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Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux

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f0dder:
I wouldn't say that gentoo is based on BSD, since it's a linux distro - but it's pretty evident where it got the "portage" idea from, though. Btw, gentoo isn't made superfluous by advances in hardware, it's just as much about having configurability options. With other distros, I've found that oftentimes I get a lot of features I don't need from standard packages (including dragging in a crapload of dependencies), but a feature I need isn't enabled - and I end up having to do those messy from-source installs after all. That's the cool thing about gentoo and it's use-masks, I don't run into the situation.

Dependency-hunting isn't hard, it's just a waste of time. And for some software, you get into the iffy situation where very specific versions are needed. Installing redmine, for instance, was pretty fun :)

urlwolf:
My main 3 problems with linux:
1 - you better invest some of your time learning sysadmin stuff. With values of 'some' that may range out of reach for most people, if you have a real job :)

2 - Quite a lot of software, for any category, is worse on linux. Music player? check. Amarok is not really up to pair, and it's a hell of a wonder compared to other linux software. Office suite? Check. Many little tools that make your life easier (ahk, etc)? check

3 - Buying hardware is a real adventure. You better scourge the web before paying for something that linux will not even see.

Even in the unlikely case that an up-to-pair software exists that repleaces your favorite windows one, you'll need to find it and play with it till you get it to suit your needs. And development may stop at any time, as soon as the main dev. gets bored.

40hz:
I wouldn't say that gentoo is based on BSD, since it's a linux distro - but it's pretty evident where it got the "portage" idea from...
-f0dder (October 20, 2008, 01:56 AM)
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You don't need to say it. Gentoo did: ;D

What is Gentoo?

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.

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml

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Btw, gentoo isn't made superfluous by advances in hardware, it's just as much about having configurability options.
--- End quote ---

Agree. But to what point? If you're looking to improve performance, it becomes somewhat pointless to spend dozens of hours researching what compilation flags to set in order to squeeze a 5% improvement in efficiency on a specific platform. You could just invest in more RAM or a faster processor.

Now I agree that it might be worth it if you were doing a Gentoo Stage-3 install as a learning experience Or if you wanted to do it for pure technical aesthetics. That's one advantage of being a student, a hobbyist, or a tech person. You get to do things like that.

I fit into the third group, so I made it a point to do a few "Stage-3's" just to find out what Gentoo was all about. And when I was finished, I considered it a good investment of my time. But that's because I'm a "computer guy" in the tech business. I can easily justify wallowing in levels of detail the average person would consider silly because it's my job to do that.

But if you're only looking for performance (and you value your time at more than $6/hour  :mrgreen: ) it doesn't make economic sense to do a Stage-3 installation. Especially when you realize could get a part-time job that pays better than that, and then use the money you earn to buy a more capable computer.

Where Gentoo really would (and does) shine is when you use it as the basis for an application appliance. But again, that is a specialized situation where there are pragmatic reasons for wringing every last ounce of performance out of your product - because if you don't, the competition in the marketplace will kill you. And there are two other good reasons. First, once you create a fully optimized Gentoo "gold master" you can just keep cloning it until you change your hardware configuration. And second, because you're going to be responsible for support, it also makes sense to get everything "just right" before you ship out 5000 boxed products.

Gentoo is an amazing version of Linux. But it is a niche product. And I still maintain that most of its benefits apply, in practice (as opposed to in theory) to only a very small subset of the Linux community. From the level of knowledge you've displayed in many of your forum posts, I suspect you (i.e f0dder) are part of that small cadre of people that has specific goals combined with the necessary technical background to pull them off. For folks like you, Gentoo makes sense.

"There's some Linux experiences money can't buy. For everything else there's Ubuntu." 8)

With other distros, I've found that oftentimes I get a lot of features I don't need from standard packages (including dragging in a crapload of dependencies),
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True. But to go back to an earlier observation I made about custom and minimalist installations, those very same dependencies you don't want installed by default may later be needed for when you want to do a source install of something else. You can't have it both ways. If you want lean - you get lean.

but a feature I need isn't enabled - and I end up having to do those messy from-source installs after all.
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I don't know of any supported 'feature' for a distro that isn't found in its repositories and installable via the preferred package manager. If you're doing source compiles for a core function, I suspect you're either hacking the kernal, or getting into something that hasn't been fully tested and approved for distribution. Nothing wrong with doing that (I'm guilty of it myself) but once again you can't have it both ways. If you want beta - you get beta.

Dependency-hunting isn't hard, it's just a waste of time. And for some software, you get into the iffy situation where very specific versions are needed. Installing redmine, for instance, was pretty fun smiley
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It is a waste of time. No argument there.

But redmine isn't a good argument for that point. Let's get some background on that story:

Redmine's hassles were the result of a change to the SQlite-3 database table_info pragma that was made by the SQLite development team. The change was made  in response to what they thought was a request from the RubyCore team. Such was not the case, and the change that got made broke all Ruby on Rails apps that were using SQLite-3. What makes this story really tragic is the fact that the problem didn't come about through an arbitrary program change, but rather by SQLite's genuine effort to be accommodating and responsive to a request it thought was from the Ruby community.

Unfortunately, both versions of SQLite's binaries are now found in many repositories, and most Linux package managers will default to the most current version of a binary for installation purposes. This can be overridden on a package by package basis by the person doing the install as long as they know about the problem. In the case of Redmine, an older version of the binary is needed. Unfortunately, most of the people involved with Redmine didn't know about the problem until after they broke their installation.

