Fri, 11 Apr 2008
Gentoo Linux - the next try
Since I have got a new workstation which supports hardware virtualization, I have installed several different operating systems to my virtual machines. I have already tried Gentoo Linux, so I gave it another try. Again, it was a bit frustrating - few examples:
- When the Gentoo Handbook writes about the default
grub.conf, why this is not already included in that file itself as a default configuration? For a newbie who wants to learn it is probably good as is, but for me it just costs more unnecessary time. - I needed to test something under GNOME, but "
emerge gnome" did not work - it said something like "required EAPI 1, supported EAPI 0". Fortunately, "emerge gnome-termianl" worked. - Why adding GTK+ and GNOME as the default
USEflags does not imply theXuse flag? In comments to my previously mentioned blog post there is a suggestion to disable theUSE=Xwhen I do not want the X server to be built. Well, it seems GTK+ client side requires X. - What is the equivalent of "
yum update" for Gentoo?
I think Gentoo can be excellent for newbie geeks who want to discover what this Linux thing is about, but even that has its limitations. For example, when I upgrade Fedora on my workstation, often many packages which I would normally refuse to install as a superfluous garbage get installed by the distribution. Which is good, because I have an opportunity to look at them later, in already working preconfigured state (in the past it included D-Bus, HAL, SELinux, and many others).
I also cannot imagine how would
I maintain tens of differently configured machines running Gentoo.
Having fixed release points with security upgrades designed and tested
on them is a big bonus, as are the precompiled packages with automatic
dependencies. yum update and you are done with minimal risk
of breaking something.