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| Is porting the Xandros 3 OCE Desktop to Gentoo a good idea? |
| What is gentoo? |
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18% |
[ 6 ] |
| Go for it. |
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34% |
[ 11 ] |
| Nah. |
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31% |
[ 10 ] |
| Can it be done? |
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15% |
[ 5 ] |
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| Total Votes : 32 |
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matty
Xendrosian
Joined: 04 Nov 2002
Posts: 1378
Location: Ottawa Ontario Canada
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 Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 11:40 pm Post subject: |
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Umm.
What does gentoo give me that debian does not ?. Aside from being different ?.
Debian packages can be compiled from source with 3 lines if you have the source files. (dsc. tgz. diff).
The hard part comes when building the control, rules and dsc files. This has to be done for emerge too, source doesnt "automagically" work in gentoo, it has to be adapted. just like debian.
You may re-compile your software for whatever you wish, we dont find the minor performance enhancements that beneficial.
Xandros strives for a working kernel, not the latest vanilla kernel or patch set from kernel.org. Again, this is not hard to do on your own.
I think your efforts would be better spent elswehere, but thats just my opinion.
And i cant see a bunch of debian heads switching to gentoo anytime soon  . |
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aldube
Xandrosianschwing
Joined: 02 Jan 2005
Posts: 2332
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 12:02 am Post subject: |
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| matty wrote: | Umm.
What does gentoo give me that debian does not ?. Aside from being different ?.
Debian packages can be compiled from source with 3 lines if you have the source files. (dsc. tgz. diff).
The hard part comes when building the control, rules and dsc files. This has to be done for emerge too, source doesnt "automagically" work in gentoo, it has to be adapted. just like debian.
You may re-compile your software for whatever you wish, we dont find the minor performance enhancements that beneficial.
Xandros strives for a working kernel, not the latest vanilla kernel or patch set from kernel.org. Again, this is not hard to do on your own.
I think your efforts would be better spent elswehere, but thats just my opinion.
And i cant see a bunch of debian heads switching to gentoo anytime soon . |
Yep; in Gentoo it has a make.conf for for automating source file compilation; the USE=¨alsa kde mmx sse etc..¨ parameter is a really nice feature.
I´m by no means asking Xandros to switch over from Debian to Gentoo; however, there´s no need to stay locked in exclusively Debian.
I don´t see people switching as much as it comes to preference. People who like Debian will keep using Debian and those who prefer Gentoo will go Gentoo. It all comes down to how it is applied; each distro has it´s strengths; however, some people may prefer cutting edge features which is easier to keep up with on a Gentoo based system. Making a Gentoo based Xandros is more likely to attract different a different crowd of users than existing Xandros customers.
At any rate just the feedback in this thread may open doors to new possiblities. Food for though.
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Monster_user
Xanscended
Joined: 03 Feb 2005
Posts: 3945
Location: Georgia U.S.A.
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 1:03 am Post subject: |
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| matty wrote: | | And i cant see a bunch of debian heads switching to gentoo anytime soon . |
You do have a point there.
I wouldn't consider trying to port Xandros to Gentoo just for fun, to be a waste of time. Its a learning experience, and a fun hobby.
I don't know about you, but I still like to just play around with an OS, seeing what would break it. Ever try running Four games, and CD Buring application, Solitaire, Run an AntiVirus scan, and Browse the web at the same time?
I've crashed many a Windows 98, and Windows Me system attempting that. Windows 2000, and Linux held up, albeit slowly.
That is how I learned that Win2K and Linux are a much better quality OS, than any of the 32-bit Win9x kernel systems. I've also crashed a few Windows XP systems doing that...
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judyz
Xendrosian
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
Posts: 1243
Location: Brantford Ontario
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 3:22 am Post subject: |
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To be honest I am not that concerned about the benefits one way or the other. If someone is willing and wanting to give this a try then Go for it. We don't know what benefits might come out of it until you try. If this idea doesn't pan out pick yourself up and dust yourself off and try something else. When you are willing to experiment you never know what you might learn or discover.
1) The modern microwave came about by accident when a technician working on a radar dish noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted.
2) 3M was trying to make a more powerfull glue when then ended up coming up with a formula for a glue that would only weakly stick and come apart easily. 14 years later an employee of 3M used the "failed" glue to create "Post It Notes" one of the most sucessfull products ever.
3) A horrible draught in 1873 wiped out the local grape crop in a small California valley. Unable to make wine or sell them for eating a local farmer decided to pick some of the grapes anyway and sell them to a San Fransico grocer who went on to sell them quite sucessfully creating a whole new product...rasins.
