Re: [gentoo-user] sys-devel/bc required for kernel compile?
On 14/03/2013 01:09, Walter Dnes wrote: On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 09:16:07AM +, Neil Bothwick wrote On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:24:00 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: A useful trick I use on my Gentoo test/dev vms is a defined set called @tools. These all use a shared /etc/portage/ for consistency, so add bc to the set and it is merged everywhere. This helps keep my world free of clutter. I do a similar thing, I have a set called @base, the first thing I do after unpacking a stage 3 and setting up make.conf is emerge @base. It means I have everything I expect on a computer and also shortcuts some of the install steps. How are the portage-2.2.0 alphas for stability/bugs (hopefully lack thereof)? I see alpha163 and alpha166 available. I find them very stable and bug-free, haven't had an issue with them since the -rc series started (that's what? 2 years ago? more?) I think Zac uses the alphas to test how well his ideas work in practice, each version numbers seems to implement one new idea at a time. Things stay in or come out based on how well they behave in the real world, so there is some feature churn but very few bugs as such. He must be doing decent testing on his end before pushing updates out :-) -- Alan McKinnon Systems Engineer^W Technician Infrastructure Services Internet Solutions +27 11 575 7585 -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
[gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
Howdy, I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? I googled a bit but couldn't find anything. Maybe my search terms wasn't good enough. Links would be nice. Dale -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
Hi !! On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 9:15 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Howdy, I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? First things first ... What do you mean by speed. Benchmarking is a very complicated job ;) Do you mean boot time, network bandwidth, HDD bandwidth, number crunching, graphics, ...? What application(s)? What data volume? ... MHO: never trust benchmarks unless you do them and you know what you are doing ;) Even then ... be careful ;) If you decide to run some benchmarks, take into account that Gentoo has so many USE flags ... youo might not use one of those flags ... but the other distros do use them. Same applies to compiler flags so ... would it be a fair comparison ? ;) Last, but not least ... Imagine Gentoo is faster ... would compile time be worth it? IOW: installing a precompiled distro (like RHEL, SLES, ...) can about 30 - 60 minutes. Gentoo can take 24 hours (or more ... or less, depending on what you install, your experience, ...). Now imagine speed up is 0.1% ... is it worth it? Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? Sorry, can't be of any help here :( I googled a bit but couldn't find anything. Maybe my search terms wasn't good enough. Links would be nice. MHO Rafa
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 03:15:36 -0500, Dale wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? Mandrake? Where have you been for the last ten years, Dale? ;) -- Neil Bothwick ... I just forgot to increment the counter, Tom said, nonplussed. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
Neil Bothwick wrote: On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 03:15:36 -0500, Dale wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? Mandrake? Where have you been for the last ten years, Dale? ;) Sorry, it was called Mandrake when I used it last. It's Mandriva now. Odd, it was about 10 years ago that I switched to Gentoo from Mandrake. That 9.1 to 9.2 upgrade was awful. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
Did this few years back for an online magazine sponsored by a local linux sysadmin company who wanted to see the difference between generic debian and optimised (not necessarily gentoo, but thats what I used.) Difference in times was ~10% across the board for graphics manipulations (gimp scripts), spreadsheet tasks (gnumeric) and the like. The kicker - simple optimisations gained far, far more than generic compiler settings. e.g., initially, the gnumeric versions were slightly different, with some wild times across the tasks. Make em the same version (and cuedos to the gnumeric maintainer for jumping in and helping diagnose/fix the problem - newer version on gentoo was heaps slower :) and there was little difference. Shared libs like glibc didnt make a huge difference, but being smart about how/what a particular task was handled gained more. If a debian app was compiled with similar options as to gentoo, little difference between them in performance which considering shared libs etc wasn't what I expected. The intel compilers are/were said to be a lot better than gcc, not sure if the gap is still there (supposedly 20% better again) Its how long is a piece of string kind of question if considered OS wide, but pick a narrow task and optimise away with smart programmers and you will do well on almost anything. Big advantage of gentoo - configurability, version control (what version is installed and changing it at short notice) and general flexibility. 10 % on software is a lot better than forking out $$$ on faster hardware to do that (as gamers do!), but at the end of the day, I can also make my car go faster by painting the diff red (urban myth/joke from my hotrodding days:) and see roughly the same performance boost - i.e., probably wont notice it in real life) BillK On 14/03/13 16:15, Dale wrote: Howdy, I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? I googled a bit but couldn't find anything. Maybe my search terms wasn't good enough. Links would be nice. Dale
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
2013/3/14 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com Howdy, Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? I googled a bit but couldn't find anything. Maybe my search terms wasn't good enough. Yeehaw, domainfactory (http://df.eu) uses a modified version of gentoo on their servers. df is one of the largest domain/hosting/mail providers in german-speaking countries.
