a serious car buyer would choose the gentoo scenario. you ensure that you have only the parts you want, and you can choose the best ones for performance and only the ones you need.

[Al3xanR0]

a serious car buyer would choose the gentoo scenario. you ensure that you have only the parts you want, and you can choose the best ones for performance and only the ones you need.

Touche! I guess there is more than one way to look at it. But let us assume for a moment (you will probably agree that the following is not far from the truth) that most beginning Ubuntu users are perhaps as inexperienced as the first time do it yourselfer --building your own car if you are not mechanically inclined, regardless of how accurate your assembly instructions are can be suicidal..
Case and point, the majority of new users flock to Ubuntu because it is EASIER to install than Gentoo. Nevertheless, your point is valid.:cool:

[RAV TUX]

OK I have two computers at home one I have been using Ubuntu since the Hoary Hedgehog.

The other has XPsp2, this is a relatively new computer Dell Gen. 5 with EM64T dual core processor, and the latest and greatest everything else.


The problem is Ubuntu would be my first choice BUT I can't get the live CD of Ubuntu to just load, yeah I have posted help in the forums and tried all the advice it just doesn't work.

now I have been able to get other live CD's Distros to work:

Musix GNU + Linux 0.40
Dreamlinux XFCE Studio Edition 1.0
Morphix Combined Heavy GUI/Gnome 0.5 pre4
GNU/Linux Kinerret 0.7.3
Knoppix 5.0.1
geexbox 1.0 rc2

and now

Gentoo 2006.0


so here is my beef why, won't Ubuntu just work? I was looking forward to the new release but just disappointment.

Ubuntu isn't unique in it's failure the following Distros don't work:

SUSE 10.1
Mepis 6.0 beta2
Kubuntu 6.06
Xubuntu 6.06
gnoppix
Scientific Linux
Fedore Core5

(I used to hear advice it's best to have an old PC and test Linux out there first but this is the worst advice because there is NO correlation what will work on my old PC and my new PC)

[23meg]

Did you try

- Burning at a slower speed
- Using a different brand of blank CD
- Using a different CD recorder
- Checking the MD5 sum of the downloaded ISO image
- Checking the CD for errors (in the boot menu)

?

Why don't you also post a link to the thread where you asked for help about the CD not loading?

[RAV TUX]

Did you try

- Burning at a slower speed
- Using a different brand of blank CD
- Using a different CD recorder
- Checking the MD5 sum of the downloaded ISO image
- Checking the CD for errors (in the boot menu)

?

Why don't you also post a link to the thread where you asked for help about the CD not loading?

yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
& I tried Breezy official CD ( which was mailed to me)

I'll look for the thread now.

[RAV TUX]

yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
& I tried Breezy official CD ( which was mailed to me)

I'll look for the thread now.

well unfortunately I couldn't find the thread. it's after 1am and I have to work tomorrow I'll look another day.

[Donshyoku]

well unfortunately I couldn't find the thread. it's after 1am and I have to work tomorrow I'll look another day.

If you started the threads, it should be listed in the forums menu under Search->"Find All Your Threads." :wink:

[GreyFox503]

Your computer is 64-bit. Are you trying to use the AMD64 version? If so, I would try just the plain x86 version.

Also, the new Dapper desktop CD has some kind of "safe graphics mode" you can use upon startup.

[RAV TUX]

well unfortunately I couldn't find the thread. it's after 1am and I have to work tomorrow I'll look another day.

OK I found the thread using advanced search:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=164563&highlight=dual+boot

[KingBahamut]

Read from Distrowatch --

Is the Gentoo Project in trouble? Recently, signs of dissatisfaction with the way things are done at Gentoo have started appearing with increasing regularity. Jochen Maes in Leaving Gentoo: "Today I resigned from my beloved project Gentoo." The author quotes lack of respect and trust from other Gentoo developers, ongoing power struggles, and frequent signs of disregarding Gentoo policies as the main reasons for his decision. Joshua Jackson in State of affairs: "...the fact that working on Gentoo has not been as much fun as it has in the past has made me consider retiring." The author also reveals that a growing number of Gentoo developers now consider leaving the project. What's going on? Are these examples just isolated incidents or is the popular source-based distribution going through the toughest period in its existence?

External Links
http://blog.sejo.be/?p=29
http://tsunam.org/?p=60

This is honestly sad news to me, Jochen had my biggest respect out of all the Gentoo'ers.

[keithjr]

Yikes, I just came out of a year of very satisfied gentoo use (before nuking my computer and deciding to experiment with other distros) about 6 months ago. I have not been keeping in touch with the project since then, I had no idea that there was so much internal turmoil. Where is this all coming from? Its community and documentation are among the best I've ever seen...

[DJ_Max]

Yikes, I just came out of a year of very satisfied gentoo use (before nuking my computer and deciding to experiment with other distros) about 6 months ago. I have not been keeping in touch with the project since then, I had no idea that there was so much internal turmoil. Where is this all coming from? Its community and documentation are among the best I've ever seen...
According to tsunam.org blog, it's been happening over the gentoo developer mailing list.

I have to say, I was a gentoo user, but wanted to try Ubuntu, but still wanted to get back with Gentoo as my main PC OS when I build it, but it's not looking so good. I hope Gentoo survives this.

[lunatic77]

Sorry for this long ramble, but these are my observations from using Gentoo:

I was feeling pretty confident back around March or so with Ubuntu. So I decided to be adventurous and try installing Gentoo. I have a faily old PC (800Mhz, 768MB RAM) so it took me a few days to actually get everything installed (compiled). I could deal with that. The things that killed me were 1) the time to maintain the system, and 2) I never got certain things working right. Anytime the system was so much as breathed upon, I found myself compiling endlessly.

However, I will say this. I had two reasons for installing Gentoo: 1) increase in performance (and customization), and 2) learn more about the core pieces of Linux. I'd say that objective #1 failed miserably, and objective #2 was definitely met. I returned to my Ubuntu installation after about 2 months with more confidence and skills (not to mention Ubuntu actually outperforms Gentoo on my old system).

It seems that there is sort of a catch 22 with Gentoo regarding the performance aspect. If one attempts to run it on old hardware in order to gain a performance boost, then actually more time will be spent compiling/maintaining/configuring and actually negate any performance boosts that were gained. Some users will argue there is no tangible performance boost with custom compilation anyway. So you might as well only run Gentoo on really fast hardware; but then again, if you have really fast hardware, why do you need the performance boost (i.e. just use Ubuntu)?

[K.Mandla]

It seems that there is sort of a catch 22 with Gentoo regarding the performance aspect. If one attempts to run it on old hardware in order to gain a performance boost, then actually more time will be spent compiling/maintaining/configuring and actually negate any performance boosts that were gained.
Excellent point. I've noticed that same fact, when working with older machines that needed hefty tweaking to get them up to speed. It seemed to me that the time I saved (or improvement I saw) in performance was lost when I considered how much time it took to make them work that well. #-o

Not to shift off topic, but it's kind of the same reason I don't use OpenBox any more. I'm not bashing OB, but It took me so long to get things how I wanted them that the speed difference didn't matter.

Anyways, just my $0.02. Now if you'll pardon me, I have to go fix sudo after the last Edgy updates. :rolleyes:

[G Morgan]

Do gentoo and compile it from scratch if you want to learn alot about how linux works. If you dont, and you just want something up and running fast..then ubuntu is the way to go. I use both. :D Gentoo as a game server and Ubuntu (dapper) as a desktop.

I'm not so sure about that. When I ran a Gentoo box true you learn loads but most of it is Gentoo specific, the minimal install will certainly break any fear of the command line and text editors though. If you really want to learn Linux surely Slackware or even LFS would teach you a whole lot more.

Gentoo is fun to play with but in the end it got tiresome. It wasn't quite as bleeding edge as I liked either (it's no slouch but a lot of distros had KDE 3.5 before Gentoo). The boot speed was phenominal on my machine (obviously custom kernel) and there was an efficiency gain. The main benefit to Gentoo though more than anything else is split KDE ebuilds so you can have the cake without buying the shop. With Kubuntu quite stripped down this advantage is negated to an extent.

Personally I like Ubuntu on my main machine because I like to keep it together more simply. I have a spare box which I play with and I may go back to Gentoo or Slack there.

[Arisna]

I used Gentoo for several months and switched to Ubuntu a few weeks ago. Although I like Gentoo's init script system much better than the SYSVINIT that Ubuntu/Debian uses, I've been just as happy, if not happier, with everything else on Ubuntu.

[Rhapsody]

A serious question.

I'm new to Linux and have just had a quick look at Gentoo.

Is Ubuntu better? If so why?

Thanks

JonnyT
I see this as like someone saying "Which is better? A kit car or a Ford Focus?".

The answer depends on what you want. Do you want to have the experience of putting a car together by hand or do you just want something you can do the weekly shopping with?

[amavida]

A serious question.

I'm new to Linux and have just had a quick look at Gentoo.

Is Ubuntu better? If so why?

Thanks

JonnyT

I have tried both.

GENTOO :?


Gentoo has a big repository of very up to date software.
Gentoo has a different package management scheme modelled on BSD way of doing things which is CLAIMED to be better than other schemes.
Gentoo is claimed to operate faster because the kernel & all the installed packages are compiled for your cpu model.
Gentoo is claimed to operate faster because the init system is CLAIMED to be better designed.
Gentoo has a large active forum of users as a help resource. I found the demographic of the forum tends to be guru types with less patience for noob questions than other distro's.
Gentoo has highly detailed install instructions (because baby your sure gonna need'em!) for it's laborious hand install procedure (think day's/weeks) & lots of other documents.
Gentoo has a regular update cycle.


