Gentoo round 4 (and Sorcerer's continued)

[Matthew Carpenter]

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I found a document indicating that foomatic was the package I wanted.
Of course you can always install from scratch.  That's kinda the point
with Sorcerer's and Gentoo.  They are *all* compiled from source.  But,
as with other distros, if you use their "ebuilds" you can also track,
remove, and update those packages quickly and easily.  (ok, maybe not
always the "quickly" part, but "emerge --update --deep world" seems easy
enough)

I just read from Collins that I could also install gimp-print easily by
typing "emerge gimp-print".  No problem.  Probably do that next.

I was *not* aware that the WUI-CUPS was that capable!  New printer
drivers have *always* been the catch.  Thanks Dep!

So far, I've been enjoying the Gentoo life this time around.  Granted I
left the nerd-knobs alone for now.  But I just did an "emerge freevo"
and "emerge qtopia-desktop-bin" and installed both QTopia Desktop and
Freevo, which I do not believe were available last go 'round I had with
Gentoo.  "emerge bibletime" also installed the esteemed BibleStudy
software, as wlll as it's dependencies.

The concept of an EBuild is that it *is* the source package with some
wrappings to indicate dependencies and stuff.  Consider it a SRPM which
allows you to compile it for your hardware and software as well as deals
with all dependencies.  It's pretty neat if you think about it.  I've
still got my reservations about some things, and Sorcerer's and Gentoo
both have their stronger points.  We'll see how they turn out.  I
believe I'm going to try Gentoo as my laptop OS for a while.  Now that I
have a KDE system and it's got some goodies.  I may try this "porthole"
app for GUI package management.  Ironically enough, it's *not* part of
the repository :)

A couple benefits to these Source Only distros:
* Free.  Free.  Free.  No company looking for ways to gouge you.
* Updated software at will.  When was the last time you updated SuSE to
a new KDE version using vendor-packages?  Last time I did that was with
Caldera and KDE 2.0
* Ability to optimize code for your machine.  With Kernel recompiles
being so much faster than *in the old days* it makes it not so daunting
to recompile the kernel if  you need something different.
* No dependency-hell (or at least none by default)
* True appreciation for how your system works, particularly with Gentoo.
* Gentoo has *great* documentation, granted it's for stuff that SuSE
does for you :) but it's amazing and valuable nonetheless... even for an
RPM fan.
* Sorcerer's has decent package management through an ncurses interface
or CLI.  Self-healing is a nice feature, although I can't be sure of its
quality yet.
* Ability to customize your system easily.  If you want to make
broad-sweeping changes after install, change your "USE" parameter and
issue a command to rebuild everything using the new settings (Over the
next day or so :)

A couple concerns I have with Source-based distros:
* Too long of an install makes it a dreaded event.  Slow lines (I have
ISDN) can make the system useless while installing.  Perhaps longevity
of each build makes up for this?
* It's difficult to know what's available easily (like YaST2 Package
Management has "major groups" and individual packages, viewable in
several different ways to find your packages)
* Source-based distros seem to take up a *lot* of resources (HD space im
particular).  My Sorcerer's build may be irrevocably damaged because I
ran our of VM Drive space while rebuilding stuff.  Not sure yet.  I keep
getting error messages about some lib_pam stuff being too short and
can't log in.  I'm working on that right now.  I used to think that
Gaming was the best test for every part of your system.  I'm beginning
to think that maybe source-based distros are coming close.
* Proprietary Binary packages provided by 3rd-party vendors may not
accept or support the SBD's
* How much pain will I have to go through to get all my authentication
run through Kerberos?  or "xyz" integration which the SuSE engineers
built into their packages?  This is currently an unfounded reservation,
as I have not tried nor been denied from doing things like that yet.


Of course, this is all very initial findings.

dep wrote:
| quoth Matthew Carpenter:
|
| | How do I download CUPS printer drivers?  emerge cups was easy enough
| | to figure out...  I will probably happen upon some magical way of
| | determining what's available easily, but I'm looking for a GUI way :)
|
| getting and installing gimp-print is a good start, though i do not know
| if gentoo offers this -- does it let one do things like big-boy linux
| does? compile stuff and so on?
|
| alternately, the browser-based gimp administration tools let you go out
| and snag/install drivers.

- --
Matthew Carpenter
matt at eisgr.com                          http://www.eisgr.com/

Enterprise Information Systems
* Network Server Appliances
* Security Consulting, Incident Handling & Forensics
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