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*NIX: Relatively Minimal Host OS for VirtualBox Use

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ewemoa:
Oh yeah, that utility for dependency checking I was trying to remember earlier is called equery. It's part of gentoolkit.
-40hz (May 26, 2014, 07:44 AM)
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I've been using the list and files modules for equery but didn't know about the others.  Thanks!

40hz:
Chunking through Gentoo's 100-page handbook. My how this distro has matured since the last time I looked at it! Some really nice stuff going down in their camp - including OpenRC and not systemd. That's enough to make me perk up since I always like to hedge my bet with Linux.

This is good stuff...



Yup! I definitely feel a stage-3 coming on... 8)

ewemoa:
including OpenRC and not systemd
-40hz (May 26, 2014, 06:23 PM)
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:Thmbsup:

40hz:
@ewemoa - Ok...just spent a few days messing with Gentoo and not doing a bunch of other stuff I should have been doing... ;D

Couple of things:

On a new PC with a fast chip and plenty of RAM, it installs, sets up, and runs beautifully.

Docs are very well done. Anybody with some Linux experience should have no trouble following or understanding what's being said. In the event you don't understand something, just a few minutes playing with the feature or command in question is enough to get you over the hump.

However, after a short while, all the conclusions I formed (and forgot) years ago about why Gentoo isn't (and won't ever become) a mainstream approach to 'doing Linux' came flooding back to me. In a nutshell: It's a learning or 'science-faire' distro. Great for learning about how things actually work; great for examining some genuinely unique ideas for how to do a distro; great for producing a sleek one-off installation for personal use. But lousy for mass deployment, or in an institutional setting. Because its "compile as needed" design is too time consuming, and its rolling release model is a potential support quagmire once you go beyond your own personal machine. For multiple desktops, it would be a challenge. For production servers, it would be a nightmare - and likely a career threatening environment to be in as well.

So...I'm removing "Genny" from my main test machine and repurposing the drive it's currently installed on.

But...I have a spare 32-bit Compaq laptop with a 20Gb hard drive in it that's gathering dust in the closet. In the next day or two, it will become a newly fledged Gentoo bird. Why? Because Gentoo is so damn much fun to ditz around with! Maybe I still don't have any practical use for Gentoo. But I am having a huge amount of fun with it.

And that's more than I can say for most of what I'm using.



Reason enough to keep it, I'd say. :Thmbsup:

ewemoa:
Because its "compile as needed" design is too time consuming,
-40hz (May 28, 2014, 12:01 PM)
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I felt this during the process of setting the machine up initially -- but not so much on a day-to-day basis now.

and its rolling release model is a potential support quagmire once you go beyond your own personal machine. For multiple desktops, it would be a challenge. For production servers, it would be a nightmare - and likely a career threatening environment to be in as well.

--- End quote ---

It certainly is more work to compile for each machine -- I don't know what Sabayon did, but IIUC they are based on Gentoo and have binary packages...may be they decided to choose some default USE flags?


BTW, I'm going to try using that nearly-bare-Debian-with-VirtualBox set up as my host OS and install Gentoo Prefix for additional software (perhaps I'll also try Nix and/or Guix).

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