[Rant] Gentoo. What the hell was I thinking?

DarkAudit · Apr 16, 2013

Thanks to fade, challenge accepted. Once I got the networking hashed out, it was more of an issue of fighting sleep than anything else to get a bootable install up and running before I went to bed after work this morning. Finally turned in at 5pm (more like 2am for my sleep schedule

)

Anyway. Wtf happened to the easy to understand eth0 or wlan0? My wireless interface is now... wlp4s0? Just what is that supposed to be? And when will they realize that WPA-PSK is a standard now and quit forcing users into the voodoo of wpa_supplicant and makes something that works straight away without having to delve into a mass of config files? Yes, I know there are a host of GUI alternatives out there. Thing is, I have to actually get a working base installed first. Then I can install X. Then I can install a window manager and a desktop environment. Then I can finally install one of those GUIs of which you speak.

Anyway anyway. I got the network config files set up and the boot scripts properly symlinked and ready for running at boot. Which they wouldn't. Turns out it needed OpenRC to run properly. Which wasn't installed at the initial install. Thanks for telling me, guys. Sorted that out and now I have a laptop that automagically connects to my wifi at boot. Big win. Ready to continue.

Wound up taking a couple of hours on a side quest to get genkernel and GRUB playing nice in case the settings X wants in the kernel means a recompile. Run. Compile. Install. Reboot. It works.

So here I sit. Just emerged xorg-server. Installed twm and xterm. Startx. Worked first time? How in the world did I manage that? RTFM has it's uses, I guess.

fade · Apr 16, 2013

MWUHAHAHAHAHA.

Seriously, though. It does nothing for you. You feel like an action movie hero when things fall together, and you get to say, "See that? I compiled ALL of it."

DarkAudit · Apr 17, 2013

Alright, alright. I give. It was fun while it lasted, but dependency hell has given way to use flag hell. Can't set a fluxbox background because image support wasn't compiled in. That image support is broken too because other flags in it weren't set. Is wicd really misconfigured, or did I miss a flag in that?

I can have Arch set up like I have Gentoo now before dawn. And then some.

Starting over.

strawman · Apr 17, 2013

Waves hand, "Gentoo is not the distribution you're looking for. Move along."

DarkAudit · Apr 17, 2013

No it's not. Fluxbox couldn't set wallpaper because image support wasn't compiled in. You have to explicitly add that. Then I found the package that provided support was not only missing itself, but would wind up missing image support too if it wasn't told to do so.

I mean, who sets up the default of an image package to not include JPEG or GIF?

In the time it took just to get a working wifi connection to install Gentoo, I had Arch, ALSA, X, Fluxbox, Chrome, and VLC installed. With time to spare for porn.

strawman · Apr 17, 2013

See, the problem is that you want a system that just works.

Gentoo folk want a system entirely free of encumbered copyrights and patents, even if said copyrights and patents are expired. So by default they do not include gif or jpg, both of which are now "free" but that isn't good enough for gentoo.

It's a noble goal, one which I respect, as I go about using my computers rather than fiddling with them.

fade · Apr 17, 2013

That philosophy must have changed. Fluxbox was the WM I used as well, but I don't remember doing anything unusual to compile it. It's been a couple of years though.

DarkAudit · Apr 19, 2013

I saw what I did wrong. I chose

Code:

default/linux/amd64/13.0

as my profile when I should have chosen

Code:

default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop

The difference being the desktop profile has most of the USE flags a desktop user may need, while the other is pretty much bare. That was where I went wrong.

I'm game to give it another go, but trying some of the tricks from the Arch install if I can.

strawman · Apr 19, 2013

You have too much time on your hands.

Come paint my house?

Krisken · Apr 20, 2013

What, can't get your army of "Mini-me's" to do it?

strawman · Apr 20, 2013

Krisken said:
What, can't get your army of "Mini-me's" to do it?

They're busy being trained. It's not easy making good minions.