Now from my perspective, this problem has nothing to do with any Linux distro, it's repositories, or the system of package management. It has everything to do with communications issues between the developers of Ruby and SQLite.

On a side note, I would also like to point out that Redmine is not found in most Linux repositories. Furthermore, if you go over to the Redmine website and read the installation instructions, you will see that the developers have left their userbase a lot of manual setup actions that should have been scripted instead. This is probably because Redmine is still under heavy development and not quite out (ver. 0.7.3) of beta. If the installation routine had been scripted, it would have been a simple matter to check for the correct version of SQLite prior to installation. And that would have avoided the whole problem in the first place.

On a related note, Redmine is a web-based project management application. If you go over to SourceForge you will find there are something like 1700 packages that are tagged  "project management." A cursory look at a few dozen will show several that duplicate, and in some cases exceed, the functionality of Redmine. Many are also out of beta.

From what I can see, there doesn't appear to much that is unique about Redmine, other than the fact that it is being implemented in Ruby on Rails. Now while I have the greatest respect for the Ruby community, and I admire the work of the folks that came up with Ruby on Rails, I can't help thinking "so what?" when I look at Redmine. Especially when there are equivalent applications I can install directly from my distro's repositories that will give me the same functionality without the hassles of doing a source compilation or a pile of manual configurations.

It's nice that Linux has made provisions for you to compile an application from source. But unless you have a very specific reason for doing so (or you just plain want-to-do-it*), why bother?

* That wouldn't normally be considered a reason - but this is Linux we're talking about, right?

 8)

P.S. - Sorry for writing a freekin' book. Somebody else talk, please?

Edvard:
I've already said more than once that I'm http://taking my GNU and going home.

I love Linux and I don't have half the problems anybody else has, but I've suffered through my fair share in the beginning.
(Slackware 8 and Mandrake 9, blaargh!!)

f0dder:
Btw, gentoo isn't made superfluous by advances in hardware, it's just as much about having configurability options. -f0dder
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Agree. But to what point? If you're looking to improve performance, it becomes somewhat pointless to spend dozens of hours researching what compilation flags to set in order to squeeze a 5% improvement in efficiency on a specific platform. You could just invest in more RAM or a faster processor.-40hz (October 20, 2008, 12:05 PM)
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I said configurability (as in --without-package or --with-feature), I didn't mean tweaking the compiler flags. For most applications, you don't really get any kind of performance increase from doing that. Heck, you could end up with slightly slower performance in some cases.

Where Gentoo really would (and does) shine is when you use it as the basis for an application appliance. But again, that is a specialized situation where there are pragmatic reasons for wringing every last ounce of performance out of your product - because if you don't, the competition in the marketplace will kill you. And there are two other good reasons. First, once you create a fully optimized Gentoo "gold master" you can just keep cloning it until you change your hardware configuration. And second, because you're going to be responsible for support, it also makes sense to get everything "just right" before you ship out 5000 boxed products.-40hz (October 20, 2008, 12:05 PM)
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If I was to do an appliance, and especially something that'd run on a system with limited performance and storage, I'd probably go linux-from-scratch instead of using a distro - even something that can be as minimal as gentoo.

but a feature I need isn't enabled - and I end up having to do those messy from-source installs after all.-f0dder
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I don't know of any supported 'feature' for a distro that isn't found in its repositories and installable via the preferred package manager. If you're doing source compiles for a core function, I suspect you're either hacking the kernal, or getting into something that hasn't been fully tested and approved for distribution.-40hz (October 20, 2008, 12:05 PM)
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I'm thinking enabling/disabling individual features from individual programs. But sure, I do tend to do custom kernel builds as well.

Redmine's hassles were the result of a change to the SQlite-3 database table_info pragma that was made by the SQLite development team. The change was made  in response to what they thought was a request from the RubyCore team. Such was not the case, and the change that got made broke all Ruby on Rails apps that were using SQLite-3. What makes this story really tragic is the fact that the problem didn't come about through an arbitrary program change, but rather by SQLite's genuine effort to be accommodating and responsive to a request it thought was from the Ruby community.
-40hz (October 20, 2008, 12:05 PM)
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I opted for MySQL instead of SQLite for exactly that reason. But that was only part of it - you also had to make sure you got the right ruby verson, the right rails version, et cetera. Lots of manual configuration. Pretty sucky and not up-to-date documentation, etc.

OK, fair enough, redmine is relatively bleeding-edge, and it's certainly more fun focusing on core development rather than documentation and proper setups. I just tend to bump into that kind of mentality too often with linux.

On a related note, Redmine is a web-based project management application. If you go over to SourceForge you will find there are something like 1700 packages that are tagged  "project management." A cursory look at a few dozen will show several that duplicate, and in some cases exceed, the functionality of Redmine. Many are also out of beta.-40hz (October 20, 2008, 12:05 PM)
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Haven't found any other that I like, though. Looks, usability, etc.

It's nice that Linux has made provisions for you to compile an application from source. But unless you have a very specific reason for doing so (or you just plain want-to-do-it*), why bother?-40hz (October 20, 2008, 12:05 PM)
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For me, it's about getting the features I want, but also not getting the features I don't want. For instance, my server doesn't run X11 and I don't print from it. I want to have as few services running as possible, since there's then less things to worry about wrt. updates, following security issues, et cetera. There's also less dependencies that can break when a stoned developer checks in a patch that messes up other things.

And the nice thing about gentoo is that you get most of the benefits from source installs, but still with the benefits of package management (uninstalls, dependency resolution, etc).

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