Gentoo 1.4

[Wolfwood]

Well there is a new version of Gentoo out. And I feel like nerding so I'm going to try out Gentoo stage 1. I'll report back any Houdini releated findings as I get to that part. (In about 3 days when all the compiling is finished)

jim.

If this goes well I'll bid fairwell to slack.

[slade]

Wolfwood why would you give up slack ?

[Wolfwood]

CPU specific compile of the entire distribution. =) Instead of Slack's default 486 optimizations.

I know you can get the sources for slack, and recompiling the kernel is the first thing I do. (and usually 2nd, 3rd and 4th thing too hehe). But if I'm going to recompile KDE, all the little bin-utils etc I might as well just go source from the start.

I guess it all depends on how much fast the two systems are. I'm not blasting slack, just installing gentoo on a different partition so I can benchmark etc...

jim.

[slade]

So your approach is from a Performance Stand Point ? Slack Has been a charm for me since I switched over from RH. I am Curious to Know the results from your benchmark, I am always looking for a performance edge

[Mcronin]

I wanted to try Gentoo, but then I noticed the part where it said it's take approximately 36 hours to compile on a modern system. Then I looked at the forums and saw all the trouble people were having... I can't even get Wings compiled and installed under RedHat, there's no way I'll get GenToo to work.

[edward]

Do you guys read slashdot?

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?...tid=106&tid=185

[Mcronin]

Yeah, those guys make some good points. Something funny I found out about GenToo though is apparently no one is actually using it. I've seen tons and tons of people talking about how awesome GenToo is, however according to their own stats there's only like 2,500 users on the whole planet. I think it's really funny that people keep extolling the virtue of GenToo but very few of them actually use it. Just last night I was trying to get some questions answered about it on IRC. As soon as I asked I got pummelled with praise for GenToo, then I ask "do you actually use it?". "Uhh no, I use Slack or Debian, but my friend..." Yeah right.

Well if you ever get it compiled, let us know how it is with Houdini. And how it performs overall. I think I'm sticking with RH, myself. It took me two days to figure out how to compile a kernel, I'm sure after about 5 days with GenToo I'd be ready to swallow a bullet.

[jono338]

I've been running Houdini under Gentoo with ZIP problems for about 3 months. The performance things is, yeah, good I guess, but who really notices that. What I like is, like last night, I thought, "Hmm, Wings3D, I really should look at that" so ...

krishna root # emerge -s wings

Searching...

[ Results for search key : wings ]

[ Applications found : 1 ]

* media-gfx/wings

Latest version available: 0.98.11

Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]

Size of downloaded files: 570 kB

Homepage: http://www.wings3d.org/

Description: excellent 3D polygon mesh modeler

krishna portage # emerge -p wings

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!

[ebuild N ] media-libs/svgalib-1.4.3-r4

[ebuild N ] media-libs/libsdl-1.2.5-r2

[ebuild N ] dev-lang/erlang-9c

[ebuild N ] media-libs/esdl-0.93.0526

[ebuild N ] media-gfx/wings-0.98.11

krishna portage #

You see, it knows everything I need but don't have installed and will download, compile and install them for me to satisfy building wings.

Hmm ... there's a later version than that, I'm sure ... so I look, and there isn't an ebuild for it, so ...

# cd /usr/portage

# cp -r --parents media-gfx/wings /usr/portage.local

# cd /usr/portage.local/media-gfx/wings

# cp wings-0.98-11c.ebuild wings-0.98.15.ebuild

# emerge wings --fetchonly

# ebuild wings-0.98.15 --digest

# emerge wings

.. go have cup of tea, and when I get back I have [the latest version] wings install, with all it's dependencies.

Now, don't try this at home, as I abbreviated a few things to simplify, and this simple copy process doesn't always work, as new versions of software can have changed build requirements, but the fact remains I did it with about 2 minutes work, and now have the latest version of wings installed. Neato!

Gentoo doesn't suit everyone, but it certainly has it's plusses.

Cheers,

Jonathan.

PS. If anyone has any problems with gentoo, I'd be pleased to help, or to help with getting wings installed, though that is a side issue.

[Wolfwood]

Do you guys read slashdot?

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?...tid=106&tid=185

Bah this always happens to me.

I know a couple of people who acutally USE gentoo and they love it.

I'll let you guys know how it goes this weekend.

jim.

[Mcronin]

Well, against my better judgement, I went ahead and did a Stage 2 install of Gentoo, mostly because I really want to use Wings.. The only thing I had a problem with was the Kernel compile because I didn't bother to read their notes and I disabled a few modules that were required by Gentoo. 24 hours of configuring and compiling and I have Gentoo working. Portage is excellent, and is really worth all the effort of installing Gentoo. I have a problem with Houdini though. I can't install it. It's in /root/Linux7, and ./houdini_install gives me "no such file or directory."

Can anyone tell me what's wrong?

BTW here's what I've emerged

system

kde (I emerged everything, like 98 packages, this included X and everything seems to be working)

csh (this included pmake and it seems to be working)

mozilla

I also installed the latest Nvidia drivers. They seem to work. I get the splash screen and the GL screensavers I tested seem to be accelerated.

I think I have everything I need. Anyone know if anything important is missing?

[Mcronin]

OK I've got Houdini installed but it cannot connect to the license server. Can anyone help? It says it's trying to connect to a server on 0.0.0.0 (????). I have 2 Nics installed with ips, and my host name is x. I can't figure this out.

[Mcronin]

All sorted now. I had to install the license server on a loopback device and straighten out my host file, as well as add some directories. So far it runs pretty good.

Oh and Wings works fine as well That was so simple with portage. I don't know why it's such a pain to compile on RedHat. Anyway I'm now a huge portage fan, apt-get blows.

[LEO-oo-]

I have read this at Sl/.shdot: Gentoo Package Accused of Violating DMCA. Funny!

[pirani1]

Again the "myth" of gentoo has entered even this forum. Just few things you guys should know:

1- Rendering time is all CPU dependent. I mean you can compile from source what ever you want but you'll always get the same rendering time when confronting with the same machine with prebuilted binaries (Kernel,XFree,KDE ...). Those benchmarks are just bull....

2- The only things that could really speed up everything is to obtain the code from SideFX . OK I was just dreaming (can you imagine if you can use the sources of programs like Maya, XSI, and of course Houdini!!).

3- Coming back to Gentoo, I think you can get a faster boot of machine and XFree, faster moving and opening of windows...., yes ridicolous things.

Bye

Enrik

[Mcronin]

Well I dunno about all that, I don't think anyone believes that Gentoo could speed up rendering times significantly in Houdini, Maya or XSI. I didn't install Gentoo believing it would speed anything up, infact if you read the link Edward posted much of it says just the opposite. I installed Gentoo because RedHat gives me trouble, and I liked the idea of compiling everything specificly for my system.

So, I don't know if Gentoo is any faster for anything, I really honestly can't tell the difference. Here's what I do know for sure. KDE sans RedHat's bastardizations is a good thing. For the first time ever I know exactly what is installed on my Linux system, and it all works perfectly (...knocks on wood...). I also know that I can install and upgrade any software on my computer and even though I'm compiling everything from source it gets done quicker than when I used RedHat or Suse because I'm not trying to chase dependencies or figure out why the package I just downloaded doesn't seem to work or won't install.

Anyhow, I give it the thumbs up so far. The only serious problem I've had is that my Wacom Tablet doesn't work, but that's due to a bug in the OHCI driver and it exists in every version of Linux. Other than the lengthy install process it's great, portage rocks, and I don't ever want to go back to an rpm based distro.

[michael]

how tough an install would it be for someone pretty new to Linux?

I'm very quickly going insane with WinXP, I loved 2000...I never had any trouble with it and it worked the way I wanted it to - which is the point of an OS I think

I want to move to Linux but whenever I think of it I giggle like a school girl and run away...

I had a RH system back in Calgary that I used as a server but I really didn't touch it much...like once a month...and RH makes me think of MS for some reason....it might be easy but I like to have a bit more control over what goes onto my system....

[Mcronin]

I consider myself pretty much a Linux noob as well although I've been using it off and on over the last couple years. Actually, the Gentoo install, I think was easier than installing RedHat. And maintinence is much easier with portage. They have a great walk thorugh right on the site. The real problem is the length of time it takes to emerge and compile everything, which seriously was about 35 hours for me on an Athlon XP 2200 to get it to the point where I could install Apprentice and start figuring that out. Part of that time though, I spent recompiling the kernel a couple times. I was able to suss out every problem I had by searching the Gentoo or SideFX forums. This was a Stage 2 intstall. You can do a stage 3, and not compile everything and it'll go much faster. Get yourself a book, either a big ass Linux for noobs book or a little Linux quick reference and give it a shot. Installing Gentoo isn't bad if you take it slow and thoroughly follow the walkthrough as you work.

[michael]

thanks...I think I will....

as soon as I get myself sorted out here...my computer is my only link to the civilized world so being down for 36+ hours might do me harm - or good

[RickW]

I've been using Gentoo for some time now. I was working with XSI and some Houdini on this box. So far I like it!

I like it cause I know what's on my system and I don't have to deal with the dependecy issues I had with Red Hat.

Personally I noticed a slight improvement in performance over Red Hat and Slack. Although it's nothing to rant and rave about. Of course this is Linux performance and not 3D performance.

Still I like using Gentoo cause I set it up the way I like. I did a stage 1 install. Yeah it took a while. However I didn't do it all in 1 go.

I got the system up and running with the basic kernel (gentoo-sources) and grub. Every night I would download and compile while I was sleeping. Overall it took like 3 days to get all the big monsters (Gnome, Kde, XFree and Mozilla) on a nightly compile.

I would downlaod all the packages I needed like:

#emerge gnome --fetchall

Once that was complete I just:

#emerge gnome

I did learn a lot about linux with this gentoo install. My thinking was, if I'm going to jump onto linux, I might as well build my system from scratch and learn as much as possible.

These days I rarely use windows except now soley for XSI. I have a newer version of glibc than what's supported by the said app. Ohh well

I don't think I'll go back to windows other than mentioned above and I doubt I'll use another distro. I even installed Gentoo on my poor laptop. Compiling was hell but now it's pretty smooth.

Currently I boot into either of these 2 kernels:

CK-Sources (pretty fast in desktop performance) with bootsplash.

2.6 beta (this bad boy is stupid fast, alsa is broken for me in this kernel)

Wolfwood, did you ever get your gentoo box up and running? I'm curious if you think it was worth it.

BTW. If you guys don't know, there is a binary version of gentoo for those that want to try it. It will get you a stage 3 install and allow you to install binaries of all the monster apps. From CD to desktop should take under an hour or so.

Although this defeats the purpose of an uber-optimized system, it does give you a system that you know what's installed. You can always recompile the enitre system if you wish at a later time.

/Rick

[tallkien]

Mcronin,

What directories did you have to add?

I'm having a similar problem. Sesinetd setup is trying to create links to files in /etc/rc.d* but I don't have a /etc/rc.d directory

rc is handled differently in Gentoo

Any ideas?

thanks