In my view we can use a few more nuts around here. If nothing else it makes life interesting.
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Judyz
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.
Xandros 4 Premium and Every Other OS I Can Get.
Ontario, Canada
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sridgway
Xandrosianding
Joined: 29 Dec 2004
Posts: 608
Location: Rosebud, Victoria, Australia
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:16 am Post subject: Nope, sorry not a good idea! |
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Gentoo is heavy duty pure kick buttocks Linux and it has no place on a Windows convert's hard drive. If you think that a Xandros installation can generate lots of issues from some users, just think of the high level of heck Gentoo will cause. 
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So I'm here kicking the corpse! |
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aldube
Xandrosianschwing
Joined: 02 Jan 2005
Posts: 2332
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 11:35 am Post subject: |
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| judyz wrote: | To be honest I am not that concerned about the benefits one way or the other. If someone is willing and wanting to give this a try then Go for it. We don't know what benefits might come out of it until you try. If this idea doesn't pan out pick yourself up and dust yourself off and try something else. When you are willing to experiment you never know what you might learn or discover.
1) The modern microwave came about by accident when a technician working on a radar dish noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted.
2) 3M was trying to make a more powerfull glue when then ended up coming up with a formula for a glue that would only weakly stick and come apart easily. 14 years later an employee of 3M used the "failed" glue to create "Post It Notes" one of the most sucessfull products ever.
3) A horrible draught in 1873 wiped out the local grape crop in a small California valley. Unable to make wine or sell them for eating a local farmer decided to pick some of the grapes anyway and sell them to a San Fransico grocer who went on to sell them quite sucessfully creating a whole new product...rasins.
In my view we can use a few more nuts around here. If nothing else it makes life interesting. |
Neat; those would make good trivia questions.
What can I say I´m adventurous, I like to experiment with stuff like this.
I´m going to say it again: A Gentoo based Xandros would not be meant to replace the existing Debian Xandros; however, I can definately see people using it; maybe it wouldn´t attract newbies at all; then again would a Linux newbie know how to use Xandros Desktop Management Server?
If just plain Xandros Linux would be good enough there wouldn´t be a Business Edition, Xandros Surfside, Powerterm Edition, and Desktop Management Server. There´ s a Debian market for these and I´m sure there´s a Gentoo market out there for easy to use cutting edge Linux. Maybe a Xandros Gentoo Edition would only see a standard level edition or maybe more of the server maket would prefer it; you guys do realize that a sizeable chuck of the server maket is moving away from Debian and going to Gentoo.
Where there is willingness a project like this can work; all we need is a defined set of parameters.
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aldube
Xandrosianschwing
Joined: 02 Jan 2005
Posts: 2332
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 11:47 am Post subject: Re: Nope, sorry not a good idea! |
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| sridgway wrote: | | Gentoo is heavy duty pure kick buttocks Linux and it has no place on a Windows convert's hard drive. If you think that a Xandros installation can generate lots of issues from some users, just think of the high level of heck Gentoo will cause. |
Right; I´ll tell you what:
I´ll give you Debian´s official Sarge installer package and I´ll give you Gentoo´s official installer package and we´ll see which one you have an easier time installing and keeping up to date. In fact you can keep a running tab on the number of questions that a newbie would not know the answer to and Debian will win for being harder to use and more confusing. For the amount of risk in using Debian unsupported I highly doubt there would be more of a risk breaking Xandros vs using a portage system; portage would simply be easier & safer to use for most users than using pinning and judgement hoping they wont break Xandros; of course this is my opinion.
I´m only suggesting that Xandros consider expanding into the Gentoo market and you´re probably not part of that market; however, there is potential here. It all comes down to: what role could Gentoo based Xandros play for Xandros?
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Davepet
Xandros Community Moderator
Joined: 24 Nov 2002
Posts: 8054
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 12:54 pm Post subject: |
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I'm confused.... Xandros is a distribution of Linux, Gentoo is a distribution of Linux. How, exactly, do you propose to make a "Gentoo Xandros"? They are two different distros. Are you proposing yet another distro?
If so you are free to create it using any part of Xandros that is not prorietary, which pretty much leaves you with "Gentoo Debian".
As a user of old HW, Gentoo is unattractive. I've got better things to do with my time than watch my machince compile.
Dave
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aldube
Xandrosianschwing
Joined: 02 Jan 2005
Posts: 2332
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Davepet wrote: | I'm confused.... Xandros is a distribution of Linux, Gentoo is a distribution of Linux. How, exactly, do you propose to make a "Gentoo Xandros"? They are two different distros. Are you proposing yet another distro?
If so you are free to create it using any part of Xandros that is not prorietary, which pretty much leaves you with "Gentoo Debian".