I found Gentoo laborious (thinks day's/weeks for install configure) & no faster than other well configured distro's. The ports system is not without it's bug's (ahem). Users tend to be zealots with a lot of time on their hands...

UBUNTU :p


Ubuntu has a decent repository of reasonably up to date software, and because it's debian based an even bigger source of packages potentially in the Debian repositories.
Ubuntu has a different package management scheme which is CLAIMED to be better than other schemes.
Ubuntu can be faiirly easilly configured to operate faster by installing a the kernel that is compiled for your cpu model & stopping un-needed services or even replacing the init system with an advanced asynchrounous type (initG). This gives 99.9% of the performance of the obtainable speed. The last 0.1% is not worth your time chasing.
Ubuntu has a very large active forum of users as a help resource. I found the demographic of the forum tends to be well balanced with a plenty of help for noob questions & advanced users alike.
Ubuntu has plenty of detailed install instructions for it's install procedure (think hours) & lots of other documents.
Ubuntu has a regular update cycle.


Ubuntu takes an hour or so to install to a working system & a couple of hours of fiddling tweaking if you so desire.

These are more subjective opinions. I welcome others opinions/experiences but ignore flames / blatant fanboyisms.

Amavida

[Dinerty]

Gentoo was way out my league, thank god Ubunru make linux simple, it's true it really is simple !!

What you guys think of Gentoo install ?!

[Swab]

What you guys think of Gentoo install ?!

Never had any desire to try Gentoo... I don't dig the elitist mentality! Uh oh... flame war! ;)

[JoWilly]

Gentoo is for people who need it. Its excellent for its purpose. Been using it for 4-5 years (it wasn't as easy as it is today) before switching to ubuntu.

[boobytrapped]

I used Gentoo for two year before Ubuntu warty came out. I was never a fan of waiting 10hrs for things to compile, but it was the best package management system of that time (I know I know, debian existed, but it was veeeery out of date at that time).

I switched to Ubuntu, and at time I would not believe my eyes.. you chant "install gaim" and it voila in 5 seconds, you are running gaim. With gentoo it was more like 15-20 minutes for each small program you wanted to install. Don't even ask me how long it took to install Gnome or KDE.

[Dinerty]

They have a GUI install but even that was to hard for me, How the hell could someone install that by command line i would never know :O

[JoWilly]

I was never a fan of waiting 10hrs for things to compile. Don't even ask me how long it took to install Gnome or KDE.

The nicest one was openoffice :mrgreen:

[nikkiana]

My fiance used Gentoo for a couple months prior to switching to Kubuntu, so my opinion of the project is more or less what I've heard him talk about....

Minus the install (which he needed an experienced friend's help for), he had a very good experience with it... but in the end, it wasn't for him... However, it was a very good learning experience for him... He's one of those people who needs to jump in over his head to learn something, so it ended up working out pretty well for him in the short term...

He did speak very highly of the community surrounding Gentoo being extremely friendly and helpful, even towards a newbie who didn't know his head from his butt.

[JoWilly]

He did speak very highly of the community surrounding Gentoo being extremely friendly and helpful, even towards a newbie who didn't know his head from his butt.

Yep, the gentoo and ubuntu communities have a lot in common.

[Dinerty]

What I found weird was, Gentoo is suppose to be this hardcore piece of software, but upon installation of my system it could not detect anything, correct resolution, sound, wireless

I don't know if the point of gentoo is to allow the user to configure everything theirself?, whereas Ubuntu makes the process alot simpler?

[Cyraxzz]

I've used it before, I would rate it 6 out of 10.

[JoWilly]

I don't know if the point of gentoo is to allow the user to configure everything theirself?, whereas Ubuntu makes the process alot simpler?

The point of gentoo is an automatic custom software compiled system with dependencies on the libraries installed on your system, with your use flags and cflags. This is what makes gentoo unique (including the bsd like portage et all).

now, this great a tool cannot be build in 1 day. See how long it took to get a gui installer (it didn't exist when I used it). Guis for everything will come (resolution, etc...), it just takes time and developers are more focused on getting the base system done first.

[elamericano]

Unique? There are other source based distros out there. Portage is the big deal. I almost set up a Gentoo machine. I'm sure I'd have gotten tired of it eventually, but I'm sorry it didn't work for me. I did a stage 1 install, which worked, but stage 2 failed. Since you're a slave to portage at that point, I was dead in the water.

I've heard of their great community, and I've seen their great documentation. The only reservation is how up to date and tested are their ports. I probably won't wind up using it now. I've got better things to do, and LFS already taught me about building a system from source.

[gruvsyco]

While I could never get gentoo running, it seems to have the most up to date app database... it seems like everything is available on gentoo almost immediately.

[Dinerty]

While I could never get gentoo running, it seems to have the most up to date app database... it seems like everything is available on gentoo almost immediately.

With suh a long compile time they have to release it first :), Only kidding I don't know nothing about Gentoo, but I respect it for what it is :)

[bobleny]

I have been told that Gentoo is better than Ubuntu. I'm not saying it is and I'm not saying it is. It is most likely a matter of ones opinion, however, I would like to know the differences. What do you think? Why do you prefer Ubuntu over Gentoo or vise versa.

[Ziox]

never used gentoo before, but i've heard it was built so that it would be easier to compile and create packages....and also all the commands suggest that gentoo is a building machine. .e.g. emerge frostwire

[scxtt]

gentoo gives you the ability to compile your own packages using your own set of CFLAGS, so it's more optimized for your system ... i don't see the point in comparing gentoo and ubuntu, they're both good @ what they do ...

[RAV TUX]

these threads have been merged:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=226908
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=96176

[MM23]

I've used them both substantially and love them both for different reasons.

I honestly think Ubuntu shines brighter in almost every respect except for one: the lack of packages in the Ubuntu universe/multiverse repositories. Sure, we have a lot of stuff, but compared to portage... portage is quite literally the most complete package distribution system for a linux distro there is. Hands down. Any little plugin you could possibly want for any program, you can get with a single emerge command. Why can't Ubuntu offer that? That's the only thing I really prefer Gentoo because of. I tend to use Ubuntu more, simply because it's fast and I don't want to wait 8 hours to install a single application, but if Ubuntu had as much content as portage in the form of precompiled binaries... I would never use Gentoo again.

I do love Ubuntu, though, so don't get me wrong. Ubuntu has a lot compared to, say, Debian or Mandriva. But god damn...

Seriously, have any of you noticed how absolutely massive portage is? I find myself having to compile from source a lot of the time on Ubuntu because I just can't find those applications or plugins in the repos. ](*,)

That, and I think Ubuntu is a stupid name so I tend to lie and say I'm using Gentoo 100% of the time or I just say it's Debian (which is half true, it IS forked from Debian!). :???:

[3rdalbum]

OK I want a stable platform to do the following:

2) Must work well with Java

I've had a few major issues with Netbeans IDE when other Java apps are running. It can kill the machine.

You want a stable computer, and you want Java on it too?

If you accomplish such a thing, I'll ring the church bells.

[Gtaylor]

I ran Gentoo as a student for about a year but grew tired with it over time for a few reasons that I found unacceptable:

I need to be in class and at other places at certain times, I don't have time to sit through very long updates and recompiles.
Things tended to break with little warning. For example, a new version of Postgres comes out, the update scripts don't backup and update your databases to the new format, and consequently a bunch of dependent systems break as Postgres crashes.
Laptop support stunk out of the box. I'm not interested in sinking hours into configuring my laptop.
Gentoo. Is. No. More. Configurable. Than. Ubuntu. You can get just as in-depth and nitty-gritty with Ubuntu as you can with Gentoo. They're both still Linux, they're both still Open-Source, they're both easy to modify and adapt to your own needs.
The benefit of binary vs. source packages is absolutely negligable in many cases. Firefox taking two seconds less to startup just isn't worth it. I can pre-link the slow applications and enjoy clean, stable packages without screwing with USE flags and often buggy packages.
I found the quality of their packages sub-par to Debian, with lots of annoying bugs and crashes, particularly in the KDE applications.
Gentoo is really bad for laptops. Most aren't built to be running at 100% utilization compiling for hours and hours on end. I've seen several laptops die to the compile-fests.

In the end it really is a question of preference, but I can't help witholding a snicker when I hear people arrogantly state that their install could smoke yours because their compile flags make them super0mgfast.

And as a note, there are binary distros that bench faster than a typical Gentoo source install from stage 1. Look back to Yoper, with their aggressive optimizations and binary stripping. That was fast, probably still is fast. With modern hardware, well-built software will run fast regardless of whether it's distributed as a binary or a source package.

[FenrisAbraxas]

never used gentoo before, but i've heard it was built so that it would be easier to compile and create packages....and also all the commands suggest that gentoo is a building machine. .e.g. emerge frostwire

Well im a Gentoo User and i think i can answer your questions.

Gentoo lets you CUSTOMIZE your computer to do what you like to do, for example the gentoo stage 1 install boots you into a console with just gcc and a few apps to BUILD UP THE CORE based on YOUR SYSTEM. To install gentoo you have to compile the kernel BASED ON YOU SPECS (CPU, Video Card, Sound Card, etc etc).

In Ubuntu you get a pretty nice GENERIC i686 - 386 kernel who will not squeeze all your cpu but will work on every x86 box. On Gentoo you have the kernel matching everything you have.

In Ubuntu packages are precompiled so if apache2 was compiled in a pentium IV and you use a Athlon XP you will get a little less performance (not too much to worry about).

In the ease of use Gentoo is a little more complex than Ubuntu but package maintainance is all through portage (like apt-get in Debian based Distros).

Doing

apt-get install icewm
Will be the same as

emerge icewm

System upgrades are easy and almost painless through portage, config editing is painless with etc-update.

Now, in portage you have the CHOICE, source code or binary packages, OpenOffice is a pain in the you-know-what to compile :P so you can install the binary package. And i read someone complaining about the USE flags too hard to set, well globaly it's hard to find a set of USE flags for every package you might need but with good use of portage you will have the info you need.


emerge -av mplayer

will list you with all the options you have to compile that package (mplayer have lots of use flags because the codecs and formats to support).

So if you have the time to do some research and learn to use portage in the propper way Gentoo is a great option, let you customize your system, gives you a slightly better performance.

But if you are a new Linux user you will get overwhelmed by all the options Gentoo gives you, so Ubuntu is a nice and ready to work distro. apt-get, aptitude and synaptic are really good packet manager tools and the system administration is made easier.

And to finish this im going to say, Gentoo isn't better or worst than Ubuntu, Ubuntu isn't better or worst than ANY OTHER distro, they just suit different needs.

Good Luck if you decide to install Gentoo without a graphical installer, it's hard but i learned a LOT when did my first Gentoo stage 1 install :)

[gmcle454]

I've got to agree with MM23. Both are great for very different reasons.

I started my Linux experience with Gentoo almost 3 years ago with a 3-day compile of the OS. From there it was a lot of work customizing the machine how I wanted it to work. Since then I've never had to re-install my OS. The machine is now a rock-solid server and runs fast. One advantage most people overlook in Gentoo is that it only compiles for your machine's specs. That means it runs lean--which equates to fast. My Gentoo kernel is well under 1M. It will fit on a floppy disk! There is only support for my specific hardware and software needs. The downside is that I have to do more work to modify the system, but the upside is that the OS runs fast and has fewer things that can break. When I need a program, it is only an emerge away.

Ubuntu on the other hand works well out of the box. It is more bloated, but in a practical way. The idea here is that you don't have to be an uber-geek to use it. Just install it and go. Shuttleworth wanted to make a lasting contribution to the Linux community, and he did just that by making Linux accessible to most people. You don't have to wait forever to install the OS, nor do you have to sacrifice any goats to the custom-config-file-gods. It is good to go from day 1. The package management is still young, but it will grow with time.

Just look at the types of questions asked in the Ubuntu forms as compared to the Gentoo forums. The Ubuntu users are asking direct questions that tend to revolve around usability, hardware and general Linux knowledge. The Gentoo forums are filled with hard-core geeks who love sharing and increasing their knowledge. Their questions tend to revolve around hacking the OS or programs , customization and hardware problems. Because they are knowledgeable (and like to show that knowledge off) they are known for jumping through fire hoops to help each other out.

Both are good, but very different. If you want to get your grandmother using Linux, give her Ubuntu. If you like to squeeze every ounce of speed out of your box, then give Gentoo a go.

[yukito]

I was to lazy to read all of this, but there is no such thing as one distro being better than another. It's a matter of taste and choice. For a beginner, ubuntu should be the first choice, because it's easy to set up and use. Gentoo is nice in its own respect, with its very powerfull ways of optimizing the system for your needs. It's powerfull and its a fast. But it takes a lot of work, time and experience to get it right. Personally, gentoo is my favourite but the source based installation of software can get old really quick, especially on older and slower hardware. And don't go thinking "I want speed and performance, so gentoo is right for me". More often then not, you can break things instead of making them faster if you don't know exactly what your doing. The stock packages in Ubuntu aren't all that much slower than gentoo anyway.

[RAV TUX]

I have decided to start a series of threads specifically for technical help for other Distros...the Distro is listed in the thread title. This is primarily for Ubuntu users who test or use other distros and feel most comfortable seeking help in our own community. In no way does this superceed the help you should also be getting from the perspective Distro., in fact I encourage you to be as active in their forums as you are here and post ideas, knowledge and solutions here to provide a reference point to share, reference links are encouraged.

Beginning with Gentoo here.

***Gentoo Tech Talk***

[RAV TUX]

OK I am installing Gentoo I will post screenshots of the installation process:

skipping the welcome message here is step 1 (pre-installation configuration):

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/7507/screenshotiq9.png

[RAV TUX]

Step two partitioning....

here I have cleared my current partitions and have chosen the Gentoo recommended layout:

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/1752/screenshot1bb7.png

[RAV TUX]

The next step is network mounts...I'll be honest here...I am not sure what this is or if I need it....so I will screenshot and skip it....I have done the Gentoo install before and can't remember what I did before...so here goes...(btw if anybody has recommendations of explanations at this point just let me know)

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/4268/screenshot2hu2.png

[RAV TUX]

Traditionally at this stage I have always done the straight forward stage 3 for quick install....this time I have chosen the *Dynamic Stage 3 install...

http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/3996/screenshot3ot7.png

[RAV TUX]

Portage tree step...on this step since I am doing the *dynamic stage 3 install I will leave the pre-selected option as is since this is what is required with the *dynamic stage 3 install...

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/4972/screenshot4hb0.png

[RAV TUX]

ok this is the most fun step of Gentoo where you enable your flags....don't just enable everthing on this step read the descriptions and be careful when things start with no- this usually will disable things,....also watch vanilla....

http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/8095/screenshot5ah4.png]

[RAV TUX]

this step is self explanatory:

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/8406/screenshot6al6.png

[RAV TUX]

again self explanatory:

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/3826/screenshot7vo4.png

[RAV TUX]

set your time zone

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/4218/screenshot8wy2.png

[PingunZ]

Nice help but would you mind saying why you arent posting this on a blog/ guide for gentoo users ?
I thaught this was ubuntu only-- > UBUNTUforums.org
I know this forum is huge but we need all the help wa can have not ppl to install gentoo and leave ubuntu.
I dont see the good things about these threads, sorry.

[RAV TUX]

again self expanatory (don't forget to hit save)

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/27/screenshot9hb4.png

[RAV TUX]

Nice help but would you mind saying why you arent posting this on a blog/ guide for gentoo users ?
I thaught this was ubuntu only-- > UBUNTUforums.org
I know this forum is huge but we need all the help wa can have not ppl to install gentoo and leave ubuntu.
I dont see the good things about these threads, sorry.

again, you are in other linux talk...this guide is for Ubuntu users who choose to test or use Gentoo....remember free as in freedom

[RAV TUX]

with that said I'm off to work...will post the rest tonight...

[XXFCTEXX]

I prefer Ubuntu. I don't have a week to get my operating system up and running and my experience in the Gentoo forums is basically of the RTFM type.

Unless you are running an old POS then I see no reason to squeeze every bit of resources out of my box as I have plenty of resources to use. Ubuntu is up and running in less than 30 minutes with all of my hardware working and every application I could ever want on it.

There is an air of snobby elitism in the Gentoo community that I abhor. Sorry if I have other things to do besides compile all day and want an OS in 30 minutes or less. I find nothing elite about wasting time.

You compile..........I'm going to chat on Gaim and IRC, download some music, and surf the net. :)

[.t.]

I'm going to chat on Gaim and IRC, download some music, and surf the net. :)
I've just built Gentoo on my laptop, and I can do all that whilst compiling.

I like Gentoo and Ubuntu both, and I continue to use the ubuntu-artwork on Gentoo, as I really love the work that has gone into it. I also really miss asoundconf, so I can easily switch between my ICH6 and Audigy2ZS Notebook card.

[thagame]

I prefer Ubuntu. I don't have a week to get my operating system up and running and my experience in the Gentoo forums is basically of the RTFM type.

Unless you are running an old POS then I see no reason to squeeze every bit of resources out of my box as I have plenty of resources to use. Ubuntu is up and running in less than 30 minutes with all of my hardware working and every application I could ever want on it.

There is an air of snobby elitism in the Gentoo community that I abhor. Sorry if I have other things to do besides compile all day and want an OS in 30 minutes or less. I find nothing elite about wasting time.

You compile..........I'm going to chat on Gaim and IRC, download some music, and surf the net. :)

wow your pc must really suck. i had gentoo base, gnome, kde and a bunch of apps all done overnight while i slept. and its not gentoo users that are snobby its linux users as a whole. you ask any forum what the worst fanboy in the world is and they will tell you linux then apple then sony.

[SoundMachine]

Actually, the tests i have seen have pretty much shown that Debian is about as fast as Gentoo, slower in some instances, faster in others all in all about equal.

Gentoo isn't a learner distro either, you don't learn anything from watching code scroll by and whatever you have learned by the make flags is discarded as soon as you are in a real world environment using only binary packages.

You want to learn Linux, edit the config files by hand and you'll learn the system way better than by compiling.

Gentoo Ricers ;) (http://www.funroll-loops.org/)

[zoram]

well, I'm quite a "noob" but here is my experience.

I've tried Gentoo about two years ago.

I did the stage one install. Honestly it was easy, you don't need to be a sorcerer, just follow the instructions you previously downloaded.

Obviously, if you're a "noob", you're pretty much still a noob afterwards, copying stuff you don't understand doesn't really make you a linux guru in 3 days.

Talking about three days, it took me about 30 hours from the time I inserted the cd to the point I was ready to install X. and then a few more long hours before being able to see KDE or Gnome (or whatever else) on your screen.

Again, it wasn't hard (and it was two years ago), I just followed to the letter the install guide.

At that point, however I was pretty incredulous.(never thought it could take that long to set up a system and was wondering what kind of person would have that time to waste especially professionals°. But I was thinking "With all that compiling it sure will be damn fast, they say the point of doing all that is to have an optimised system".

Well, the mouse doesn't work (eventhough it was automatically detected during the looong install process).
Found out I had to edit some file and replace /mouse byt /mice (or something like that). I mean seriously, choice is cool, but who NEEDS to manually set up a ******* mouse.

Geting the sound card to work was another few hours of work.

Installing any program would take freaking forever.
I hardly see the point of gaining a few seconds when you launch an app if it takes half a day to upgrade your system. seriously.

But the best part I had never seen my computer so slow. I had to be very careful about which music player I use, basically everything with more options than play/pause/stop would make the listening experience a torture (like gaps every ten seconds) and moving the mouse cursor smoothly prooved impossible.

So well, took me forever to install, had to edit config files just to have a working mouse and ended with the slowest system ever.

Granted, it was two years ago so might haev changed, but then again, at the time the arguments for using gentoo were exactly the same as today.

So I tried ubuntu about two weeks ago. Took me 20 minutes to install, ran automatix, and hop, it's working, I can use amarok and still move the cursor across the screen or even use another application (awwww).

same pc, xp 1700+ 512 Mo Sdram (ok, it's a bit old; but ubuntu runs ok, as does winXP).

Maybe I've just been unlucky with gentoo though ...
buit anyway what's the point really : we 're going to take a day just for compiling stuff, because we like speed ? Did I miss something there. Sound a bit like "my car is super fast, takes me 20 minutes to get the engine running, but once it's on the motorway it is really fast".

nb, got a error when posting and ended with a duplicate (if somebody could delete the first one :) )

[el3ktro]

Well I was also using Gentoo a few years ago, then switched to Ubuntu on all my machines, but now I had to switch to Gentoo on my new laptop, simply because Ubuntu wasn't able to install, I did install Breezy though and upgraded to Dapper then - which worked, but I had a lot of issues with my kernel (lockups after ~10mins). So well I had to switch to Gentoo which is the only distro which can be installed without automatic hardware detection (because that's what prevent almost all other distros from installing).

Be honest, do you really think somebody creates a distribution THAT slow? If you have mouse lags and can't even play music, then - sorry - you have obviously configured something wrong in the kernel or so. Having seen Ubuntu & Gentoo running on the same laptop now, I can tell how much faster Gentoo is. But well, Gentoo definitely is not a distro for everyday use imho, it's more a playing around, learning & tweaking distro. You just work at another "level", you work at the system itself, like for example choosing which dhcp daemon to use, which mouse module to put in the kernel, how to create the files in /dev etc. It's not compareable.

Well for any desktop system, I'd 100% recommend Ubuntu and I hope s much that when Edgy is ready it well properly run on my laptop, but when you want to "dive" into Linux and know how the system, Linux, works, then choose Gentoo.

Believe me, when you play around with it, and when you try things for yourself, you will know at som point what all the commands you enter during installation actually do - it's really not that complex actually.

Tom

[zoram]

Be honest, do you really think somebody creates a distribution THAT slow? If you have mouse lags and can't even play music, then - sorry - you have obviously configured something wrong in the kernel or so

I hardly see how I could have "done something" wrong, I merely followed the instruction on the installation guide. I'm sure, my problem was probably fixable, but after having spent days to install a system, plus getting basic things to work, I had reached the end of the time I was willing to waste.

Ok, maybe I "learned" things whil typing in all that code, but that drove me straight back to windows, so I pretty much forgot what I learned but the frustration of the waste of time and inefficiency.

This is obviously just my experience, I'm not saying this is true for everybody. (I guess most people don't have laging mouses :p).

[deepwave]

I would say Ubuntu is better as in easier and faster to install then Gentoo.

That being said, Gentoo is an excellent distribution if you want to control minute details of a Linux system. Gentoo also sports a large number of programs. I personally used Gentoo for nearly three years I can say that you will spend A LOT of time on configuration and building programs. Sometimes I found Gentoo fun with tons of neat brand-new software, other times it resulted in headaches especially during updates. Unless you have the time, the heart to face difficulties, and the urge to do the things that a professional system admin/package maintainer does, I would stick with Ubuntu.

The only time I recommend Gentoo is if you have bizarre hardware, or need a machine with very specific needs.

I hope that helps.

[el3ktro]

I hardly see how I could have "done something" wrong, I merely followed the instruction on the installation guide. I'm sure, my problem was probably fixable, but after having spent days to install a system, plus getting basic things to work, I had reached the end of the time I was willing to waste.

Well especially when it comes to choosing the right kernel configuration there's A LOT one may do wrong. With the wrong kernel configuration the system may be slow, laggy, unstable or won't even boot. This is the most tricky part of the Gentoo installation. Even if you use genkernel there may be a kernel module which is slowing down your system or prevents it from booting.

Well what I like on Gentoo is that it is very, very customizable - and this saved my Linux life, because Ubuntu adly wouldn't even install on my new laptop, but with Gentoo I was able to find out that one single kernel module prevents the Ubuntu CDs to boot, but I Gentoo was able to disable this one module and install it. I really hope that Edgy will work on my laptop though, then I'll definitely come back.

If you just want a system which works, then use Ubuntu, or SuSE or something similar. If you're willing to spend some time and want to learn how Linux works, how all the other distributions look under the hood, then have a look at Gentoo. Gentoo is not a distribution, it's a meta-distribution, you have to do all the work that make other distributions look so fancy & user-friendly for your own, but that's the intersting thing about it, you know how things work afterwards.

[mips]

If you like Gentoo but find it a bit intimidating then mabe people could look at www.sabayonlinux.org which is based on gentoo

[Kateikyoushi]

I used FreeBSD for years and gentoo brought me to the linux world. Sometimes the thought still crawls back into my head to go back but really have no time for that.

Gentoo is really freedom for me, I can do with my system almost anything I like.
I use ratpoison, xbindkeys, no need for window borders, taskbar etc to steal my screen.
I have no need for KDE or Gnome like bloat on my rig.

It is like greased lightning.

With ubuntu I feel my hands are tied do not even really know how to use it, should start reading guides to it but I have no intention to use it.
Just want to have a clear view can I recommend it to anyone, will they be able to manage it ?

[RAV TUX]

moving this thread to other OS/Gentoo talk

[veruca]

I am a former Gentoo user and I will return when I feel froggy. Nothing has run as smooth as my gentoo with fluxbox.

In my humble opinion, until gentoo came out with their liveCD, NO ONE could touch them. Yeah, the trade off is long install times, but it was a VERY smooth running OS. Gentoo's kryptonite is drastic updates... i.e. the latest X update. If you weren't ontop of it early it really bit you in the rear, that's what got me anyways.

You had to be willing to put a day in to install gentoo, but after that it was smooth sailing. All you had to do is follow the install instructions for the command line to a T and you were good to go. You may run into a minor problem, but even a noob could hack it out eventually (if they wanted it bad enough). I just tried gentoo's new liveCD's and they suck. The dev's broke gentoo's install (in my opinion). So here I am in ubuntu, and mindless distro that just works... Which is nice (very nice). Am I a convert? at the moment I am, but I will be watching gentoo to see how it works out with the new install cd's. I'm not downing the ubuntu community but the gentoo community was very very helpful. There are a lot of guys on those forums that know what's what. I still check in with complex problems from time to time.

Wow, I think this turned into a rant... anyways...

Which is better? Gentoo (if you get it going). Which is easier (making better for the masses)? Ubuntu with out a doubt.

[Crooksey]

I used to use gentoo 100% of the time, but i became very tired of the long install times, so on my desktop i installed ubuntu, works no problems, as the problem with gentoo on a desktop is, if i wanted to use the OS as a desktop OS and something broke, it would take a while to fix it, whereas in ubuntu it was intsalled and updated in40 mins, the perfect desktopOS.

I still run gentoo on servers as i can get a custom configuration, but for a plain desktop, gentoo just isnt worth it.

[harisund]

Let me give you my take on this.
Ubuntu is meant to be a newb's distro. And it does a very good job of it. A near perfect job, if I dare say, and brings a whole new meaning to "linux on the desktop". Plus if you hang out on the IRC #ubuntu, you will realize people are extremely willing to help, and things just can't be friendlier.

You install Ubuntu, you start using Ubuntu, you start loving it. Plain and simple. You start enjoying your so called "new found freedom", you start calling Microsoft names (micro$oft *******) .. probably you start advocating Ubuntu as well. You know, hand out some CDs to friends.. and so on.

If you have no strains of being a geek in you, you live happily ever after and it is a fairy tale ending.

However, if there is even a small little geek inside of you waiting to pop out, you will begin to realize Ubuntu no longer poses a challenge. Eventually, things start to fall apart. apt-get is just too easy, synaptic makes it easier, and in the remote case you actually download a .deb file from the internet, double clicking on it makes it work. Every camera, USB drive, iPod, scanner, printer you hotplugged into your USB drive has been recognized.

Then you begin to realize, Ubuntu doesn't satisfy your thirst for power. You begin to demand more, and see yourself as a non-nerd, a non-geek using Linux yes, but a Linux that was custom made, tailored for the hoi polloi.

Little things start to annoy you. Perhaps you saw a shell script somewhere, and were seduced by the dark side (the command line). You slowly begin to long for more control. Your drivers just work. You ask plenty of questions on the IRC channel about compiling a new kernel and why that make xconfig doesn't work, and nobody helps you (probably because you are no longer a n00b, and remember, everything about Ubuntu is n00b friendly - only). You begin to realize that everything in the Ubuntu wiki is basically nothing more than a marketing gimmick. All the instructions are plainly "do this, copy this, execute this, paste that". Nowhere does it tell you why you are doing what you are doing. Want to install apache2? just do 'apt-get install apache2'. Huh? What does that do? Yeah I know it installs apache2 but what happens in the backgrond?

And that's where my friend, a more powerful distro enters the picture. A Linux installation that actually allows you to install the kernel the way you want it sounds like Linux heaven to you. Yeah it takes long, but every package is optimized for your system, and you get what you want. There is no annoying cdburning modules or DVD related stuff when you never had a DVD in the first place. There is no CUPS, you don't have a printer. There is no bluez-utils because you don't have bluetooth. And applications are compiled having that in mind.

Eventually, it is bound to happen. There was once a time when the world used Windows, and it was the target platform for malware writers. These days, it really looks like the world is shifting to Ubuntu en-masse. With Linux adoption rates soaring the way it is now, Ubuntu becomes the next Windows, Canonical becomes the next Microsoft, Shuttleworth becomes the next Gates. And the cycle continues all over again.

meanwhile, distros that remain true to their principles are the ones that don't die. I for one, welcome our new Gentoo and Debian overlords :)

[zoram]

meanwhile, distros that remain true to their principles are the ones that don't die. I for one, welcome our new Gentoo and Debian overlords :)

How on earth a distro that just make things work without having to go through unnecessary hassle is *dying* ?

A computer, at least for most users, is a way to be more productive, a mean to an end, not an end in itself.

Unless you masturbate configuring your OS (not that there's anything wrong with that), or you'e having highly specific professional needs, gentoo is useless for people who just want a reliable Os that works.


Your drivers just work

Every camera, USB drive, iPod, scanner, printer you hotplugged into your USB drive has been recognized

apt-get is just too easy, synaptic makes it easier

my point exactly.
so things that don't work without spending hours on them arn't cool enough ?

Nothing wrong being a geek, but I don't see how being one makes you a better judge of what is a good OS.

[harisund]

come on .. I was just joking... I have nothing against Ubuntu, and am all for Ubuntu world domination (or atleast bug #1) myself.

That apart, I didn't really say gentoo was "better".


gentoo is useless for people who just want a reliable Os that works.
Agree with you completely. No doubt about that.

[H0bb3z]

Thanks for the added visuals for Gentoo -- I usually follow the handbook on the Gentoo site and it seems to be quite accurate, but its nice to see the graphical install as well!

I've been using several different flavors of Linux, including Gentoo for a a long time now. I have to say that both Ubuntu and Gentoo are my favorite flavors because of the wealth of knowledge and great documentation that each distro provides to its users.

I use Gentoo for my workstation and a couple servers and I run Ubuntu on my wife's PC and my webserver -- I like them both!

[Silver Surfer]

I used Gentoo for almost 2 years before switching to Ubuntu.

Why?
Because I got sick of emerging things in stable that BROKE my stable system. I honestly had a pretty basic system, and stayed with the stable branch because I didn't want to deal with breakdowns. But things STILL broke. The Gentoo forums are the only reason I stuck with it.

The Gentoo community is awesome. You have a problem, chances are someone else already posted about it. You need answers, their forums are great.

Why did I switch to Ubuntu?
I wanted to test out Debian, but did not want to deal with RTFM responses from Debian experts. So I looked for a Debian-based distro that had a gentoo-like community. Ubuntu was the choice and I am glad I stuck with it.

When I look back, over the last year I have had maybe 2 things that didn't update correctly, but the next time I tried updating it fixed whatever was wrong. Stability-wise, my experience is Ubuntu is MORE stable than Gentoo. It's probably because Ubuntu is managed better. I am not talking emerge v. apt, I am talking people.

[PineGroveDave]

I've been a Gentoo user for over 3 years now. I like it. So far, I like Ubuntu as well. I switched from RH to Gentoo because I couldn't stand the dependency hell it brought w/ it and Gentoo's Portage Tree was sweet. Ubuntu certainly does do some things better then Gentoo, I'll say that much. :)

[drFUNK]

However, if there is even a small little geek inside of you waiting to pop out, you will begin to realize Ubuntu no longer poses a challenge. Eventually, things start to fall apart. apt-get is just too easy, synaptic makes it easier, and in the remote case you actually download a .deb file from the internet, double clicking on it makes it work. Every camera, USB drive, iPod, scanner, printer you hotplugged into your USB drive has been recognized.

Then you begin to realize, Ubuntu doesn't satisfy your thirst for power. You begin to demand more, and see yourself as a non-nerd, a non-geek using Linux yes, but a Linux that was custom made, tailored for the hoi polloi.

Little things start to annoy you. Perhaps you saw a shell script somewhere, and were seduced by the dark side (the command line). You slowly begin to long for more control. Your drivers just work...You begin to realize that everything in the Ubuntu wiki is basically nothing more than a marketing gimmick. All the instructions are plainly "do this, copy this, execute this, paste that". Nowhere does it tell you why you are doing what you are doing. Want to install apache2? just do 'apt-get install apache2'. Huh? What does that do? Yeah I know it installs apache2 but what happens in the backgrond?
I'm going through this phase - so, right now I'm installing Gentoo over ssh on my other box. Should keep me busy for a while.;)

[randomnumber]

Gentoo is great if you know how to create and make config files and have a day or more to install. Gentoo can be much faster then Ubuntu. In the Gentoo install you make your os specific to your computer. I once heard that someone had Gentoo booting in just a few seconds.

For the most part it is a game of pay now or pay later. Install takes advance user many hours and Ubuntu take a child less than an hour.

I spent a year off and on trying to install Gentoo. I was finally successful but decided that I did not know enough when installing to make a stable version nor know enough solve a problem. I since installed Ubuntu and have been very happy and if I screw ubuntu up enough I just reinstall. If you never screw up an os you never do anything.

My advice is to try gentoo, you will learn alot. When you give up come back to Ubuntu. If you get Gentoo installed working call yourself, at the veryleast, an advanced user. For the most part gentoo is linux and ubuntu is linux.

I have tried mandriva, gentoo, and now use ubuntu. When I get more time disk space I will try suse and rehat. I find that all linux distros have signifcantly improved since I started as a user that only knew or used windows.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Gentoo is honestly a truely geek distro, the kind of geek who has WAAAAAAAAAAY too much time on thier hands.
Gentoo is the kind of distro that is a minefield for newcommers, but swan lake for those who know linux like the back of thier hand.
Now i am not dissing Gentoo, I have heard good things about it but it is a linux distro that is not for the faint of heart.

[zaratustra]

I wolud and would not agree with you. I am a linux user for about 6 months. I started with Ubuntu, and after figuring some stuff, there was nothing exciting about it any more for me. So, Gentoo made my heart pump faster (yeah yeah, I'm bloody geek). I must say that it has some serious bugs(eating partition table during the install) adn I spent few nights configuring, but if you do things step-by-step (reading howto's 'n stuff), you can become a satisfied linux user from a complete noob, having very powerful weapon, cutting-edge software and much more

[SunnyRabbiera]

But gentoo is definately not for the Newbie, for the newbie I would personally suggest Mepis Linux first, Ubuntu second and Gentoo a dead last...
But for the hardcore terminal user Gentoo is for you.

[zaratustra]

thats the part od your post that I personally agree, but there is also other people that think it's best to throw children into water. The main problem with computer users today is that they want knowledge just to be poured in thier heads. Also, something what is presented in society I live at, is that people use linux just because they could đsay they use it, not because they really want and enjoy in it. For example, (lets say you wont use generic kernel but your own) people think of neccessery kernel complinig as a problem, not as a way to figure out how system works, how does boot sequence or customizing kernel for your needs and hardware...
But, as I said, I think that Ubuntu is nice distro to start. For someone who
wants to learn, it should be just an introduce into beautiful world of gnu/linux.

[hey_ian]

thats the part od your post that I personally agree, but there is also other people that think it's best to throw children into water. The main problem with computer users today is that they want knowledge just to be poured in thier heads. Also, something what is presented in society I live at, is that people use linux just because they could đsay they use it, not because they really want and enjoy in it. For example, (lets say you wont use generic kernel but your own) people think of neccessery kernel complinig as a problem, not as a way to figure out how system works, how does boot sequence or customizing kernel for your needs and hardware...
But, as I said, I think that Ubuntu is nice distro to start. For someone who
wants to learn, it should be just an introduce into beautiful world of gnu/linux.
That is also exactly my opinion. Anyway I know many people who started without any Linux knowledge on Gentoo and were satisfied. But lots of people were not satisfies because of portage. It is not the best way to compile all the software, in my opinion it is a waste of time. You will not get any performance improvements, but you will have to sit a long time in front of the PC and watching the build log.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Portage is a nice concept though, I know of its preposed advantages over a deb or a rpm.
I heard portage is getting better though, if only I could figure out the installer... a OS that can take days to install is real intimidating.

[zaratustra]

I am compile freak :twisted: ](*,) . I have poor processor so I'd like to get my system be as fast as it could be. Why wouldn't we optimize in general? That's why we lack of oil, air or clean water, because we use our resources irational, IMHO:-k . For me it isn't a problem to compile while I learn, cook or sleep. I like watching things compile. As a matter of fact, this is my desktop background ](*,)
http://www.gentoo.org/images/backgrounds/gentoo-abducted-1280x1024.png
@Sunny - There is nice graphical installer in Gentoo now with ability of usnig different stages of install (binary packs also) and networkless install. As I mentioned, it still has some serial bugs, but nothing is perfect:-))

[boban]

It is not the best way to compile all the software, in my opinion it is a waste of time. You will not get any performance improvements, but you will have to sit a long time in front of the PC and watching the build log.

You WILL get performance improvements... It's about (max) 5% as I have heard... but there is something more to it - you can have software compiled only with minimal stuff you need (e.g. no java in open office). That way your programs are smaller, thus loading faster...
For me - Gnome in gentoo is far more responsive than in ubuntu... And sometime I need this extra 5% of power...

