[nzlug] Kernel squared

[Glenn Enright]

Comments inline 

On Friday 29 September 2006 11:07, Daniel Lawson wrote:
> * tweaking CFLAGS is, by and large, a complete waste of time.
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=74072
true especially as packages with real compiler needs overide CFLAGS 
anyway.

> * USE flags are handy at times, but modern distributions use sensible
> packaging to provide the same effect.  Eg: Debian has modularised
> most packages that can be. Want mysql support for php? Install
> php4-mysql. Don't want LDAP support? That's cool. Don't install
> php4-ldap.  About the only time USE flags useful is if you have, for
> example, LDAP support enabled systemwide, and one app fails to
> compile with ldap, so you remove the ldap USE flag for that app.
> Yawn.
>
> * portage (the program) has been a serious pain in the ass for a lot
> of reasons:
>  * It's in written in python, which is fine. What isn't fine is
> executing a new python process for *every line of output* to
> determine if it should format that line in colour or not. This
> contributed to an almost 50% reduction in speed when emerging
> programs. I know this is the case because I reimplemented that
> section in C, and submitted it as a patch, and was told it was going
> away "in the next version of portage". A better fix would be to cache
> the output, given that it's pretty unlikely that someone would change
> their portage configuration mid-emerge. 
> * no nice way of passing 
> warnings/info from emerged apps back to the admin. Several attempts
> were made by others at patching this, but were all told their
> solutions were lacking, and that it  would be fixed "in the next
> version of portage".
Yeah I've seen this quote a lot. Kinda defeats the purpose of using the 
comunity as a resource. OTOH portage has definitely matured and 
improved...

>  * To be fair, t's possible the above have been fixed by now,
> certainly there are workarounds for the latter. "the next version of
> portage" is actually out now I think, I stopped paying attention
> after about 18 months and no progress.
>  * management of flat file lists such as /etc/services is a real pain
> in the ass. While there are nice tools that will let you merge the
> file manually, it's still tedious, and missing something from this
> file can cause services to fail for no obvious reason.
>  * the other userspace tools keep changing. Featres are added and
> removed, tools are deprecated in favour of new tools, then those are
> deprecated in turn.
>
> * portage (the concept) is actually quite nice, but it's nothing new.
BSD Ports system has a lot of similar functionality. generally uses 
binaries, but can build the same packages from source too if you 
prefer.

> Building new packages is pretty easy. If the userspace tools were a
> bit more mature, it'd be quite a decent system. But...
>  * packages are deployed very poorly configured. This isn't just the
> app configuration itself, but also integration with other aspects of
> the system such as logging and logfile rotation.
>
> * The init system is nice, and is one area I'm still impressed over.
> It's also relatively hard to switch a distribution to use a different
> init system, so it's not likely to be incorporated into other systems
> for a while.
Exactly

> * It is more up to date than most other distributions.  It's a lot
> easier to track recent release packages than it is with Debian. The
> advent of Ubuntu has mitigated this somewhat, but it's still a point
> in favour.
Sometimes, although the package database is getting somewhat large. 
Possibly too large :/

> * I've found that if you don't update your system every week,
> especially if you are running the unstable branch, it can get very
> messy to upgrade when you do get round to it.
I got sick of this too. One of the reasons I went and tried some other 
systems for a while.

> * I for one didn't learn anything new about "linux" by using gentoo.
> Nor did it  expose anything about programming or compiling to me.
> Tweaking CFLAGS and USE doesn't count towards programming, nor does
> watching the output of a build. This is one point that gets quoted a
> LOT, but I really don't see how gentoo is any better than any other
> linux OS.
No but if you are a little less knowledgable, and/or want to play with 
the code, all the package infrastructure with overlays and custom 
ebuilds is imediately available, while on other distros, usually you 
have to learn several programs to implement this.

> I guess the fact that gentoo doesn't integrate 
> applications with other apps (eg, syslog, logfile rotation) might
> mean that you could learn a bit about that in the process, but I
> suspect it just doesn't get done on most gentoo systems.
True

> Bear in mind that with all of my complaints above, I was actively
> trying to fix some of them. I've submitted bugs, I've submitted
> patches, I've submitted new packages to portage (although I don't
> think it was accepted). I toyed with becoming a gentoo package
> maintainer, but that never went anywhere.   I spent a lot of time
> trying to make it all work, and then found I had more pressing things
> to do so let things slip. It's possible a lot of the problems I had
> (and there were a lot I didn't mention, and I know people who had a
> lot of other problems that I didn't encounter) have been fixed
> already.
>
> Don't get me wrong, I still think gentoo is fun in some ways, and
> I'll concede that at least provides an opportunity to get in deeper
> under things than other linux distributions do. I also think it still
> has potential.
>
> And finally,  I think the biggest single failure point of gentoo (and
> of course any other OS or piece of software), is that portion of the
> userbase that takes things to extreme.  We all know of the MS,
> FreeBSD and Linux Zealot types, however Gentoo users managed to take
> it one step further: http://www.funroll-loops.org/
Yeah that link is a little OTT :)

> Having written all this, I'm sure people will see it as
> distro-bashing. Please don't :). I still use gentoo, I'm just
> providing some reasons not to use it after having 3 or so years of
> running it on a desktop and on a production server.
>
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