Knowledge is Power
Gentoo Linux
http://gentoo.org
Funtoo in the Flesh
1651 days
by wolfden
in Gentoo Linux
I’ve been steadily working on my Funtoo install that I started through a chroot environment. I must say that doing it like that sure makes it a lot easier. You don’t have to worry about no cd/dvd disk,bad burn or installer issues. Create your partition(s), download the stage you want, unzip, chroot in and start setting up the config files than build to your heart is content. When I booted into my new install I was able to boot into a fully working Gnome desktop and it took less than a day. I have decided that Funtoo for me is a textured Gentoo with a little bit of Sabayon Linux that leaves a person with fantastic options.
Gentoo – Gentoo Lives!
1760 days
by wolfden
in Gentoo Linux
If you have looked at portage (2.2rc2) lately you will have noticed some nice new things:
–jobs JOBS
Specifies the number of packages to build simultaneously.
Also see the related –load-average option.–keep-going
Continue as much as possible after an error. When an error
occurs, dependencies are recalculated for remaining packages
and any with unsatisfied dependencies are automatically
dropped. Also see the related –skipfirst option.–load-average LOAD
Specifies that no new builds should be started if there are
other builds running and the load average is at least LOAD (a
floating-point number). This option is recommended for use in
combination with –jobs in order to avoid excess load. See
make(1) for information about analogous options that should
be configured via MAKEOPTS in make.conf(5).
Interesting blog post with more info.
So how about that? So many people are too busy trying to bury and put a headstone on gentoo that they are not seeing that Gentoo is a live and well. Imagine that! Even through the so called turmoil the media was drumming up, portage was active. People complain that the devs aren’t communicating, but it takes two to complete this process. A gentoo dev isn’t going to come to your house and personally tell you what is going on. The user has to take some initiative and look at the mailing lists that are available, even gentoo planet and gentoo universe. I wish I had a dollar for everytime I heard gentoo was done from someone.
Gentoo – Baselayout and OpenRC Migration Guide
1861 days
I’ve been running the new baselayout and openrc for a bit now and I have to say I like it very much. I think this is a good move as in the future it will make upgrading easier. A new baselayout use to terrify the community, but this way should ease the pain of that. Gentoo is going to moving it all into ~ arch soon. This will effect all Sabayon Linux users and they should get familiar with it. They do a great job with a Migration Guide that explains what is what.
What’s baselayout?
Baselayout provides a basic set of files that are necessary for all systems to function properly, such as /etc/hosts. It also provides the basic filesystem layout used by Gentoo (i.e. /etc, /var, /usr, /home directories).
What’s OpenRC?
OpenRC is a dependency-based rc system that works with whatever init is provided by the system, normally /sbin/init. However, it is not a replacement for /sbin/init. The default init used by Gentoo Linux is sys-apps/sysvinit, while Gentoo/FreeBSD uses the FreeBSD init provided by sys-freebsd/freebsd-sbin.
Gentoo – 2008.0 beta 1
1869 days
by wolfden
in Gentoo Linux
Gentoo rolled out the beta on April 1st and so I decided I would give the livedvd a whirl and see what they have done and include some screen shots. It came with a load of desktops like xfce, gnome, enlightenment, kde, and afterstep to just to name a few. I couldn’t get the E-Gnome to work and enlightenment was only e16 still, which is just god awful compared to e17. They kept everything minimal and ugly. The desktops are all bare bone, no fancy themes or colors, not even a Gentoo logo for wallpaper. No nvidia drivers so I was stuck running the wrong resolution for my 1440×900 screen. You don’t even get flash or java either, which makes web browsing a real downer. It was smooth and very responsive for a livedvd tho. Things opened up very quickly and things seemed really stable. It has version KDE 3.5.8 and Gnome 2.20.0, so obviously stable branch. It was weird to see those version after running ~arch for so long. Anyway, for beta1, it’s got great potential. You can download and give it a test drive also. I had the livedvd downloaded in a couple hours with bittorrent.
Gentoo – autounmask
1876 days
This script has been around since last year and is definitely worth talking about again. I mentioned it on the Sabayon Forum when it first came out to help people with unmasking, but it must of went over their heads as not many comments were not made about it. Since it’s release it has made it’s way into the official portage tree now. It’s fairly simple to use, don’t believe me, take a look at the help file.
root@wolf911:/home/wolfden # autounmask –h autounmask version 0.21 (using PortageXS-0.02.07 and portage-2.1.4.4) Usage: autounmask category/package-version Options: -h, –help : Show this help. -p, –pretend : Just pretend. -n, –noversions : Do not append version when unmasking a package.
It only has 3 switches to remember. Even I can remember those. So lets take an example of using the latest gnome. Gnome contains a lot of packages to unmask and well it would be impossible to guess all the packages. So we fire up autounmask and tell it to do it for us.
# autounmask gnome-base/gnome-2.20.0
It will now do it’s thing and edit the files for you. Once it gets done, all you need to do is:
# emerge -pv =gnome-base/gnome-2.22.0
I like to run versionless, which is really nice with all the new KDE 4 releases. I didn’t need to unmask 4.0.0, 4.0.1 and now 4.0.2. As they roll out, my world update grabs the packages.
# autounmask -n =kde-base/kde-meta-4.0.2
This works for any masked package in portage, single or multiple packages.
Sabayon – Great Script called usef
1877 days
micdah has come up with a really nice script for detailed information about a package’s USE flags. Thanks to his internet connection having problems and not being able to connect to certain websites to obtain information, he made a script to help make his life better and share it with us.
It’s up to you how and where you want to run this script, but here is micdah’s setup:
- # cd /opt/scripts/
- # wget http://www.micdah.dk/wp-content/usef.zip
- # unzip usef.zip
- # ln -s /opt/scripts/usef.sh /usr/bin/usef
Now that you have a symbolic link created you can simply:
usef gedit
Change the name to the package you want of course
Results
Thanks micdah 
What is Gentoo Linux?
1912 days
by wolfden
in Gentoo Linux
Gentoo is a free operating system based on either Linux or FreeBSD that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme configurability, performance and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience.
Thanks to a technology called Portage, Gentoo can become an ideal secure server, development workstation, professional desktop, gaming system, embedded solution or something else — whatever you need it to be. Because of its near-unlimited adaptability, we call Gentoo a metadistribution.
Of course, Gentoo is more than just the software it provides. It is a community built around a distribution which is driven by more than 300 developers and thousands of users. The distribution project provides the means for the users to enjoy Gentoo: documentation, infrastructure (mailinglists, site, forums …), release engineering, software porting, quality assurance, security followup, hardening and more.
