[ILUG] Suggestions for best 64 bit Linux distro?

[Paul Biggar]

On 6/23/05, Nils Olofsson <lists at olofsson.tv> wrote:
> > Low points:
> > - Some codecs don't work in 64 bit.
> > - Portage is source based, as I'm sure you're aware. So you don't get
> > to use a package when you need it. You have to wait 3 hours.
> > - Not everything works. You'll occasionally (ie more than you'd like
> > to) update or install a new package only for ebuild to fail. I've
> > never seen this happen in debian (i386)
> 
> What! I've been using Gentoo for the last 4 plus year and the only time
> it fucked up was when my HD fail,I've never had an ebuild failer,bar
> running out of space for compiling OpenOffice (what can i say) :)

Are you running amd64? I've had about 10 packa^H^H^H^H^Hebuilds fail,
log4j and avalon come to mind (both dependencies, no idea what they
even do). Odd that they're both java though, which you would think
would work no matter what the architecture.

> > - The initial install is not simple, and it is long (though it is well
> > documented).
> 
> It's to weed out the idiots :) (Darwin Awards comes to mind)

Funny how so many made it through...


> > - Use flags suck ass. They're inconsistant across ebuilds; flags that
> > you think would be supported by some packages aren't; and there aren't
> > any decent tools to play with them (ufed? kill me)
> 
> Different packages use different USE flags. you can't expect apache to
> compile with gnome dependency, can you ?

I'm sorry, what an idiot I am. Here i was doing USE="+gnome" emerge
apache2, and wondering why it didn't work. Thank you for setting me
straight.

Clearly, this is actually a real problem, lest I would not be ranting
about it in public. There are some flags which are widely supported
(ogg comes to mind). There are some which are not widely supported,
even though you'd expect them to be. If you have two packages that do
roughly the same thing, you'd expect them to have similar flags.

Looking at gentoo-portage.org/USE, some examples:
imap: surely supported by all mail clients, right? No, it's supported
by 8 ebuilds, three of which are php, and two of which are mutt.

mail: Hang on, mail is a local use flag? Is this not exactly the thing
that should be used by lots of ebuilds? I want evolution for the
calendar? USE="-mail". Same with thunderbird. Dozens of packages use
mail, and surely, in gentoo, I don't have to go with the default
choice. I don't use mail, so I can turn them off. Wrong. mail is a
local use flag for net-im / kadu.

Getting bored, so just one more:
commercial: Aha, I'm a converting debian geek, and don't like using
non DFSG stuff. Down with that sort of thing. So I turn off
'commercial'. Again, no. This is a local flag belonging to net-misc /
nxserver-freenx.


As I said, they're inconsistent and aren't really supported by many
packages. They suck ass. Nice idea, but they could do with a little
bit of editorial control, and then they might actually do what they're
designed for.

> > You can get around some of these problems by running a debian chroot.
> > But that's twice the install, and you need to use debootstrap, which
> > is also not trivial.
> What ?

You're going to have to elaborate on 'What ?'.

> All my updates compile in the background, most 99% are emerged within a
> few hours.
There goes your speed difference. Everything is 20% faster, except
that you're constantly compiling in the background, so everything is
20% slower. Same as me. I wonder how many other gentoo/BSD people have
the same problem.


> > All in all, when debian etch comes out, and has full amd64 support, I
> > will probably switch.
> Good, hope it works out.

Ta. I'll let you know :)


Paul

-- 
Paul Biggar
paul.biggar at gmail.com