As a user of old HW, Gentoo is unattractive. I've got better things to do with my time than watch my machince compile.
Dave |
I´m beginning to feel like a parrot.
Squak; poly wants a cracker.
You obviously didn´t read the whole thread!
Gentoo has its own packaging system ¨tbz2¨ that doesn´t require compiling.
Xandros is currently based on Debian; however that doesn´t mean they can´t expand into a Gentoo base; after all Xandros IS a easy to use customization of a Debian base. The majority of Xandros´ customizations are in KDE and KDE is also available for Gentoo, so porting Xandros to Gentoo would not be that hard.
Please read the whole thread first and don´t repeat questions and comments that have already been answered.
lol
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Last edited by aldube on Tue Apr 05, 2005 1:30 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Davepet
Xandros Community Moderator
Joined: 24 Nov 2002
Posts: 8054
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 1:42 pm Post subject: |
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!- I understand that there is a way to install binary packages Are you saying there is a version of gentoo that can be installed without compiling?
2- That makes no sense. Xandro is a debian based distro. A user friendly gentoo based distro would be an entirely different distro.Makes about as much sense as "Gentoo-Suse" or "Gentoo-Fedora"
3-I *did* read the whole thread. I just don't agree with you.
Dave
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aldube
Xandrosianschwing
Joined: 02 Jan 2005
Posts: 2332
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 1:47 pm Post subject: |
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I had my fill of uneducated opinions; unless anyone else has some really good facts or questions to present, I´m not willing to indulge in anymore uneducated opinions with a reply. I´m not interested in any flame-war either, so any rude comments are going to be ignored as well.
I´ll be here and I´m sure others will be happy to help out Xandros with developping/testing a Gentoo based Xandros in whatever capacity that Xandros feels is satisfactory.
Now all Xandros needs is time to consider what´s been presented here.
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Davepet
Xandros Community Moderator
Joined: 24 Nov 2002
Posts: 8054
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 2:03 pm Post subject: |
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This was a *real* question:
Are you saying there is a version of gentoo that can be installed without compiling?
Dave
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aldube
Xandrosianschwing
Joined: 02 Jan 2005
Posts: 2332
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 2:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Davepet wrote: | This was a *real* question:
Are you saying there is a version of gentoo that can be installed without compiling?
Dave |
Yes; Gentoo has the option to install generic GRP tbz2 packages which do not need to be compiled and there is a also a Gentoo based distro called Vida Linux using the Anaconda installer which requires no compiling.
Compiling all of Gentoo from scratch is for those performance buffs/geeks who want to squeeze out some extra % of performance out of Linux.
In fact if a package didn´t exist (for example the latest Gimp) it could be easily created on a faster computer from source code then installed on the slower computer.
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Arne Anka
Xanspiration
Joined: 21 Mar 2004
Posts: 4186
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 3:16 pm Post subject: |
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Everything need compiling. Its just a question of when, where and by whom.
A properly configured DEB repository like the one provided by Debian contains both source code and binaries. To compile the source it can be as simple as this in Debian.
Add a source repository in /etc/apt/sources list like this
| Code: |
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
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and use
| Code: |
apt-get -b source <package>
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to compile the package. This includes installing all header files, libraries and tools it depends on. The result will be a new DEB package.
Then there are tools like auto-apt to auto resolve dependencies.
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-search.en.html#s-auto-apt
Debian and its package manager has pretty much all you need. Its just a question to find the right tool for the right work.
ALthough I don't either see how Xandros would benefit from your suggestion, as a personal experimental project it may very well provide you with a lot of joy. |
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aldube
Xandrosianschwing
Joined: 02 Jan 2005
Posts: 2332
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 3:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Arne Anka wrote: | Everything need compiling. Its just a question of when, where and by whom.
A properly configured DEB repository like the one provided by Debian contains both source code and binaries. To compile the source it can be as simple as this in Debian.
Add a source repository in /etc/apt/sources list like this
| Code: |
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
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and use
| Code: |
apt-get -b source <package>
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to compile the package. This includes installing all header files, libraries and tools it depends on. The result will be a new DEB package.
Then there are tools like auto-apt to auto resolve dependencies.
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-search.en.html#s-auto-apt
Debian and its package manager has pretty much all you need. Its just a question to find the right tool for the right work.
ALthough I don't either see how Xandros would benefit from your suggestion, as a personal experimental project it may very well provide you with a lot of joy. |
This would be a nice topic in the Xandros Forum Tips & Tricks section.
Leave it to Arne Anka to come up with some cool ideas; this will defiantely make some interesting reading in the meantime.
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