Krisken · Apr 20, 2013

That is training. Wax on, wax off.

strawman · Apr 20, 2013

No, I'm pretty sure future wars will involve primarily economic and cyber warfare.

DarkAudit · Apr 20, 2013

Anyway...

Started over with a smaller but faster HDD than before. This time I selected the correct profile and did all the kernel settings for X, ALSA, and power management in advance.

And that's where I stand on this attempt. Not quite at a bootable system yet.

Krisken · Apr 20, 2013

Ok, I agree with stienman. You should paint his house.

PatrThom · Apr 20, 2013

stienman said:
No, I'm pretty sure future wars will involve primarily economic and cyber warfare.

Heh. "Future."

--Patrick

DarkAudit · Apr 21, 2013

Bah.

Turns out even if I touch nothing, the kernel that genkernel turns out is not the same as just running make menuconfig. So for attempt 3, I just followed the default procedures again, choosing the correct profile his time. I'll config the kernel for the extra stuff after I'm done with the install and online again.

DarkAudit · Apr 21, 2013

Well, shazbot. After about half a dozen attempts to find the right built-in/module combination for my ethernet connection, I'm finally able to install wpa_supplicant to get wi-fi working. And thanks to the desktop profile and the not-yet-installed X, it's pulled 177 other packages to install.

I would have been better off just setting the right profile and running “emerge -uDNav world" instead of starting over. Or I know that now...

DarkAudit · Apr 23, 2013

Sigh. stienman is right. It's not what I'm looking for. Twice the work to get things looking like I have it on another distro (not counting compiling), and yet it still feels like things are missing.

And actually they are. By design. Two years after GNOME 3 released and Gentoo is still on version 2.32.1. To get 3.x you have to fiddle around with /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords. Even more so if you want 3.8. That's hardmasked. Tell Arch to get GNOME, and you get 3.8 without doing anything else.

Back to Arch. Which now is as easy as just dropping in the other HDD.

PatrThom · Apr 30, 2013

I would like to start fiddling around with distros to see where it goes and what I might be able to do, but I am unwilling to do the sort of work you are doing at this time, DarkAudit .
Perhaps when I retire (or if I accidentally fall into a job that requires *nix chops).

--Patrick

DarkAudit · Apr 30, 2013

The more I look into it, the more I realize Gentoo is far less "bleeding edge" than it's reputation suggests. "Rolling release?" Yah right. Many packages are years behind by default, unless you tinker with masks. It's not enough that I have to wait for packages to compile, but now I have to spend an inordinate amount of time checking the web site to make sure the package I'm liable to get by default isn't months or even years behind upstream.

That doesn't mean I've given up on Gentoo just yet. Just that it's going to take a bigger bat to whip the system into shape. Once I finish this post I'm going to update Arch, and then swap out for Gentoo and bring the kernel and GNOME back into the present.

(I'm also a little surprised that there isn't a bigger audience for Linux around here. I'm doing it simply because I can. Work supplies their own computers and software, so this is just personal enjoyment.)

PatrThom · May 1, 2013

DarkAudit said:
(I'm also a little surprised that there isn't a bigger audience for Linux around here. [...])

For me, it's simply a time thing. I want to be as platform-agnostic as possible, and with the way things are headed (i.e., ARM), it's extremely likely I'll need to know my way around *nix a lot better than I do now, and I'd prefer to learn more about it sooner, lest I end up being That Guy Who Only Knows Stuff Nobody Uses, but I really just can't dedicate the time to tinkering with it right now unless I was getting paid to do so.

--Patrick

strawman · May 1, 2013

I have little desire to play with Linux, but I use it when I need to for various things. I've had two projects that required Linux and I ran it in a virtual machine one of those times. The other time I tried putting Linux on a bleeding edge system, and had all sorts of problems getting drivers, but it was fast and had a lot of memory just so I could compile the Linux kernel in minutes rather than hours. I've bootstrapped Linux onto an arm device for one project (which is why i needed to compile the kernel quickly, i had to modify it several times a day, and hour long compiles were a deal breaker). I do deal with a few Linux web servers, but rarely need to tinker much with the kernel, drivers, etc.