But Ubuntu is easier... and just works... So I have 2 distros - ubuntu and gentoo installed right now...

[zaratustra]

You WILL get performance improvements... It's about (max) 5% as I have heard... but there is something more to it - you can have software compiled only with minimal stuff you need (e.g. no java in open office). That way your programs are smaller, thus loading faster...
For me - Gnome in gentoo is far more responsive than in ubuntu... And sometime I need this extra 5% of power...
And if you add few rationaly choosed CFLAGS, things can get pretty fast. Gentoo isn't known as fastest without a reason. Also, what you mentioned, USE flags are really usefull feature. For me, GNOME isn't good. I found XFCE as a optimal between GNOME;KDE and black/flux/open|box.

[boban]

And if you add few rationaly choosed CFLAGS, things can get pretty fast. Gentoo isn't known as fastest without a reason. Also, what you mentioned, USE flags are really usefull feature. For me, GNOME isn't good. I found XFCE as a optimal between GNOME;KDE and black/flux/open|box.

I'll give XFCE a try... (I use Gnome because... hmmm.. it's just that I got used to it ;-) )

And by the way... I'm reinstalling Gentoo right now (new hdd). And I'm doing it from Ubuntu... It's kind of cool... :mrgreen:

[mysticrider92]

I just tried to install the amd64 version of Gentoo on my Athlon 64 system, and the installer wouldn't work. It kept failing to compile stuff and would just quit. I am going to try the x86 version when it finishes downloading.

[paul6]

If I need to, can I install aptitude/apt-get on Gentoo and use the Ubuntu repositories to get my applications instead of using emerge?

[xXx 0wn3d xXx]

No...If you need to emerge something in a hurry use the precompilied package option. Like this:

sudo emerge -d firefox

I believe that -d is the package option but if it is not just type emerge --help and find it.

[burek]

Gentooo is as good as Ubuntu.

The good things:
- lot of users sharing their knowledge (very good forums and Howto)
- stability
- simple to use
- lot of documentation from users on the Net.

... Bsd is also good, FC5 too, ....

Maybe it's better to have a try with Live Cd's ...

Courage to find your suitable Linux !

[slimdog360]

Im tempted to give gentoo a shot but Ive heard that it takes forever to complie kde. I also woulnt mind giving freebsd another shot. I didnt mind it last time but the lack of support and difficulty I had installing everything got to me.

Ive tried pcbsd and knoppix today bu neither worked. PCSDB gave me some crap about not being able to find a kernel and knoppix said somethin about not being able to find a usable file system (or something like that).

Hmm, decisions decisions.

[Muty-bg]

As a matter of fact, this is my desktop background
Nice, nice background I haven't seen it before but it's already on my gentoo box :). check it out :)::click:: (http://img453.imageshack.us/img453/7438/nicerh2.png)
Thx

I'm using gentoo on one of my desktops for a litlle bit more than an year now. And I can't explain the feeling about it. I've spent countless hours configuring it and now it works like a charm. But I can't recomend it to newbies. I actullay did so once and I still regret it as my friend was so frustrated that he gave up completely.
Actually I ran into ubuntu more or less "by incident" last friday. A friend of mine was asking me if I can help him install linux on his pc. And I heard good things about ubuntu so I gave it a try. And the only thing I can say is that I'm impressed. I installed it on my notebook and I really like it.
I'll never remove my gentoo, but the gentoo is more of a hoby for me rather than an everyday desktop os. I've learned alot from it an the community is great. I'm very happy that ubuntu has a strong and nice community too :)
But ubuntu is great for a desktop linux os. Everything works out of the box and is very convenient. Really for me these are 2 different worlds :).

A yeah and my girlfriend seems to like ubuntu prety much too. She was avoiding my gentoo box like fire :( but now that I've installed ubuntu on the nb she really enojoys it and said its better and far more intuitive than winbooze.

These days I'll install ubuntu on the same machine as the gentoo so I can make some performance comparisons. I'll post them here afterwards :)

[kallu_be]

I used to use gentoo, but it has eaten my valuble time and effected my preivous semister grades. Next day i removed gentoo and installed ubuntu. Students don't install gentoo on ur system and save ur valuble time.

[mysticrider92]

I just installed Gentoo 2006.1 on my Ubuntu computer to have something to experiment with. I didn't install a bootloader with Gentoo because I wanted to use the one from Ubuntu. My question is, I can't get Grub configured to boot Gentoo.

This is the /boot/grub/menu.lst entry I currently have for Gentoo:

title Gentoo Linux 2.6.17-r7
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.17-gentoo-r7 root=/dev/sda2

I can boot from this, but when it starts loading the kernel I get this error:

VFS: Cannot open root device "sda2" or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option.
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

The partitions on my SATA drive are:
sda1: Ubuntu ext3
sda2: Gentoo ext2
sda3: extended with sda5 as swap

Does anyone know what to try for this?
Sorry if this is in the wrong place, I figured there would be more Gentoo users here.

[3rdalbum]

According to the guy at my local **** Smith's (electronic store), whenever he tries to update his Gentoo installation, his /etc/fstab file gets erased. But he was quite happy to recommend that I switch to Gentoo :-)

[deepwave]

According to the guy at my local **** Smith's (electronic store), whenever he tries to update his Gentoo installation, his /etc/fstab file gets erased. But he was quite happy to recommend that I switch to Gentoo :-)

lol. Ask him if he ever heard of etc-update, and about not nuking your etc files.

The only thing I miss about Gentoo, was Portage and the FLAGS idea in general. It would be kind of cool, to have more control over what features in a app get installed under Ubuntu. On the other hand, I am too lazy for that nowadays.

I thought that I would miss the community feel of Gentoo, with Ubuntu. And I was wrong about that too. Love the Ubuntu community.

But the thing I absolutely miss about Gentoo are posts like the following:
"dudez. -funroll-loops m4k3s my b0x is so f4s7er. u sukzor if you m4k3 without fast flags."

[zaratustra]

this is part of my menu.lst that boots gentoo

title GeNtOo LiNuX 2.16.18-r3 (GeNtOo-SoUrCeS)
root (hd0,6)
kernel /vmlinuz

Don't really know what is the problem, but maybe this could help you

[mysticrider92]

Thank you, I will try that later.

[rplantz]

I'm getting ready to add Gentoo, so I'm also playing around with grub, etc.

You might try running grub from your Ubuntu (sudo grub). Then try


> find /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.17-gentoo-r7

in grub. That will tell you which disk and partition, in the grub syntax, the file is in. This will ensure that you haven't made a mistake in the name and in specifying the disk/partition in your root (hd0,1) command. What you have done looks okay to me, but this would be an easy double-check.

By the way, I just spent many hours tracking down a place where I typed "17.10" instead of "17-10". :oops:

[coffeecat]

You are missing an initrd line and the genkernel probably needs some more parameters. Here is the genkernel entry which was set up by the 2006.1 install CD on my installation - all I've changed is the title. Obviously, change the partition number entries to suit your setup.


title Gentoo Linux on hda6, Genkernel
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.17-gentoo-r7 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/hda6
initrd /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.17-gentoo-r7

Edit: Oh, by the way, I've installed everything into the one root partition. I find Gentoo's obsession with a separate /boot partition irritating, so if this is how the installer set it up for you, you'll have to change the root line accordingly.

[mysticrider92]

I only have the one partition for Gentoo (sda2). I didn't add the intrid line because I couldn't find the initrd file. I am still not sure if the install went completely right, but it looks ok.
Thanks for replying.

[coffeecat]

I didn't add the intrid line because I couldn't find the initrd file.

That's strange, because I would have thought that the genkernel wouldn't work without initrd. In fact I would have thought that is what is your problem. Are you sure it's not there in /boot?

[mysticrider92]

I don't think so, but I will check in a bit. There is a tar.gz file in there that could be it. I'll try that and see if it works. That could be what is causing the kernel panic.

[mysticrider92]

That was the problem. Thank you for helping! Now I have Gentoo on my computer, and it is fast.

[coffeecat]

Now I have Gentoo on my computer, and it is fast.

Just wait till you've compiled your own kernel! :wink: Glad it's fixed.

[a_l_a_n]

My kubuntu is boned and this weekend will probably see me doing a clean install.

Out or curiosity more than dissatisfaction I am considering trying another distro. In particular I am feeling myself drawn to Gentoo.

Talk me out of it. Go!

[chrisccoulson]

Have you discussed your problems on the forums so that people can help you fix them?

[taurus]

Move to Gentoo area.

[a_l_a_n]

Snappy responses!

What Gentoo area?

I did indeed. I posted a question on four forums looking for help (I had an inconsistent hdparm that was preventing me from upgrading version/doing anything!). Got around it by hacking the apt status file, advanced somewhat in the upgrade, before it crashed again trying to install hdparm. Now I cant even get into recovery mode. Its screwed. I hope to use a live CD to salvage some data (anyone know how to mount RAID0 with a live CD?) but Im fairly sure it needs a new install.

[mips]

Maybe try Sabayon as a intro to Gentoo...

[Lord Illidan]

If you are you advanced enough to consider Gentoo, go ahead mate.

[varean]

I know this is a bit odd jumping in after 22 pages of posts but I just have to say that Gentoo is quite possibly the most customizable Linux distrobution I've ever seen. The installation process is straightforward if you are running the run-of-the-mill PC(x86, nothing fancy) but it does tend to get really complicated when trying to set it up for some 1 in a million system. But if you know what you are doing then you can optimize the hell out of your box.

