Linux drove me to get a Mac

[Jamon Camisso]

Ian Petersen wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Tyler Aviss <tjaviss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Anyone on the list use Gentoo? I've always wanted to try that out so
>> maybe I'll have more luck, though in many cases it'll likely be
>> trading one type of frustration for another, at least I've got a fast
>> machine to compile on now :-)
> 
> I use Gentoo and I think you're right that you'd be trading in
> frustrations.  I really like Gentoo's package manager but the limited
> experience I've had with Debian (it might have been a Debian
> derivative) is that apt is at least as good, with the added benefit of
> installing precompiled binaries so Apache takes seconds to install
> instead of tens of minutes, and OO.o _also_ takes seconds to install
> (post-download) instead of hours.
> 
> I'm still running Gentoo mostly out of convenience--I think it would
> be inconvenient to migrate to a new distribution when the one I'm
> running basically works.  I only have one machine at home and it's
> loaded up with gigabytes of personal data--things like wedding and
> honeymoon pictures, financial records, and the source code to the
> real-time OS I built in university that I'd love to play with again
> "one day".  I'm sure it's possible to migrate my system "in place",
> but I get discouraged into inaction every time I consider how much
> planning and backing up I'd need to do to make sure I don't lose
> anything and then consider the fact that the system works as-is.
> 
> I think Gentoo is based on a neat idea but it's not executed as well
> as it might be.  Portage (the package manager and its associated
> repository of packages) occasionally breaks in mysterious ways.  It
> gives you the flexibility to build a mostly-custom distribution
> without the hassle of Linux-from-Scratch, but that flexibility comes
> with an associated cost: chances are close to zero that anyone else
> has the same configuration.  The community is generally pretty good,
> so it's often possible to find solutions on the Gentoo forums, but the
> quality has declined since I first started using Gentoo in ~2002, so I
> don't recommend the forums as heartily as a I used to.  Also, the dev
> community seems to be hit-and-miss.  Many packages are pretty well
> maintained, but others not so much, and the "others" are not always
> obscure packages.
> 
> Running Gentoo taught me more about managing a Linux-based PC than any
> other single factor, so by no means do I regret choosing it.  My
> interest in tinkering has waned considerably since I graduated
> university, got married, and started a real career.  My next fresh
> install of Linux will probably be Debian, or maybe one of its
> derivatives.  I'd like to leverage other people's compile farms, and a
> dev team with a real dedication to quality control.  I think Gentoo is
> best suited to applications like scientific compute farms where you
> can create your own dedicated compile farm that pushes binaries to the
> rest of the network and where the ability to turn compile flags on and
> off on a package-by-package basis is worth the effort.  Burning cycles
> on compiling doesn't make any sense to me anymore (it always seemed
> dubious, but I've finally chosen a side of the fence).  I still like
> the ideas behind Portage but, as I said, apt is pretty damn good, too,
> and Portage seems to suffer from some implementation flaws that limit
> its ability to meet its potential.

I think that you'll find that for 99% of what you're after, debian's
binaries are fine. For pushing out stuff to a compile farm with
different flags, simply using export CFLAGS on a per package/machine
basis should be no trouble.

Building via a quick script to export your desired compiler flags, then
run something like "apt-get build-dep apache2-mpm-prefork && apt-get -b
source apache2-mpm-prefork" would be all you need to get the same
desired effect as with emerge, all bundled into a nicely redistributable
.deb (ok pbuilder or checkinstall is better for that, but it illustrates
a point).

Jamon
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