Gentoo
March 26, 2008
I’ve been a happy Gentoo user for the last few years. There’s so much to like about it: built from source with only what you need and Portage beats the pants off RPM, among many other reasons. But lately, I’ve been getting a little annoyed with it.
My annoyance has to do with the releases … or lack thereof. And, the communication about said "delays" … or lack thereof.
There used to be four Gentoo releases a year. A few years ago, they went to two releases a year. Last year, they completely skipped 2007.1 release. Now, we’re three months into 2008 and the 2008.0 release, which was supposed to be released to the public as stable on March 17th, hasn’t even been seeded to mirrors for public beta yet. 2007.0 is still the official stable release of Gentoo – a release that is more than a year old at this point.
This wouldn’t be a big deal if I didn’t really need an updated live CD to do installs with. I have new machines with an onboard SATA controller that isn’t supported by the kernel in the 2007.0 release but is supported by the 2.6.23 kernel which was in the Gentoo sources at the time. I was at an impasse, unable to install Gentoo on my equipment until I got around it by compiling my own updated kernel and rolling my own live CD. But, I wouldn’t have had to do that if the Gentoo release team could at least come close to hitting their release schedule. I’m not asking for the universe – just get within the same month as the schedule says and we’ll call it good.
There’s also been disturbingly little communication about the reasoning behind these "delays." There was one post to the site about the 2007.1 release being cancelled. There’s been no communication on the site whatsoever about the delay with 2008.0. The things on the front page right now talk about the monthly newsletter and some new trustees of the Gentoo foundation.
I know it’s free software and I shouldn’t complain, but for those of us who make our living using Gentoo, it’s a bit annoying to say the least. You won’t need trustees of a foundation if there’s no foundation … because everyone goes somewhere else because the distro is updated less often than a phone book comes out.
March 27, 2008 at 1:01 am
You can install Gentoo with any live cd, just use it to boot and get network connectivity and install Gentoo from the network. Easy as pie.
March 27, 2008 at 2:17 am
try Pclinuxos2007 or 2008minime and build your own system around it..
gentoo is dead as far as i’m concerned.. and who cares bout 3seconds off of boot time or one more fps, for the all the hassle of it..
hours of compiling time for simple apps, the egos when you ask for help in forums and in irc , might as well get a distro that just works, and read what others have done to tweak it up and do the same..
or there’s always slackware, or arch, or even zenwalk, vector (if you dont like rpm)
but in 3 years ive tried ,installed , configured and almost configured like 25 distros, and EVERY single time, Ive come back to PCLINUX
perhaps you should try it, ya never know, you may like it..
March 27, 2008 at 10:54 am
You can install Gentoo with any live cd, just use it to boot and get network connectivity and install Gentoo from the network. Easy as pie.
Of course I could use Knoppix or Ubuntu to do the install. But that’s kind of beside the point – if I have to use one distro to install another, what reason do I have to continue to use Gentoo as opposed to something else that has a shorter and more active release cycle?
March 27, 2008 at 10:58 am
brad Says:
March 27, 2008 at 2:17 am e
try Pclinuxos2007 or 2008minime and build your own system around it..
The thing that keeps me on Gentoo is portage.
Understand, I don’t try to use this on my Desktop – I’m a Mac guy on the desktop – so I don’t really care about boot time as much as ease of maintenance.
I was a Red Hat guy before coming to Gentoo a few years ago. I run Gentoo because Portage rocks so hard for system admin. I don’t experience dependency hell and, if I don’t want something installed or want specific options, I mask out what I don’t need and USE what I do.
Portage is so great. It’s a shame that the rest of Gentoo is killing me.
March 28, 2008 at 2:15 pm
[...] said, the concern just recently stated by some users [1] [2] who have new machines don’t have a valid Gentoo CD to use for installation. Sure, their are [...]