[zaratustra]

I know this is a bit odd jumping in after 22 pages of posts but I just have to say that Gentoo is quite possibly the most customizable Linux distrobution I've ever seen. The installation process is straightforward if you are running the run-of-the-mill PC(x86, nothing fancy) but it does tend to get really complicated when trying to set it up for some 1 in a million system. But if you know what you are doing then you can optimize the hell out of your box.it's why it is called meta-distro:rolleyes: after a six months, I still makes me feel excited](*,) :-D

[mips]

I installed ubuntu last night after more than a 2 month absence. I usually use kubuntu but I dowloaded the wrong edgy .iso .So now I´m busy adding kubuntu-desktop, which is faster than downloading another iso.

1. I cannot stand the default ubuntu theme.
2. I´ve finally come to the realisation that I dislike Gnome.
3. Ubuntu feels as slow as mud compared to Sabayon. This is probably not a feeling but reality. Windows scroll slowly, applications open slowly etc.
4. Nautilus is a pain in the butt once you are used to konqueror.

The edgy installer would not install GRUB for due to XFS but Dapper & Sabayon handled this fine. So I´m using LILO which I will have to remove and try to manually install GRUB so I can boot into Sabayon & XP(when hell freezes over).

Somehow I don´t really miss ubuntu but I will keep it installed. The only reason I installed it was to try and answer someones SELinux question. Next time I will will probably just install debian instead of ubuntu but you never know how feisty+ will turn out.

I miss sabayon though, strange how it only took me just over two months to get attached to it.

Sabayon I predict to turn into a really great distro falling within the top ten of all distros eventually.

Long live Sabayon !

My little rant is over now :mrgreen:

[Rodneyck]

I don't miss it. I just posted my nightmare with Sabayon here...

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2030984#post2030984

[zaratustra]

New Installer in Gentoo 2007.0 ?
Read this...

http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/agaffney/2007/01/22/installer_overhaul

No more broken partitions:)))

[vinboy]

For those who (drive an automatic transmission car) prefer things that just work, Ubuntu is better. Some people say it is bloated.


For those who (drive manual transmission car/love to get deep into things) like to know every bits and pieces of what they put in, Gentoo is better.


And there were cases there Ubuntu upgrade breaks the system etc. Gentoo upgrade is far easier and doesn't seem to break the system.

I use Gentoo by the way. Ubuntu and XP as secondary OS. :guitar:

[zaratustra]

Gentoo fights flamewars and bad behaviour!

Check out the gentoo.org:)

[gusmao]

And there were cases there Ubuntu upgrade breaks the system etc. Gentoo upgrade is far easier and doesn't seem to break the system.

I have to disagree with you. I've used gentoo for two years and upgrades *always* ended up breaking the system (emerge -u --deep world). Things were also quite painful when changing gcc version or profiles. The dependency tree is always broken, and there is also a glitch or two that you have to fix.

I haven't been through a Ubuntu upgrade so far, but it definetelly looks like its not gonna be such a pain.

IMHO, you should use gentoo if you have *lots* of time to spare, want to learn linux more deeply and care a lot about customization. If you want things just to work well and with as little headaches as possible, stick to ubuntu.

[rai4shu2]

Ubuntu only breaks frequently if you use certain third party repos. If you stick with official repos, you should never see breakage unless you're testing.

[igknighted]

Ubuntu only breaks frequently if you use certain third party repos. If you stick with official repos, you should never see breakage unless you're testing.

Well, not entirely... they had a kernel update a while back that broke everyone's kernel modules for nvidia and ndiswrapper. But I agree with your point. Emerge -uv world often causes issues, while ubuntu updates are nearly harmless. The price you pay for the bleeding edge I guess.

[BoneKracker]

The degree to which you can achieve a "better" system with Gentoo ("better" meaning better for you), depends highly on your level of skills with Linux.

Someone who is fairly new to Linux is going to experience a real challenge just setting up Gentoo.

Someone who is an intermediate Linux user or less is very likely, in my opinion, to mis-configure and/or sub-optimize enough things to render a less functional and less efficient system than Ubuntu. (But both will have a tremendous learning experience.)

You can move into an existing house or build your own. If you want to build your own, it's a good idea to learn a few carpentry, plumbing, and wiring skills first. One way to do that is first buy a house and do a little remodeling here, add an addition over there, maybe put in a sprinkler system, etc..

[zaratustra]

I agree that is easier to remodel another's one, but you can never achieve such level of customizabilty unless you make it by yourself.... And satisfaction is much greater, even more if you start fighting with gentoo as total n00b and came out as an l33t (just kiddin)...

[BoneKracker]

I agree with you. A noob who is intelligent and is a self-teaching kind of person and is willing to work at it will reach an "advanced intermediate" stage with Linux a hell of a lot faster working with Gentoo or SourceMage or the like.

Then they gotta do LFS!! :) (or maybe not)

It's also useful to get exposure to an "enterprise" Linux. And a BSD.

Then they can go back to a distro like Ubuntu and really get the most out of it (because they can understand which of the optimizations the devs and packagers have attempted are actually beneficial to their use cases and they know how to adapt the system without breaking the automation that's been so painstakingly put in place to make it "easy").

But I think it's wise for new users to have their expectations set appropriately so they don't blunder into a situation that turns them off on Unix/Linux as a whole.

[zaratustra]

I agree with the part about LFS and BSD... every new expirience makes you more capable to get a better job and to get idea how beautiful and different is this world:)

And about choice of first distro, we came to a area where I am not an expert. Should you throw children into water to learn to swim or hold them on surface and teach them to swim is more part of pedagogy and I am studing computer science:)

[BoneKracker]

...or push them off the boat in the middle of the lake, at night. In the Winter. After eating a full meal.

-- Thus spake Zarathustra

[Anonii]

Greetings good gentlemen!

It's time to give out my opinions regarding Gentoo (it won't take long, I promise.).
First of all, I've been a long time Ubuntu and Debian-based distro user, but well, just for the sake of exploration and because of my early days in Linux (My first distro, was Gentoo Stage 1, which I _didn't_ manage to install), I installed Gentoo. If you check my old posts, you will see many of them criticizing Gentoo and teasing funroll-loops, but well, I had to give it a try. And I really got rewarded.

The installation? Easy as ****, if you know the basics, like the commands you are going to use, _why_ (not in all of them, but knowing the purpose is really important in some cases), and what you are aiming for. (I didn't use the buggy as hell GUI. As soon as I got my first crash in it, I changed to the ol' good ultra-terminal) After two tries [messed some stuff up (I basically, became, without wanting it, an unstable-version tester), and got a bug in X because of it], I got a working KDE-based system. Everything ran smoothly, and fast. Not, the -aw-my-freaking-God- fast, more like the, -hmm-amarok-responds-faster-than-in-Ubuntu- fast. So, to pass the boring stuff (yes, you have many of that stuff with Gentoo; having to compile everything) after 2 days of experimenting and messing around I got a really greatly working OS. I could see I minor speed improvement from Ubuntu, but well, the best thing was the control you had over your system. It may not sound logical, but seriously, having only the features you want makes you feel much more comfortable. So, I had a system without a mail client, no application had built-in support for mail clients. I also didn't want aRts; no application bothered me with aRts (well, wine did, but that's a bug.),
As soon as I got familiar with portage and the rest, I could feel much more in home than with APT, which is golden and all, but lacks some features because of the binary nature of it.
Also, Gentoo, has a "nice" community. Notice, that I used the word "nice" and not "excellent", because the word "excellent" is reserved for the Ubuntu one. And well, you can still see me here, can't you ;)

Right now, I'm really cool in my Gentoo system, mainly because I have nothing to miss from my old Ubuntu one. I'm planning on trying Feisty, once again, in a month or so, after the studying clears up. And then moving to Gentoo again, when KDE4 gets released.

Finally, because I don't want to post in an extra thread: Kudos to the organisers and the "teachers" of the Ubuntu classroom. Great work done, and unfortunately I didn't have time to stay in all the sessions that interested me. See you tomorrow, in #ubuntu-classroom.

[GSF1200S]

Im drawn to Gentoo bigtime, but i dont know it well enough to run it as a host operating system. Im going to run Gentoo inside of virtual box and learn it that way. This way, if I break it, I just go back to a snapshot. It will help me learn linux, computers, and gentoo, without risking the loss of my OS.

I think people fail to give Ubuntu enough credit.. its alot more customizable than some distros. I personally think Ubuntu is perfect for a main OS, then just use Gentoo on a virtual machine to learn and tweak..

[darf]

There is no better or worse, they are completely different.

"Ubuntu better then Gentoo because its easier to install"

Well so is Windows XP, does that make it better than Ubuntu? Of course not so how how can we judge?

The simple answer to this is what do you want your Linux to do for you. (or any OS for that matter)

Gentoo will give you the tools to learn the inner worlkings of things, its geared for those who want more control over what gets installed on their systems (and how). The Gentoo mantra is NOT about compiling everything to make it faster" its about what gets installed and what kind of control you have over it.

Ubuntu will push on your system whatever flavor of the month is on the new CD. you can customize this list later by playing with synaptic or whatever but you have zero control over what gets installed and where. But on balance ubuntu is ready right out of the box with very minimal tweaking required. And this is a great thing if this is what you want!

So basically and to put it very simply the difference between the two can be compared to an installation program on windows. One that lets you choose "Express Install (Ubuntu) or Customized Install (Gentoo)"

Of course customized will take longer and you will have more control, wheras express will install what it thinks you should have and be done with it.

Hope this helps and if you trully want to figure out what is best for you then I suggest you install both systems and see for yourself. You might find a use for both like I have.

[Ateo]

A serious question.

I'm new to Linux and have just had a quick look at Gentoo.

Is Ubuntu better? If so why?