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 03/14/2013 04:15 PM, Dale wrote: Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? What exactly does it mean to run a "modified version of Gentoo"? Don't we all? ;)
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
Hi Just my $0.02: Of course there are distro-related issues on performance, but once the system is up and running, wouldn't it be a matter of compiler/linker optimization differences? Francisco 2013/3/14 Michael Hampicke mgehampi...@gmail.com 2013/3/14 Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com Howdy, Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? I googled a bit but couldn't find anything. Maybe my search terms wasn't good enough. Yeehaw, domainfactory (http://df.eu) uses a modified version of gentoo on their servers. df is one of the largest domain/hosting/mail providers in german-speaking countries. -- If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. - George Bernard Shaw
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/2013 13:29, Mark David Dumlao wrote: On 03/14/2013 04:15 PM, Dale wrote: Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? What exactly does it mean to run a modified version of Gentoo? Don't we all? ;) I've always claimed to colleagues that there is no such thing as a running Gentoo. There's an AlanOS, and a DaleOS and a MarkOS and they are all forks of Gentoo, but nobody actually ever runs Gentoo :-) -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Mar 14, 2013 6:39 PM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On 14/03/2013 13:29, Mark David Dumlao wrote: On 03/14/2013 04:15 PM, Dale wrote: Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? What exactly does it mean to run a modified version of Gentoo? Don't we all? ;) I've always claimed to colleagues that there is no such thing as a running Gentoo. There's an AlanOS, and a DaleOS and a MarkOS and they are all forks of Gentoo, but nobody actually ever runs Gentoo :-) LOL... that's why I got into the habit of saying Gentoo-based system :-) Rgds, --
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Mar 14, 2013 4:14 PM, William Kenworthy bi...@iinet.net.au wrote: Did this few years back for an online magazine sponsored by a local linux sysadmin company who wanted to see the difference between generic debian and optimised (not necessarily gentoo, but thats what I used.) Difference in times was ~10% across the board for graphics manipulations (gimp scripts), spreadsheet tasks (gnumeric) and the like. The kicker - simple optimisations gained far, far more than generic compiler settings. e.g., initially, the gnumeric versions were slightly different, with some wild times across the tasks. Make em the same version (and cuedos to the gnumeric maintainer for jumping in and helping diagnose/fix the problem - newer version on gentoo was heaps slower :) and there was little difference. Shared libs like glibc didnt make a huge difference, but being smart about how/what a particular task was handled gained more. If a debian app was compiled with similar options as to gentoo, little difference between them in performance which considering shared libs etc wasn't what I expected. The intel compilers are/were said to be a lot better than gcc, not sure if the gap is still there (supposedly 20% better again) Its how long is a piece of string kind of question if considered OS wide, but pick a narrow task and optimise away with smart programmers and you will do well on almost anything. Big advantage of gentoo - configurability, version control (what version is installed and changing it at short notice) and general flexibility. This. Why I prefer Gentoo over other distros: Full control. I mean, I can (and do) leverage -march=native. And I certainly have an overly long USE flags... but it's the sheet satisfaction of knowing that my system is MY system that made me stick with Gentoo... It's eminently satisfying -- a geekgasm, if you will -- to know that one's kernel is lean and customized, all the toolchains have been tuned, and there are no useless things being installed... In regards to performance, the benefits might not be groundbreaking, but it's there, and when your server is being relentlessly hammered by requests, Gentoo seems to have additional breathing space where other distros choke... Rgds, --
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 03/14/2013 07:36 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote: On 14/03/2013 13:29, Mark David Dumlao wrote: On 03/14/2013 04:15 PM, Dale wrote: Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? What exactly does it mean to run a "modified version of Gentoo"? Don't we all? ;) I've always claimed to colleagues that there is no such thing as "a running Gentoo". There's an AlanOS, and a DaleOS and a MarkOS and they are all forks of Gentoo, but nobody actually ever runs "Gentoo" :-) Smart call that you called it a "running" Gentoo rather than an "installed" one, because my followup question would have been, "Well what exactly does it mean to have installed Gentoo? I've had this laptop two years now and I'm still not done tinkering with it!" ;)
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/2013 14:31, Mark David Dumlao wrote: On 03/14/2013 07:36 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote: On 14/03/2013 13:29, Mark David Dumlao wrote: On 03/14/2013 04:15 PM, Dale wrote: Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? What exactly does it mean to run a modified version of Gentoo? Don't we all? ;) I've always claimed to colleagues that there is no such thing as a running Gentoo. There's an AlanOS, and a DaleOS and a MarkOS and they are all forks of Gentoo, but nobody actually ever runs Gentoo :-) Smart call that you called it a running Gentoo rather than an installed one, because my followup question would have been, Well what exactly does it mean to have installed Gentoo? I've had this laptop two years now and I'm still not done tinkering with it! ;) This is my fifth Dell laptop in a row with Gentoo installed. Tinkering? yeah I do that too :-) Some days this system looks like one of those crazy Wily E. Coyote machines with all the bits I bolt on the back :-) -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/2013 14:12, Pandu Poluan wrote: On Mar 14, 2013 4:14 PM, William Kenworthy bi...@iinet.net.au mailto:bi...