a crackpot idea i had

[Collins]

On Mon, 13 May 2002 07:01:48 -0500 "David A. Bandel"
<david at pananix.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 12 May 2002 23:01:57 -0400
> begin  dep <dep at linuxandmain.com> spewed forth:
> 
> > hey, gang!
> > 
> > y'know what the world needs? yet another linux distribution!
> > 
> > now, i admit that you might attribute this notion to the fact that
> > i'm on some pretty fearsomely effective painkillers at the moment
> > due to a physician who probably should have been a meat packer,
> > but hear me out.
> [snip]
> 
> Well, I have my distro, "Chiriqui Linux", based somewhat loosely on
> LFS(Linux From Scratch).  I keep it small so I can boot and run off
> a CD(even run without a hard disk), but it has X 4.2.0 and a whole
> bunch of other things I use a lot.  I use it for my wireless access
> points, and more.  Doesn't have KDE, but I don't use that anyway. 
> My laptop has been running this for a while now.  I split the disk
> into two big chunks, update one chunk, run from that, and in a
> couple of months I update the other chunk and run from that.  I take
> care of all the little details too(like the pcmcia includes from the
> pcmcia-cs package being copied to the kernel, etc.).
> 
> My system, though, has no install method, no package update method
> (other than recompile and reinstall).  Everything is scripted, so I
> just start the scripts and let it run.  If I need to update a
> package, I just update the reference to the package and run the
> compile/install script.
> 
> So it can be done, but it's a lot of work (or just a lot of time d/l
> package sources and letting the install scripts run).
> 

I use a somewhat similar but less work-intensive approach with gentoo.
 

I alternate between two (or more) partitions on my hard drive. 
Frequently (and certainly before any major upgrades) I clone the
current system to the alternate partition and verify that the
alternate will boot (about a 35-40 minute process).  Uses 'cp -a' to
copy each directory with permanent contents, and modify the fstab. 

A few hours a week I spend upgrading anything new.  If the results are
acceptable, I remain on the current system; otherwise I revert to the
clone.  I've only needed to do this once in the past year and a half
(that was when gentoo moved to the current system of init scripts and
I fat fingered the upgrade.)

My system is totally current, but not bleeding edge, and it's rock
solid.  Other gentoo users are gratefully chewing up the gcc 3 stuff
and happily suffering with the non-stable results.  All on basically
the same distro.

I occasionally install kde3 just to see what's changed, but otherwise
I ignore it.  Since a primary gentoo developer works kde3, I don't
have to do much other than wait for a stable ebuild to be released and
then spend 6-7 hours compling it and qt.  I currently have gnome libs
installed, because I like using galeon, but you can get most of what
galeon offers with plain old mozilla.

There are quite a number of threads on gentoo (as for any other
distro) about the fun of installing to a laptop.  I'm glad I don't
need that right now.  Like everything else with gentoo, installing to
a laptop is a one-time painful scenario.  After that it's all gold.

--
Collins Richey - Denver Area - WWTLRD?
gentoo(since 01/01/01) 2.4.19+(ext3) xfce-sylpheed-mozilla