Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo, LWS and Slackware for linux learner?
On Sunday 22 May 2005 20:08, askar ... wrote: If I'm not wrong we can put Gentoo, Slackware and LFS distros on the same line - I mean they're all source based distros. As far as I know Slackware there is no emerge-like tools - I have to do everything manually. Slackware is not a source-based distro. Slackware packages, despite their tgz extension, contain binary files which, once expanded, go into the right directories. And yes, there are tools that help you keep a slackware distro up-to date, more or less automatically. The most famous one is swaret. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
[gentoo-user] Gentoo, LWS and Slackware for linux learner?
Dear everybody! I have one topic to discuss. I'm not native speaker in english, but I will try. My first linux was Debian. I began using it in 1999 in fall, just because my senior course mate was using it. After that for me it was interesting to install several distros: Mandrake, Miracle, Turbo, Vine, Red Hat, Suse, Slackware. I didn't use them for a long time - I just installed them for fun, but trying to find my own distro. Before Gentoo, I used to think that Debian is better (not the best - because I'm not good at linux to say which is the best) than other distros. One year ago I tried gentoo and I feeled that maybe this is what I was looking for. Even know I use gentoo at home. I don't use linux at work - linux is my hobby. In the mean time I still try other distros to see how do they look like, but not so often as before. Saying again, I don't have strong knowledge to say which is the best linux for me, so I estimate the best linux for my only basing on the easy-to-use distro. Of course, this is a matter of taste, any person has his own favorite distro. In gentoo I liked the portage and emerge concept, that I can build my own system and make it for my hardware (if I install from stage 1). But, on the other hand emerge does for us installations, compilations, dependency checks, etc - we do not compile by hand. If I'm not wrong we can put Gentoo, Slackware and LFS distros on the same line - I mean they're all source based distros. As far as I know Slackware there is no emerge-like tools - I have to do everything manually. Here at http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major written about Slackware ...if you need help with your Linux box, find a Slackware user. A Slackware user is more likely to fix the problem than a user familiar with any other distribution Is it true? This is one question. Also, it seems most of current gentoo users had experience with other distro, so they have rich experience in linux, and this help them to solve linux-generic problems. In my case, I would like to learn linux as deep as possible. Is it ok if I use emerge-like, apt-get-like comfortable tools? That was my second question. What you recommend for those, who would like to learn linux from fundamentals? In order to do so, I think, learner has to do everything manually. I haven't installed LFS distro before, so I don't know is it like Slackware or not, but as the name says, this is linux from sratch, like gentoo... I think, answers to this thread will be interesting not only for me, but also for many ML participants. Thanks in advance. askar -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo, LWS and Slackware for linux learner?
hum.. well portage compiles/makes/makes installs for you and keeps a database. but considering that compiling by hand isn't such a big deal, think of emerge/portage like just a tool that does ./configure;make;make install for you. On 5/22/05, askar ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dear everybody! I have one topic to discuss. I'm not native speaker in english, but I will try. My first linux was Debian. I began using it in 1999 in fall, just because my senior course mate was using it. After that for me it was interesting to install several distros: Mandrake, Miracle, Turbo, Vine, Red Hat, Suse, Slackware. I didn't use them for a long time - I just installed them for fun, but trying to find my own distro. Before Gentoo, I used to think that Debian is better (not the best - because I'm not good at linux to say which is the best) than other distros. One year ago I tried gentoo and I feeled that maybe this is what I was looking for. Even know I use gentoo at home. I don't use linux at work - linux is my hobby. In the mean time I still try other distros to see how do they look like, but not so often as before. Saying again, I don't have strong knowledge to say which is the best linux for me, so I estimate the best linux for my only basing on the easy-to-use distro. Of course, this is a matter of taste, any person has his own favorite distro. In gentoo I liked the portage and emerge concept, that I can build my own system and make it for my hardware (if I install from stage 1). But, on the other hand emerge does for us installations, compilations, dependency checks, etc - we do not compile by hand. If I'm not wrong we can put Gentoo, Slackware and LFS distros on the same line - I mean they're all source based distros. As far as I know Slackware there is no emerge-like tools - I have to do everything manually. Here at http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major written about Slackware ...if you need help with your Linux box, find a Slackware user. A Slackware user is more likely to fix the problem than a user familiar with any other distribution Is it true? This is one question. Also, it seems most of current gentoo users had experience with other distro, so they have rich experience in linux, and this help them to solve linux-generic problems. In my case, I would like to learn linux as deep as possible. Is it ok if I use emerge-like, apt-get-like comfortable tools? That was my second question. What you recommend for those, who would like to learn linux from fundamentals? In order to do so, I think, learner has to do everything manually. I haven't installed LFS distro before, so I don't know is it like Slackware or not, but as the name says, this is linux from sratch, like gentoo... I think, answers to this thread will be interesting not only for me, but also for many ML participants. Thanks in advance. askar -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo, LWS and Slackware for linux learner?
On Sun, 22 May 2005 21:18:02 +0300 Ivan Lucian Aron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | well portage compiles/makes/makes installs for you and keeps a | database. but considering that compiling by hand isn't such a big | deal, think of emerge/portage like just a tool that does | ./configure;make;make install for you. Meh, that's pretty wrong. You can think of ebuild.sh as something that basically just automates the build of a single package if you like. However, emerge is a whole different kettle of fish. -- Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Vim, Shell tools, Fluxbox, Cron) Mail: ciaranm at gentoo.org Web : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm pgpXdx1ctxPs0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo, LWS and Slackware for linux learner?
* On Mon May-23-2005 at 12:08:18 AM +0600, askar ... said: [...] apt-get-like comfortable tools? That was my second question. What you recommend for those, who would like to learn linux from fundamentals? In order to do so, I think, learner has to do everything manually. I haven't installed LFS distro before, so I don't know is it like Slackware or not, but as the name says, this is linux from sratch, like gentoo... LFS is quite different from Gentoo. LFS provides documentation that instructs you how to build your system from scratch. Compared to other distros, Gentoo requires you to do most of the installation manually, but still provides you with tools like bootstrap.sh which do a lot of the work for you. LFS does not provide tools like this, but instead instructions of how to do this yourself. If you think of a linux system as a car, then Fedora, SuSE and those distros are like buying a car. You can choose some options but it is already built for you. Gentoo is a car you build yourself, but some of it is done for you. You get the engine and the frame and everything else and then put it all together. LFS is a just a box of tools, and you must build the engine, frame, and each other part yourself. When I was new to linux I first installed Slackware because I heard it was good. I enjoyed using it, it is a good distro. I also tried to install LFS because I wanted to learn, but that was a bit overwhelming and when I ran into problems I didn't know where I went wrong since I was just following instructions. Like you, I installed almost any distro I could find to see how which one felt comfortable for me. Gentoo happened to be that one. I would not recommend LFS as a starting point to get to know the internals of a linux system. Get to know Gentoo (or Slackware, or whatever) well first and understand how that works. Then when you have an understanding of what all the core software on you system is (fex. packages in 'emerge -ep system') I'd say go for an LFS install. Then again, everyone is different and maybe you're more clever than I am and LFS will be easy... I guess the only way to find out is to try it. -- Sami Samhuri pgp3pf6JlCmuz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo, LWS and Slackware for linux learner?
Hi, http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major written about Slackware ...if you need help with your Linux box, find a Slackware user. A Slackware user is more likely to fix the problem than a user familiar with any other distribution Is it true? well Slackware is the distribution with the least hand holding - so a slackware user has to solve a lot of probs for himself, that are simple mouseclicks in others. But do not think that debian is a great start... debian teaches you the debian way .. nothing that will help you with suse, redhatco. This is one question. Also, it seems most of current gentoo users had experience with other distro, so they have rich experience in linux, and this help them to solve linux-generic problems. In my case, I would like to learn linux as deep as possible. Is it ok if I use emerge-like, apt-get-like comfortable tools? That was my second question. What you recommend for those, who would like to learn linux from fundamentals? In order to do so, I think, learner has to do everything manually. I haven't installed LFS distro before, so I don't know is it like Slackware or not, but as the name says, this is linux from sratch, like gentoo... I started with SuSE, stayed there, tried Mandrake, OpenBSD (three times!), FreeBSD (two times), switched to Slackware (the best learning experience ever) and contemplated about LFS, which was very popular back then, when gentoo 1.0 came out. Since I 'tuned' the slackware-binaries for my own taste, I was very, very tempted, to switch something else, because.. well I did not see much sense in a packet mnager that time, after fleeing from rpm hell, and having worked around slackwares packet managment from the beginning... LFS WAS tempting, oh yes - so many people wrote, how easy it was, how great it was, to have a personalized desktop... but... I do not have a printer also.. and gentoos installation instructions took less than a sheet of Din A 4... (and the gentooers were way more well behaving, than the 'my dingdong is longer than yours'-LFSer in some places, I visited regularly.. sadly, some/most of them are gentoo-users now *sigh*) Since gentoo 1.0 I have stayed there.. no need to try other distris... pure happiness. True. There are bugs and problems (I am ~x86 with almost daily updates) but there was never the need for a reinstall (and I did the gcc 2.9.5 to 3.x switch), except the two times a harddisk died... (reinstall because of hardware reasons 2, reinstalls because of software probs 0). And compared with the hours of toothpulling to get certain stuff in SuSE running (or make Mandrake less braindaming colourfull), it is like seeing a cloud on the sky while walking in a park... I have a little SuSE installed, at the moment, because a friend of mine has it on its laptop (working better there, than gentoo), but after installing it, and a test session, I was not persuaded, to switch. On the contrary, the dia show while installing was nice, but the packet selection was pure pain for me.. oh yeah... and after that, I was back, where I fled from years before... RPM HELL. (In my humble opinion, it is just wrong to install a lib, without the headers, and put them into well hidden *-dev-packets) SuSE paved me the way, but I have grown out of it a long time ago, so no happiness there and no switch back. Hm, did I learn much about linux? Something I did not know before? Maybe one ore two little details, but Slackware was the way greater learning experience. With gentoo you do not learn much, besides using the distri-tools, but that is true for a lot of other distributions, too. Exspecially debian... I consider debian as a bad distribution for learning, because it has (had) so many special cases and comfort at the same time, that you learn A LOT about debian, but not much about linux in general... So, my conclusion is: for a desktop, I will always choose gentoo, but for learning, I recommend Slackware (of course not for newbies.. newbies are sent to suse,mepisco), and LFS for everybody with a spare box, a spare printer, spare time, too little ego and a hardenend soul, to go through it, without going mad. But from a pure learning point, it may be a worthwhile experience. Sometimes I get an itchy feeling about installing Slackware again... it WAS the distribution where I had the most power.. but at the same time.. I do not want again have to managing a overflowing /usr/local... or recompile some packages to get certain stuff in - or out. Glück Auf Volker -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