Thanks

JonnyT

Ubuntu is neither better nor worse. It's just different. Ubuntu is binary based. Gentoo is source based. Ubuntu takes 30 minutes to install while Gentoo can take a half day.

In the end, Gentoo is a breeze to maintain as long as you don't break things. With Gentoo, things do not work 'out of the box'. The 'it just works' motto of Ubuntu doesn't fly with Gentoo.

Don't get me wrong, I still love and use Gentoo and probably will until my last breath.

[GSF1200S]

Ubuntu is neither better nor worse. It's just different. Ubuntu is binary based. Gentoo is source based. Ubuntu takes 30 minutes to install while Gentoo can take a half day.

In the end, Gentoo is a breeze to maintain as long as you don't break things. With Gentoo, things do not work 'out of the box'. The 'it just works' motto of Ubuntu doesn't fly with Gentoo.

Don't get me wrong, I still love and use Gentoo and probably will until my last breath.

To have the power of Gentoo with "out of the box" functionallity, take a look, as I am, at Sabayon. It uses Gentoo's portage, but is designed to work with your hardware off the bat. Its basically Gentoo with stuff preinstalled (by way of binary) and installs in like 30 minutes. Sounds cool enough...

Yeah, yeah.. I know its a different thread, but they are simalar enough to point a newbie possibly in a better direction. Im a noob to pertaining to Sabayon and Gentoo, so I think the Sabayon distro might be the perfect distro to use when im feeling a little froggy. I think ill be running it in a virtual machine first to get a feel for how it works and what its all about- no sense in removing a perfectly good Kubuntu install...

Have fun whatever you decide... :)

[Anonii]

To have the power of Gentoo with "out of the box" functionallity, take a look, as I am, at Sabayon. It uses Gentoo's portage, but is designed to work with your hardware off the bat. Its basically Gentoo with stuff preinstalled (by way of binary) and installs in like 30 minutes. Sounds cool enough...

Yeah, yeah.. I know its a different thread, but they are simalar enough to point a newbie possibly in a better direction. Im a noob to pertaining to Sabayon and Gentoo, so I think the Sabayon distro might be the perfect distro to use when im feeling a little froggy. I think ill be running it in a virtual machine first to get a feel for how it works and what its all about- no sense in removing a perfectly good Kubuntu install...

Have fun whatever you decide... :)

Last time I tried Sabayon, it was really freaking slow. And I'm talking about the actual installation, not the LiveCD. The hardware detection and the automatic Beryl were awesome, but it was really bloated. Also, in my opinion the point of Gentoo is the control it gives you over your system, and unfortunately, the installers and the "30 minutes" install of Sabayon ruin this.

[GSF1200S]

Last time I tried Sabayon, it was really freaking slow. And I'm talking about the actual installation, not the LiveCD. The hardware detection and the automatic Beryl were awesome, but it was really bloated. Also, in my opinion the point of Gentoo is the control it gives you over your system, and unfortunately, the installers and the "30 minutes" install of Sabayon ruin this.

Yeah.. well youre not going to get the power of Gentoo without...well... Gentoo. But, for someone who would like a little more gradual entry, Sabayon might be a good option. Im surprised to hear you say the install was slow; Ive heard installs taking 25 minutes! And pertaining to speed- Ive heard a number of people saying it was faster than Ubuntu, which to me is already pretty fast. I feel the same way as you about the bloat, though.. thats why Id opt for the mini-cd version versus the DVD version. I figure the mini-cd version will have far less bloat, yet still incorporate the excellent hardware support and the necessary programs.

I guess the control is less because of the fact that the install installs the programs in a binary form, but I would THINK, and dont quote me on this, that you could recompile any program to liking through portage..

[Anonii]

Yeah.. well youre not going to get the power of Gentoo without...well... Gentoo. But, for someone who would like a little more gradual entry, Sabayon might be a good option. Im surprised to hear you say the install was slow; Ive heard installs taking 25 minutes! And pertaining to speed- Ive heard a number of people saying it was faster than Ubuntu, which to me is already pretty fast. I feel the same way as you about the bloat, though.. thats why Id opt for the mini-cd version versus the DVD version. I figure the mini-cd version will have far less bloat, yet still incorporate the excellent hardware support and the necessary programs.

I guess the control is less because of the fact that the install installs the programs in a binary form, but I would THINK, and dont quote me on this, that you could recompile any program to liking through portage..

Sorry I didn't make myself clear. When I said: "And I'm talking about the actual installation, not the LiveCD", I meant the system after the installation is complete. Yes, the install was quick for me too, but my system afterwards was slower than Ubuntu.

[GSF1200S]

Sorry I didn't make myself clear. When I said: "And I'm talking about the actual installation, not the LiveCD", I meant the system after the installation is complete. Yes, the install was quick for me too, but my system afterwards was slower than Ubuntu.

Really... Hmmmm, I might need to hold off a little myself then. I am pretty happy with my K/Ubuntu install.. I figured sabayon would be faster as is Gentoo. I will dedicate my efforts instead to going vastly in depth with my video card...

How is compiling from source any more effecient than the .deb and binary's we can use? I mean, in Gentoo you have usage flags, etc, to control how everything falls into place (I dont know the specifics here).

In Ubuntu, does a source install accomplish anything above the binarys available? Maybe this is a different thread as well.. but it would seem this relates considering most of Sabayons initial setup is binary in nature. Obviously the fact of the binary installs and the bloat slows it down.. Is a source install really that substantial in better performance?

Haha, Im liking K/Ubuntu more every day... :)

[Ateo]

To have the power of Gentoo with "out of the box" functionallity, take a look, as I am, at Sabayon. It uses Gentoo's portage, but is designed to work with your hardware off the bat. Its basically Gentoo with stuff preinstalled (by way of binary) and installs in like 30 minutes. Sounds cool enough...

Yeah, yeah.. I know its a different thread, but they are simalar enough to point a newbie possibly in a better direction. Im a noob to pertaining to Sabayon and Gentoo, so I think the Sabayon distro might be the perfect distro to use when im feeling a little froggy. I think ill be running it in a virtual machine first to get a feel for how it works and what its all about- no sense in removing a perfectly good Kubuntu install...

Have fun whatever you decide... :)

Well, I did JUST that.. Of course. I am cursed with the addition of dinking with things.

It installed nicely. I totally dig the default overall themes (from kdm to the desktop). A lot of love has gone into spicing up this port of Gentoo.

While this did install as quick as Ubuntu does, the root issue is the fact that I don't like to wait for packages to compile (on my workstations) because when I need something, I need it right then. This doesn't apply to servers as you can just ssh in and compile mysql, gcc, binutils updates and just walk away... So, Sabayon would still require me to wait it out while I install something.

I find it very important to be able to compile everything from source on servers. Servers are about being efficient and not plagued by software or kernel configurations that shouldn't be. I'm currently testing Ubuntu server edition but I don't think it'll cut it for me only because it's binary based.

Hmm. I just threw Sabayon on the same drive as um.. my winxp/ubuntu desktop (it has a 250GB drive so space really is no concern). Hmm. I guess I just popped my virgin tri-boot cherry. Hurray for me! (Hint: you can use the same swap partition and be careful of grub)...

[bmartin]

In Ubuntu, does a source install accomplish anything above the binarys available? Maybe this is a different thread as well.. but it would seem this relates considering most of Sabayons initial setup is binary in nature.
Not really. Ubuntu's packages contain architecture-independent binaries, meaning they'll run on any processor. A normal (non-optimized) compile produces the same kinds of binaries. You can set compilation flags (for the C/C++ compilers) and USE flags (Gentoo-based systems only) to affect how the binaries are built. There are -m flags for compilation, which set options related to your machine's architecture (e.g. optimized for MMX or SSE or 3DNOW instructions) and -f flags (which affect machine-independent optimizations). These flags can be set on any machine by using the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS environment variables. You can set them in BASH by using the export built-in command. Mine are set to -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -falign-functions=4 -march=athlon-xp -m3dnow -mfpmath=sse,387 -mmmx -msse, which would be considered excessive by some. It's a matter of knowing what your architecture supports.


How is compiling from source any more effecient than the .deb and binary's we can use? I mean, in Gentoo you have usage flags, etc, to control how everything falls into place (I dont know the specifics here). [...] Obviously the fact of the binary installs and the bloat slows it down.. Is a source install really that substantial in better performance?
USE flags are IMHO what sets Gentoo apart. With them, you can control what features of a certain program are included in the build. If there are features of a program you don't intend to include, you can ignore them when you compile the program. If you go through the list of USE flags (yes, there is a "complete" list), they really make a difference. Standard source installs aren't that much leaner or faster than standard binary builds; Gentoo's ability to exclude unneeded bells and whistles makes it faster. Optimized code gives minuscule performance improvements over standard compilation.

Basically, you're not going to get much of a performance boost simply by compiling your own binary files. If you're looking to boost speed, cut out bells and whistles. The biggest speed boost I ever received came from running Fluxbox instead of GNOME. The speed boost isn't earth-shattering, but it's noticeable. I'm writing you from a Gentoo box.


Haha, Im liking K/Ubuntu more every day... :)Ubuntu's a great distro. My biggest complaint is that I often come across code on the net that I'd like to compile on my Ubuntu machine... and it fails during compilation for some reason. When I run Ubuntu, I feel like I'm being "babied". Gentoo involves a learning experience that you won't get with many other distros, even Sabayon. Sabayon tries to hide a lot of the ugly stuff for you. I tried it out because the graphical installer always screws up on my Gentoo Live CDs... they've still got some kinks to work out of the Sabayon install (e.g. a lot of conflicting packages installed by default), but I think it'll be a quick ticket to a fast, highly-customizable, user-friendly Linux some day.