@iinet.net.au wrote: Did this few years back for an online magazine sponsored by a local linux sysadmin company who wanted to see the difference between generic debian and optimised (not necessarily gentoo, but thats what I used.) Difference in times was ~10% across the board for graphics manipulations (gimp scripts), spreadsheet tasks (gnumeric) and the like. The kicker - simple optimisations gained far, far more than generic compiler settings. e.g., initially, the gnumeric versions were slightly different, with some wild times across the tasks. Make em the same version (and cuedos to the gnumeric maintainer for jumping in and helping diagnose/fix the problem - newer version on gentoo was heaps slower :) and there was little difference. Shared libs like glibc didnt make a huge difference, but being smart about how/what a particular task was handled gained more. If a debian app was compiled with similar options as to gentoo, little difference between them in performance which considering shared libs etc wasn't what I expected. The intel compilers are/were said to be a lot better than gcc, not sure if the gap is still there (supposedly 20% better again) Its how long is a piece of string kind of question if considered OS wide, but pick a narrow task and optimise away with smart programmers and you will do well on almost anything. Big advantage of gentoo - configurability, version control (what version is installed and changing it at short notice) and general flexibility. This. Why I prefer Gentoo over other distros: Full control. I mean, I can (and do) leverage -march=native. And I certainly have an overly long USE flags... but it's the sheet satisfaction of knowing that my system is MY system that made me stick with Gentoo... It's eminently satisfying -- a geekgasm, if you will -- to know that one's kernel is lean and customized, all the toolchains have been tuned, and there are no useless things being installed... In regards to performance, the benefits might not be groundbreaking, but it's there, and when your server is being relentlessly hammered by requests, Gentoo seems to have additional breathing space where other distros choke... Gentoo excels as a -dev system where your devs need to test things in different environments. A classic case is different pythons. We have many Centos 4 machines in production that run python-2.4, the developers naturally run something bleeding edge like 2.7 or 3.3 on their laptops. Many many times they need to know if their bespoke code runs properly on Centos, or PyPy or whatever other valid environment difference could happen in the real world. Tweak USE, tweak the masking and let emerge world do it's thing. Now the dev can do valid tests. If the dev machines are VMs, snapshot them just before starting this and you have the best possible solution for my money. Or, try remove LDAP, NIS and PAM support for auth from a RHEL machine to test if it works without those things in place. RHEL? Impossible. Gentoo? Trivially easy. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 03/14/2013 09:28 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote: On 14/03/2013 14:12, Pandu Poluan wrote: On Mar 14, 2013 4:14 PM, William Kenworthy bi...@iinet.net.au mailto:bi...@iinet.net.au wrote: Did this few years back for an online magazine sponsored by a local linux sysadmin company who wanted to see the difference between generic debian and optimised (not necessarily gentoo, but thats what I used.) Difference in times was ~10% across the board for graphics manipulations (gimp scripts), spreadsheet tasks (gnumeric) and the like. The kicker - simple optimisations gained far, far more than generic compiler settings. e.g., initially, the gnumeric versions were slightly different, with some wild times across the tasks. Make em the same version (and cuedos to the gnumeric maintainer for jumping in and helping diagnose/fix the problem - newer version on gentoo was heaps slower :) and there was little difference. Shared libs like glibc didnt make a huge difference, but being smart about how/what a particular task was handled gained more. If a debian app was compiled with similar options as to gentoo, little difference between them in performance which considering shared libs etc wasn't what I expected. The intel compilers are/were said to be a lot better than gcc, not sure if the gap is still there (supposedly 20% better again) Its how long is a piece of string kind of question if considered OS wide, but pick a narrow task and optimise away with smart programmers and you will do well on almost anything. Big advantage of gentoo - configurability, version control (what version is installed and changing it at short notice) and general flexibility. This. Why I prefer Gentoo over other distros: Full control. I mean, I can (and do) leverage -march=native. And I certainly have an overly long USE flags... but it's the sheet satisfaction of knowing that my system is MY system that made me stick with Gentoo... It's eminently satisfying -- a geekgasm, if you will -- to know that one's kernel is lean and customized, all the toolchains have been tuned, and there are no useless things being installed... In regards to performance, the benefits might not be groundbreaking, but it's there, and when your server is being relentlessly hammered by requests, Gentoo seems to have additional breathing space where other distros choke... Gentoo excels as a -dev system where your devs need to test things in different environments. A classic case is different pythons. We have many Centos 4 machines in production that run python-2.4, the developers naturally run something bleeding edge like 2.7 or 3.3 on their laptops. Many many times they need to know if their bespoke code runs properly on Centos, or PyPy or whatever other valid environment difference could happen in the real world. Tweak USE, tweak the masking and let emerge world do it's thing. Now the dev can do valid tests. If the dev machines are VMs, snapshot them just before starting this and you have the best possible solution for my money. Or, try remove LDAP, NIS and PAM support for auth from a RHEL machine to test if it works without those things in place. RHEL? Impossible. Gentoo? Trivially easy. Trivially easy, of course, means an emerge -euDNtv world emerge -ctv revdep-rebuild -i revdep-rebuild ... ehehehe I dunno, it might actually be easier to setup the said distros in a VM. And if those configurations don't work, you shouldn't have to support them, eh? ;)
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/2013 15:40, Mark David Dumlao wrote: On 03/14/2013 09:28 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote: On 14/03/2013 14:12, Pandu Poluan wrote: On Mar 14, 2013 4:14 PM, William Kenworthy bi...@iinet.net.au mailto:bi...@iinet.net.au wrote: Did this few years back for an online magazine sponsored by a local linux sysadmin company who wanted to see the difference between generic debian and optimised (not necessarily gentoo, but thats what I used.) Difference in times was ~10% across the board for graphics manipulations (gimp scripts), spreadsheet tasks (gnumeric) and the like. The kicker - simple optimisations gained far, far more than generic compiler settings. e.g., initially, the gnumeric versions were slightly different, with some wild times across the tasks. Make em the same version (and cuedos to the gnumeric maintainer for jumping in and helping diagnose/fix the problem - newer version on gentoo was heaps slower :) and there was little difference. Shared libs like glibc didnt make a huge difference, but being smart about how/what a particular task was handled gained more. If a debian app was compiled with similar options as to gentoo, little difference between them in performance which considering shared libs etc wasn't what I expected. The intel compilers are/were said to be a lot better than gcc, not sure if the gap is still there (supposedly 20% better again) Its how long is a piece of string kind of question if considered OS wide, but pick a narrow task and optimise away with smart programmers and you will do well on almost anything. Big advantage of gentoo - configurability, version control (what version is installed and changing it at short notice) and general flexibility. This. Why I prefer Gentoo over other distros: Full control. I mean, I can (and do) leverage -march=native. And I certainly have an overly long USE flags... but it's the sheet satisfaction of knowing that my system is MY system that made me stick with Gentoo... It's eminently satisfying -- a geekgasm, if you will -- to know that one's kernel is lean and customized, all the toolchains have been tuned, and there are no useless things being installed... In regards to performance, the benefits might not be groundbreaking, but it's there, and when your server is being relentlessly hammered by requests, Gentoo seems to have additional breathing space where other distros choke... Gentoo excels as a -dev system where your devs need to test things in different environments. A classic case is different pythons. We have many Centos 4 machines in production that run python-2.4, the developers naturally run something bleeding edge like 2.7 or 3.3 on their laptops. Many many times they need to know if their bespoke code runs properly on Centos, or PyPy or whatever other valid environment difference could happen in the real world. Tweak USE, tweak the masking and let emerge world do it's thing. Now the dev can do valid tests. If the dev machines are VMs, snapshot them just before starting this and you have the best possible solution for my money. Or, try remove LDAP, NIS and PAM support for auth from a RHEL machine to test if it works without those things in place. RHEL? Impossible. Gentoo? Trivially easy. Trivially easy, of course, means an emerge -euDNtv world emerge -ctv revdep-rebuild -i revdep-rebuild ... ehehehe I dunno, it might actually be easier to setup the said distros in a VM. And if those configurations don't work, you shouldn't have to support them, eh? ;) Well, devs tend to ask questions like would this thing X work in practice? or do I have to munge my code? They want to know if shipped code supports something. And, I don't get to say I'm sorry, I cannot support Centos 4 on this Business has a stock answer Well, find a way to make it work. Flexibility is the key. At least with emerge -euDNtv world emerge -ctv revdep-rebuild -i revdep-rebuild I can walk away and come back in three hours, look at logs and tell them to test. Plus I don't have to re-install their customer code everyt time from scratch (said code *never*, of course, coming with anything resembling a MakeFile) -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! Is it 1974? What's at for SUPPER? Can I spend gmail.commy COLLEGE FUND in one wild afternoon??
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/2013 16:07, Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. nonononononono, gentoo is much faster. I did the same test, but comparing Centos on a DVD with Gentoo on a USB stick. The stick tends to fall about 8% faster, mostly due to removing those aerodynamic instabilities causing lift effects from the wing-like shape of the DVD. I consider this a perfectly valid test as Gentoo is designed to let me remove unwanted side-effects from the environment. The shape of a DVD was unwanted, so I made a tweak to take it out. p.s. good joke on your part :-) Dale is never going to live this one down. But he's a big boy, he can take it. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 7:12 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: Why I prefer Gentoo over other distros: Full control. That's it, in a nutshell. I mean, I can (and do) leverage -march=native. I've been scared away from -march and instead of -mtune in case i need to drop my hard drive into another system for recovery which might have an incompatible CPU.
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:40:49 +0800, Mark David Dumlao wrote: Or, try remove LDAP, NIS and PAM support for auth from a RHEL machine to test if it works without those things in place. RHEL? Impossible. Gentoo? Trivially easy. Trivially easy, of course, means an emerge -euDNtv world emerge -ctv revdep-rebuild -i revdep-rebuild ... ehehehe There's no need to rebuild everything, and those other flags make no sense when using -e. Generally you only need emerge -uaD --changed-use @world -- Neil Bothwick Set phasers to extreme itching! signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/13 22:31, Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 7:12 AM, Pandu Poluan pa...@poluan.info wrote: Why I prefer Gentoo over other distros: Full control. That's it, in a nutshell. I mean, I can (and do) leverage -march=native. I've been scared away from -march and instead of -mtune in case i need to drop my hard drive into another system for recovery which might have an incompatible CPU. Ok, thats another valid comparison to go with dropping Alans gentoo on a USB stick, centos on a DVD ... so what OS goes with a hard drive when its dropped? Is anyone near Piza ... Ive been told they have a tower that's been used for these types of test in the past. BillK
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 07:29:54PM +0800, Mark David Dumlao wrote: html head meta content=text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type /head body bgcolor=#FF text=#00 div class=moz-cite-prefixOn 03/14/2013 04:15 PM, Dale wrote:br /div blockquote cite=mid:51418728.7020...@gmail.com type=cite pre wrap=Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? /pre /blockquote What exactly does it mean to run a modified version of Gentoo? Don't we all? ;)br /body /html What kind of crap email do you call that ^^^ ? -- Happy Penguin Computers ') 126 Fenco Drive ( \ Tupelo, MS 38801 ^^ supp...@happypenguincomputers.com 662-269-2706 662-205-6424 http://happypenguincomputers.com/ A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 08:31:54PM +0800, Mark David Dumlao wrote: html head meta content=text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type /head body bgcolor=#FF text=#00 div class=moz-cite-prefixOn 03/14/2013 07:36 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote:br /div blockquote cite=mid:5141b649.1090...@gmail.com type=cite pre wrap=On 14/03/2013 13:29, Mark David Dumlao wrote: /pre blockquote type=cite pre wrap=On 03/14/2013 04:15 PM, Dale wrote: /pre blockquote type=cite pre wrap=Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? /pre /blockquote pre wrap=What exactly does it mean to run a modified version of Gentoo? Don't we all? ;) /pre /blockquote pre wrap= I've always claimed to colleagues that there is no such thing as a running Gentoo. There's an AlanOS, and a DaleOS and a MarkOS and they are all forks of Gentoo, but nobody actually ever runs Gentoo :-) /pre /blockquote Smart call that you called it a running Gentoo rather than an installed one, because my followup question would have been, Well what exactly does it mean to have installed Gentoo? I've had this laptop two years now and I'm still not done tinkering with it! ;)br /body /html Kindly turn off your HTML ... this is email, not your personal web page. ;) -- Happy Penguin Computers ') 126 Fenco Drive ( \ Tupelo, MS 38801 ^^ supp...@happypenguincomputers.com 662-269-2706 662-205-6424 http://happypenguincomputers.com/ A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? Don't top-post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post#Top-posting