I prefer FreeBSD, though, primarily due to licensing issues, and used that over a decade ago for on demand Internet when we still had dial up and more than one computer at home. Haven't done much with it since, but I do remember tinkering with that a lot.

But it's just a tool for me, not a toy, and thus I rarely run into issues getting desktop apps (sound, video, games, etc) working, and inside a virtual machine I never worry about hardware drivers or compatibility, so I don't run into the same issues you have.

The_Khan · May 1, 2013

So what is wrong with buntu per debian or mint or etc. Why gentoo

DarkAudit · May 1, 2013

Gentoo is for the challenge it presents to get installed and running properly, and for a system built specifically for this machine and this machine only.

Debian is just too politically correct for it's own good. Renaming and rebranding Firefox as "Iceweasel", for example. More lawyering than coding.

Ubuntu, Fedora, and others on a release schedule all share the same issue. To get the latest and greatest updates, sometimes you have to wait months for the distro to make the change. That or beg their backports project to include the package in question sooner rather than later.

fade · May 6, 2013

I use linux constantly, but it's hard to diagnose your install issues from afar. If you like Gentoo, they do have (or did have) an active forum... though I always hated the "RTFM" attitude that pervades the open source world. At work we're a bit behind because a lot of the *nix software requires older libraries. We're still on RHEL 5 here.

I recommended Gentoo, but now that I think of it, I last maintained a gentoo server in 2004. That's 9 years ago! It was bleeding edge then. On my own machines, I honestly "just" use Ubuntu now, or more often I use Mac OS X, which I've been able to compile nearly all of my own POSIX software on right out of the box. If I need a bleeding edge package, I just go to an RPM database or build from source for Ubuntu, or Macports for the Mac.

DarkAudit · May 6, 2013

fade said:
I use linux constantly, but it's hard to diagnose your install issues from afar.

PEBKAC, mostly.

Telling portage to go to the ~amd64 repository from the beginning helped. Now only the hardmasked packages and special use flags are any sort of roadblocks.

That and undocumented "features". I spent hours trying to troubleshoot a balky touchpad setup before I found out the driver was disabled if the system saw that my mouse was turned on first. :mad:

DarkAudit · May 9, 2013

Fiddle... fiddle... fiddle...

Partly because it was the middle of the night, and partly because I didn't want to go to Walmart to spend money on a bigger thumb drive, I spent quite a bit of time trying to get Samba working on two different distros so I could move some files off of Arch and onto the Gentoo drive. A lot of hours were burned, and I only barely got the setup working the way I needed. Neither one had it working both to and from the Windows box. For anything further, I now have an 8GB Cruzer I got cheap at Best Buy.

That "ugly" Gentoo I mentioned a while back? PEBKAC strikes again. I hadn't installed the proper Intel video drivers. Now it looks just as pretty as the Arch setup, and without the wtf is that? you sometimes get from AUR installs.

DarkAudit · Jul 26, 2013

Blah.

If I'm running KDE, I can fart around for days at a time without issues. But I don't WANNA just run KDE. I want to run LXDE every once in a while. But I'm crashing out to the login prompt if I have windows open on multiple desktops and then switch desktops. Doesn't happen immediately, but eventually it WILL segfault.

They finally took the hard mask off GNOME 3.8. Oy. My emerge world list was a disaster. Conflict after conflict. Block after block. Blocks that struck to the very heart of my installation. Update wanted me to get rid of udev and open RC. Not gonna happen. Ain't no one got time for that!

At this point I'm wondering why I keep using it beyond the novelty of not-windows and not-Ubuntu. It's kinda like those old sports cars that need as much time in the garage as on the road to keep running properly.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD