Gentoo Questions

[Collins]

On Sat, 07 Dec 2002 14:13:30 -0500 "Brett I. Holcomb"
<bholcomb at intergate.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> > [ snips ]
> > 
> > On Sat, 07 Dec 2002 12:52:09 -0500 "Brett I. Holcomb"
> > <bholcomb at intergate.com> wrote:
> >> I had some time yesterday and spent it browsing the Gentoo web
> >site> and came up with a question about the updates.
> > 
> >> how is the availablity of packages for Gentoo?
> >> 
> > 
> 
> > Several choices:
> > 
> > 1) If you like RPM, nothing prevents you from using it on gentoo
> > (the disadvantages are multiple package databases and the fact
> > that nobody is tailoring RPMs specifically for Gentoo).  You could
> > also tinker with the debian tools to install debian packages, if
> > you feel adventuresome.
> 
> Multiple databases is once of my concerns and why I askesd.
>  
> > 2) Download the tarball (or a binary package) and install it
> > yourself.
> >  Keeping track of hand-installed packages may be troublesome
> >  unless
> > you use something like InstallWatch.  All you're doing here is a
> > stand alone version of what emerge/ebuild does for you in an
> > automated fashion.  You can also record what you've done in the
> > portage system, so that subsequent ebuilds will be aware of the
> > package.
> 
> I use checkinstall to create RPMs from tarballs now.  At least you
> can record it.
>  
> > 3) Join the gentoo user groups (do this anyway) and request that
> > someone make an ebuild for the package.  This isn't very quick,
> > but some of the developers are quite responsive.
> > 
> > 4) Do a little RTFM on the gentoo site and learn to generate an
> > ebuild yourself (do this in combination with 2 above)  - not much
> > more difficult than working with SRPMs, for example.  Then you can
> > offer up the ebuild for general use and others will benefit.
> 
> This sounds like the best option if a package is not available.  I
> read the manuals and learned how to build SRPMs for Caldera.
> 

If I can help you in any way, let me know.  I've just reenabled my
gentoo system after a couple of months toying around with RH 7.3 (it's
also a quite reliable distro) and getting tired of the hunt and peck
approach to finding new packages!

People on this list (well some anyway) got tired of hearing about the
advantages of gentoo, so I don't report anything very often.

As an example of package availability, the ink isn't even dry on
mozilla 1.2.1, but gentoo already has a standard ebuild which I just
completed installing.

You'll either love gentoo and wonder why anyone except a raw newbie
uses anything else, or you'll hate it.  Using the latest  gentoo
livecd (1.4+) and one of the pre-packed tarballs, you can get up and
running with a completely usable system in less than 2 days (lots of
compiles).  Add an extra day for kde and/or gnome, if you are of that
persuasion (I use xfce).  Note that you can do most all of this from
your currently running system (chroot to the partition where gentoo is
being built) so that you can be having fun while the compiles churn
away in the background.

Just a note if you try it - watch your USE variables.  Gentoo will by
default drag in kde and/or gnome as a dependancy for any package that
has (or seems to have) optional features that require kde and/or
gnome.  What looks like a simple package install (xfce for example)
could easily expand to 24 hours!  Be sure to do 'emerge -p
packagename' to have portage tell you the dependancies in advance.