Email encodings (was Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros )
On 03/14/2013 11:17 AM, Bruce Hill wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 07:29:54PM +0800, Mark David Dumlao wrote: html head meta content=text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type /head body bgcolor=#FF text=#00 div class=moz-cite-prefixOn 03/14/2013 04:15 PM, Dale wrote:br /div blockquote cite=mid:51418728.7020...@gmail.com type=cite pre wrap=Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? /pre /blockquote What exactly does it mean to run a modified version of Gentoo? Don't we all? ;)br /body /html What kind of crap email do you call that ^^^ ? From the headers of his email: Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros References: 51418728.7020...@gmail.com In-Reply-To: 51418728.7020...@gmail.com Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit It's perfectly compliant. You may want to correct your mail client to understand HTML. (Admittedly, it's unusual to see email clients send *only* text/html, rather than a multipart message with two different encodings.) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Email encodings (was Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros )
2013/3/14 Michael Mol mike...@gmail.com On 03/14/2013 11:17 AM, Bruce Hill wrote: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 07:29:54PM +0800, Mark David Dumlao wrote: html head meta content=text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type /head body bgcolor=#FF text=#00 div class=moz-cite-prefixOn 03/14/2013 04:15 PM, Dale wrote:br /div blockquote cite=mid:51418728.7020...@gmail.com type=cite pre wrap=Also, I read that Nasdaq runs a modified version of Gentoo. Do any other large corps run it that we know of? /pre /blockquote What exactly does it mean to run a modified version of Gentoo? Don't we all? ;)br /body /html What kind of crap email do you call that ^^^ ? From the headers of his email: Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros References: 51418728.7020...@gmail.com In-Reply-To: 51418728.7020...@gmail.com Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit It's perfectly compliant. You may want to correct your mail client to understand HTML. (Admittedly, it's unusual to see email clients send *only* text/html, rather than a multipart message with two different encodings.) At least one link: http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7574/ . It is kinda old, but I liked the reading. -- João de Matos Linux User #461527
Re: [gentoo-user] make modules_install error; modules not recognized as ELF files
On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 10:47:34PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote Is my netbook dying, or is something else wrong? This is an older 32-bit Atom netbook, with CFLAGS=-O2 -march=native -mfpmath=sse -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -fno-unwind-tables -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables and 'MAKEOPTS=-j1'. Compiling the kernel works OK, but make modules_install dies as follows... I unmasked kernel 3.5.7-r1 (no, I don't run ext4) and tried again. I got... [aa1][root][/usr/src/linux] make modules_install INSTALL drivers/char/kcopy/kcopy.ko INSTALL drivers/scsi/scsi_wait_scan.ko INSTALL drivers/usb/host/ehci-hcd.ko DEPMOD 3.5.7-gentoo-r1 depmod: /lib/modules/3.5.7-gentoo-r1/modules.builtin is not an ELF file depmod: /lib/modules/3.5.7-gentoo-r1/modules.order is not an ELF file make: *** [_modinst_post] Error 1 Both of these are textfiles, but there were a few *.bin files in the previous kernel build error list. This is a 32-bit machine running gcc 4.6.3. My desktop, also running in 32-bit mode with kernel 3.5.7-r1 and gcc 4.6.3, has no such problem. Any ideas? -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org I don't run desktop environments; I run useful applications
Re: [gentoo-user] make modules_install error; modules not recognized as ELF files
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 4:14 PM, Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org wrote: On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 10:47:34PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote Is my netbook dying, or is something else wrong? This is an older 32-bit Atom netbook, with CFLAGS=-O2 -march=native -mfpmath=sse -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -fno-unwind-tables -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables and 'MAKEOPTS=-j1'. Compiling the kernel works OK, but make modules_install dies as follows... I unmasked kernel 3.5.7-r1 (no, I don't run ext4) and tried again. I got... [aa1][root][/usr/src/linux] make modules_install INSTALL drivers/char/kcopy/kcopy.ko INSTALL drivers/scsi/scsi_wait_scan.ko INSTALL drivers/usb/host/ehci-hcd.ko DEPMOD 3.5.7-gentoo-r1 depmod: /lib/modules/3.5.7-gentoo-r1/modules.builtin is not an ELF file depmod: /lib/modules/3.5.7-gentoo-r1/modules.order is not an ELF file make: *** [_modinst_post] Error 1 Both of these are textfiles, but there were a few *.bin files in the previous kernel build error list. This is a 32-bit machine running gcc 4.6.3. My desktop, also running in 32-bit mode with kernel 3.5.7-r1 and gcc 4.6.3, has no such problem. Any ideas? At some point in the past few months I think module-init-tools was replaced by another package (kmod perhaps, I'm going from memory)... I am wondering if it has something to do with that transition.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. Then install another OS on the same hardware. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The object of this is, does Gentoo with the customization it allows run faster than some binary install that does NOT allow those controls? In other words, can a Gentoo based install perform more efficiently than a binary based install like Redhat, Ubuntu or some other distro? I am NOT concerned about compile times or the install itself. Does that put the dots closer together for the challenged ones? ROFL Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/13 22:41, Dale wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. Then install another OS on the same hardware. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The object of this is, does Gentoo with the customization it allows run faster than some binary install that does NOT allow those controls? In other words, can a Gentoo based install perform more efficiently than a binary based install like Redhat, Ubuntu or some other distro? I am NOT concerned about compile times or the install itself. Does that put the dots closer together for the challenged ones? ROFL Dale :-) :-) The point of the challenged ones was that while we can take measurements like these, it's rather meaningless to do so. The result will be different for every single person out there depending on their configuration, USE, CFLAGS and who knows what else. I can compile a package with support for 3 different DEs, few WMs, oss and alsa and about a billion things I will never use. Does this make for a more or less of a meaningful test than doing the same test with no flags what so ever? There is no correct answer as it varies per user basis. The most meaningful measurements that we can probably take would be between different USE flags configurations. Maybe we can say that package ‘foo’ with certain USE and CFLAGS runs in less average time than the same package on a distro Bar. In my opinion, it would be far more meaningful to measure the effect of different USE flags on the same package, *in relative time* on the same system. This would give us more idea about the impact of each flag as opposed to a very limited view of ‘package foo with certain specific USE flags runs 10ms faster than the same package on the same hardware on a binary distribution’. If you still want such measurements and you want them to be somewhat meaningful to you, it is you who will have to take them. Unless there are some gross inconsistencies in run times on different distributions, we have no use for such measurement. Everyone understood what you asked for. It's _you_ that misunderstood their explanation for why it's meaningless to ask such a question in the first place. -- Mateusz K.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote: On 14/03/13 22:41, Dale wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. Then install another OS on the same hardware. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The object of this is, does Gentoo with the customization it allows run faster than some binary install that does NOT allow those controls? In other words, can a Gentoo based install perform more efficiently than a binary based install like Redhat, Ubuntu or some other distro? I am NOT concerned about compile times or the install itself. Does that put the dots closer together for the challenged ones? ROFL Dale :-) :-) The point of the challenged ones was that while we can take measurements like these, it's rather meaningless to do so. The result will be different for every single person out there depending on their configuration, USE, CFLAGS and who knows what else. I can compile a package with support for 3 different DEs, few WMs, oss and alsa and about a billion things I will never use. Does this make for a more or less of a meaningful test than doing the same test with no flags what so ever? There is no correct answer as it varies per user basis. The most meaningful measurements that we can probably take would be between different USE flags configurations. Maybe we can say that package ‘foo’ with certain USE and CFLAGS runs in less average time than the same package on a distro Bar. In my opinion, it would be far more meaningful to measure the effect of different USE flags on the same package, *in relative time* on the same system. This would give us more idea about the impact of each flag as opposed to a very limited view of ‘package foo with certain specific USE flags runs 10ms faster than the same package on the same hardware on a binary distribution’. If you still want such measurements and you want them to be somewhat meaningful to you, it is you who will have to take them. Unless there are some gross inconsistencies in run times on different distributions, we have no use for such measurement. Everyone understood what you asked for. It's _you_ that misunderstood their explanation for why it's meaningless to ask such a question in the first place. I didn't miss anything. I get what some are saying. The reason for my question is this. Gentoo allows a person to customize the OS to the specific hardware it is being run on. Redhat and other binary distros don't allow this, unless you compile your own packages which is no longer really a binary install. So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? If people can't get this, never mind. Dale :-) :-) -- I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:52:41 -0500, Dale wrote: So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? No. They may have tested it on their machine, but not on yours, so their results aren't applicable to running the same tests on DaleOS[tm]. The times this really matters is when running resource-intensive or time-critical applications (like the NASDAQ example you gave) and on those situations it is possible to define a set of test that give meaning results, but only n those situations. Your question makes how long is a piece of string seem a model of precision. -- Neil Bothwick A Smith Weason beats Four Aces everytime. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 14/03/13 23:52, Dale wrote: Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote: On 14/03/13 22:41, Dale wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. Then install another OS on the same hardware. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The object of this is, does Gentoo with the customization it allows run faster than some binary install that does NOT allow those controls? In other words, can a Gentoo based install perform more efficiently than a binary based install like Redhat, Ubuntu or some other distro? I am NOT concerned about compile times or the install itself. Does that put the dots closer together for the challenged ones? ROFL Dale :-) :-) The point of the challenged ones was that while we can take measurements like these, it's rather meaningless to do so. The result will be different for every single person out there depending on their configuration, USE, CFLAGS and who knows what else. I can compile a package with support for 3 different DEs, few WMs, oss and alsa and about a billion things I will never use. Does this make for a more or less of a meaningful test than doing the same test with no flags what so ever? There is no correct answer as it varies per user basis. The most meaningful measurements that we can probably take would be between different USE flags configurations. Maybe we can say that package ‘foo’ with certain USE and CFLAGS runs in less average time than the same package on a distro Bar. In my opinion, it would be far more meaningful to measure the effect of different USE flags on the same package, *in relative time* on the same system. This would give us more idea about the impact of each flag as opposed to a very limited view of ‘package foo with certain specific USE flags runs 10ms faster than the same package on the same hardware on a binary distribution’. If you still want such measurements and you want them to be somewhat meaningful to you, it is you who will have to take them. Unless there are some gross inconsistencies in run times on different distributions, we have no use for such measurement. Everyone understood what you asked for. It's _you_ that misunderstood their explanation for why it's meaningless to ask such a question in the first place. I didn't miss anything. I get what some are saying. The reason for my question is this. Gentoo allows a person to customize the OS to the specific hardware it is being run on. Redhat and other binary distros don't allow this, unless you compile your own packages which is no longer really a binary install. So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? If people can't get this, never mind. Dale :-) :-) I don't think that it's plausible to take such measurement. We could set every USE flag possible for the package we are benchmarking to try and replicate the support for everything that the binary package is likely to have. We also have to do this for all its dependencies (and their dependencies and so on) to have nothing that could potentially influence the measurement. Assuming that portage complies with this (it won't), we compile the package with optimizations for our hardware. The result? We probably have the same result on Gentoo and the other distro. Why? The reason is simple: binary distributions provide packages compiled with optimizations turned on for specific architectures. Unless you are doing some unheard of optimizations for your obscure model
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On 15/03/13 08:31, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote: On 14/03/13 23:52, Dale wrote: Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote: On 14/03/13 22:41, Dale wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: ... RedHat maintainers aren't stupid (you can probably tell I've never used RH) – they will release packages optimized for architectures they will run on. Overall you might get very slight performance boost because of some CFLAG you enable but you might as well have worse performance because you don't know as much about optimizations as the RH maintainers and developers. Bah, you can even find examples on Gentoo wiki where compiling certain packages with certain flags actually makes them slower and not faster where usually the opposite is the case. Further, when we did the tests I mentioned before (exactly what Dale was asking about in fact) - we had 3 identical machines for testing in parallel ... Celerons at the time. While setting up, it became clear that while gentoo was working well on my P4 laptop, cloning it onto the celeron gave performance worse than a default i386 debian. So after a bit of swatting on compiler flags I tuned it closer to the architecture, did an overnight rebuild and we went from there ... and it could only shade i386 default debian about 10% ... mostly. 1. The upshot is that I consider its actually easier to shoot yourself in the foot performance wise if you get it wrong than it is to get it right. 2. Tuning for a particular load/job *WILL* make the machine more unsuitable to other load/job profiles. 3. On the same hardware, any distro can/should be made to perform identically if tuned by someone in the know (or made worse) 4. Gentoo is easier to tune (make better ... or worse :) BillK
[gentoo-user] ntfs-3g problem (I suppose) - locking system
Hello. During some months now, this machine was (and still is, sometimes) suffering from a strange progressive lock down. It always has begun with the web browser, passing to the whole X environment, and finally I could not even use a console. After several trial and error actions, as no log entry could give any hint on what is going on, it seems that I found something consistent. This machine is a dual-boot Linux/Windows, as my wife once in a while needs to work on a Windows O.S. . The lock down starts when she saves a file received by e-mail in a ntfs-3g mounted partition, so that file would also be accessible whenever she uses Windows. The reason why I suspect of ntfs-3g is that when the lock down starts, that is, if only the web browser locks, just unmounting (and mounting back later) that partition, recovers the web browser functionality. Sometimes, when the lock down has already affected the whole graphic environment, but I still may use a console, again unmounting that same partition also unlocks everithing. I have already tried to emerge ntfs-3g with different use flags, but the problem persists. Even built a new kernel and re-emerged ntfs-3g after that. Now ntfs-3g package is using its own fuse. I would really appreciate any hints on what to do or where to look for any more information on this subject. Perhaps I am still looking at an effect, and not the cause. Thanks Francisco -- If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. - George Bernard Shaw
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Mar 15, 2013 7:31 AM, Mateusz Kowalczyk fuuze...@fuuzetsu.co.uk wrote: On 14/03/13 23:52, Dale wrote: Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote: On 14/03/13 22:41, Dale wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. The point being, you're going to have to define speed. Does speed refer to Installation time? Boot time? Linpack? Dhrystone? Whetstone? Time for me to figure out how to fix a configuration problem? Time to do to an update on a machine that's been unplugged for a year? Time to to produce a packaged version of some random C program that comes with a Makefile that uses autotools? Time for a reported bug to get fixed? OK. It appears not very many can figure out what I asked for. So, let me spell it out for those who are challenged. LOL ;-) Read some humor into that OK. Install a OS. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. Then install another OS on the same hardware. Run tests on a set of programs and record the time it takes to complete a certain task. More tasks the better. The object of this is, does Gentoo with the customization it allows run faster than some binary install that does NOT allow those controls? In other words, can a Gentoo based install perform more efficiently than a binary based install like Redhat, Ubuntu or some other distro? I am NOT concerned about compile times or the install itself. Does that put the dots closer together for the challenged ones? ROFL Dale :-) :-) The point of the challenged ones was that while we can take measurements like these, it's rather meaningless to do so. The result will be different for every single person out there depending on their configuration, USE, CFLAGS and who knows what else. I can compile a package with support for 3 different DEs, few WMs, oss and alsa and about a billion things I will never use. Does this make for a more or less of a meaningful test than doing the same test with no flags what so ever? There is no correct answer as it varies per user basis. The most meaningful measurements that we can probably take would be between different USE flags configurations. Maybe we can say that package ‘foo’ with certain USE and CFLAGS runs in less average time than the same package on a distro Bar. In my opinion, it would be far more meaningful to measure the effect of different USE flags on the same package, *in relative time* on the same system. This would give us more idea about the impact of each flag as opposed to a very limited view of ‘package foo with certain specific USE flags runs 10ms faster than the same package on the same hardware on a binary distribution’. If you still want such measurements and you want them to be somewhat meaningful to you, it is you who will have to take them. Unless there are some gross inconsistencies in run times on different distributions, we have no use for such measurement. Everyone understood what you asked for. It's _you_ that misunderstood their explanation for why it's meaningless to ask such a question in the first place. I didn't miss anything. I get what some are saying. The reason for my question is this. Gentoo allows a person to customize the OS to the specific hardware it is being run on. Redhat and other binary distros don't allow this, unless you compile your own packages which is no longer really a binary install. So, if I install Redhat on my machine, would it be less efficient than my Gentoo install which is customized for my hardware? Has someone else tested this and made it public? If people can't get this, never mind. Dale :-) :-) I don't think that it's plausible to take such measurement. We could set every USE flag possible for the package we are benchmarking to try and replicate the support for everything that the binary package is likely to have. We also have to do this for all its dependencies (and their dependencies and so on) to have nothing that could potentially influence the measurement. Assuming that portage complies with this (it won't), we compile the package with optimizations for our hardware. The result? We probably have the same result on Gentoo and the other distro. Why? The reason is simple:
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On 14/03/2013 16:07, Grant Edwards wrote: On 2013-03-14, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: I was wondering. Has anyone ever seen where a test as been done to compare the speed of Gentoo with other distros? Maybe Gentoo compared to Redhat, Mandrake, Ubuntu and such? I just did a test, and they're all the same. CDs/DVDS of various distros dropped from a height of 1m all hit the floor simultaneously [there are random variations due to aerodynamic instability of the disk shape, but it's the same for all distros]. If launched horizontally with spin to provide attitude stability (thrown like a frisbee), they all fly the same. nonononononono, gentoo is much faster. I did the same test, but comparing Centos on a DVD with Gentoo on a USB stick. The stick tends to fall about 8% faster, mostly due to removing those aerodynamic instabilities causing lift effects from the wing-like shape of the DVD. I consider this a perfectly valid test as Gentoo is designed to let me remove unwanted side-effects from the environment. The shape of a DVD was unwanted, so I made a tweak to take it out. Nice try, but CentOS has a network install option. So before you guys get up the elevator to the tenth floor, the sysad on the ground has already smashed the machine in frustration.
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:02 PM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On 14/03/2013 15:40, Mark David Dumlao wrote: On 03/14/2013 09:28 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote: Or, try remove LDAP, NIS and PAM support for auth from a RHEL machine to test if it works without those things in place. RHEL? Impossible. Gentoo? Trivially easy. Trivially easy, of course, means an emerge -euDNtv world emerge -ctv revdep-rebuild -i revdep-rebuild ... ehehehe I dunno, it might actually be easier to setup the said distros in a VM. And if those configurations don't work, you shouldn't have to support them, eh? ;) Well, devs tend to ask questions like would this thing X work in practice? or do I have to munge my code? No, that doesn't make sense. The situation you presented above was removing impossible to remove components on an OS and asking if the software still works. You don't get to call that a vaild test environment if the test environment itself doesn't work in the first place. They want to know if shipped code supports something. And, I don't get to say I'm sorry, I cannot support Centos 4 on this Business has a stock answer Well, find a way to make it work. Actually, business has a stock answer of Supported on Windows XP or later, Mac OS X some cat, Red Hat version foo, SuSE In general they target actual known platforms, and YES they get to say I cannot support Centos 4 on this all the time. Flexibility is the key. At least with emerge -euDNtv world emerge -ctv revdep-rebuild -i revdep-rebuild I can walk away and come back in three hours, look at logs and tell them to test. Plus I don't have to re-install their customer code everyt time from scratch (said code *never*, of course, coming with anything resembling a MakeFile) Hoo boy what I would give for -euDNtv to take less than 3 hours on my setup ;)
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo speed comparison to other distros
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:43 PM, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:40:49 +0800, Mark David Dumlao wrote: Or, try remove LDAP, NIS and PAM support for auth from a RHEL machine to test if it works without those things in place. RHEL? Impossible. Gentoo? Trivially easy. Trivially easy, of course, means an emerge -euDNtv world emerge -ctv revdep-rebuild -i revdep-rebuild ... ehehehe There's no need to rebuild everything, and those other flags make no sense when using -e. Generally you only need emerge -uaD --changed-use @world I know that, in general principle. But it's a test environment. I'd assume stricter standards of purity there than elsewhere. simply going by changed-use can break some library dependencies. We need to use depclean to remove build deps junk after the emptytree, and we're revdep-rebuilding twice in case the depclean borked something. (To be really strict, revdep-rebuild should be repeated until it stops building things...) Heck in some setups empty-tree will simply fail thanks to circular deps of the global use flags and you'll need manual intervention to bootstrap a package with less USE...
