Time for a new flavour of linux


Doesn't compiling everything take a lot of time?
I mean, on Arch, I've got some AUR Packages that compile on update, and stuff like Inkscape or Scribus alone takes half an hour...

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Doesn't compiling everything take a lot of time?
I mean, on Arch, I've got some AUR Packages that compile on update, and stuff like Inkscape or Scribus alone takes half an hour...
It got better with modern processors. When I started using Gentoo on a Pentium III, compiling something the size of KDE took a literal weekend. With a 6 core AMD Phenom II, something like Libre Office was down to 45 minutes.
Arch is the best of both worlds, imo. Binary by default, custom compiled when needed, and I like the Arch build system.
 
why would "Sync" install a package?
Don't ask me; I'm not trying to defend it, just explain it. I think I also prefer the apt-get interface in general, although not being able to update and upgrade in one step without resorting to shell scripting feels like an artificial limitation.
 
Gentoo can build binary packages, too; you can compile on a fast machine and then install the binaries elsewhere.

There also are binary packages offered by the maintainers for some large things like libreoffice and firefox.

It doesn't bother me that compiling takes a while. I usually don't need something *immediately* that isn't already installed. The only time it's ever very inconvenient is gcc major version upgrades --- in that case, one must rebuild the entire system, and things will stop working for a while (like KDE) when libraries they depend on (e.g. Qt) get rebuilt. For ~2000 packages on the computer in my living room, it takes a few days to complete. However, I recently installed Mint for a colleague, and it took about the same amount of time to upgrade itself, for various reasons; and it required more human interaction during the process, due to its own issues.

I haven't re-installed the OS on this computer since the first time I built it in 2011. I like that kind of continuity, and find it preferable to starting over every time there's a new major release.

Gentoo also provides a wonderful command line environment for those who prefer that sort of thing. :)
 
Um. Are you referring to gcc as 'the system' in that first quote?

Nope; I mean *everything*. Major gcc versions sometimes introduce ABI-breaking changes, so libraries compiled with the new version are no longer compatible with binaries built with the old one. Most distros include such upgrades as part of their yearly release cycle, when everything gets upgraded anyway.

To clarify the second quote: obviously I have rebuilt everything on this system multiple times since 2011, as new versions are available. However, I have not wiped the disk and started from scratch with an OS install ISO, like many people seem to prefer for one reason or another.
 
Aaand same for me.

pacman -Syu does not work.
Seems to be the ffmpeg issue.

Code:
Warnung: dee: Lokale Version (1.2.7-11) ist neuer als community (1.2.7-2)
:: pkg-config durch core/pkgconf ersetzen? [J/n] j
Löse Abhängigkeiten auf...
Suche nach in Konflikt stehenden Paketen...
Fehler: Konnte den Vorgang nicht vorbereiten (Kann Abhängigkeiten nicht erfüllen)
:: ffmpeg2.8: das Installieren von x265 (2.8-1) verletzt Abhängigkeit von 'libx265.so=151-64'
 
Aaand same for me
I hate to be, ya'know, happy about your misfortune, but it is nice to get confirmation that it wasn't just me.
Good luck, hopefully you'll be able to recover better than I did.
 
I hate to be, ya'know, happy about your misfortune, but it is nice to get confirmation that it wasn't just me.
Good luck, hopefully you'll be able to recover better than I did.

Here's what I'll do - Wait.
I don't want to break my computer during the semester.
So I'll wait until mid July until I will try to fix things manually.
Until then I'll do pacman -Syu every now and then and maybe they'll upgrade other things and it will work without me doing anything.

One thing said: If it will break my computer once more I'm done with Arch.
 
Hmm, seems I got new ffmpeg (v1.4.0-3) and new x265 (v2.8-1) when I updated two weeks ago. I was upgrading that x265 from v2.7-1 it seems, if that's of any use to you.
 
It's not exactly hard to roll back a duff package if it gets installed. Find the backup of the old working version in /var/cache/pacman/pkg, and install that using pacman -U.

Then you can stop it installing any new ones be editing your /etc/pacman.conf and adding an IgnorePkg line to your [options] section. If your pacman -Syu is failing you can just exclude the problematic package using that. But it's only ever a temporary solution, as eventually something will depend on it and then fail to install in turn.
 
So far it looks like Manjaro is the distro for me: Arch without the system breaking updates. I'd never even heard of it until mentioned here, so thanks for that.
I managed to get my system more or less stable. I plan on buying a new hard drive this weekend and trying some installs early next week.
Manjaro is all the rage these days, it's becoming the new Mint (in a good way), I'm surprised you haven't heard of it.

I'd be interested in a review.
 
So it's been a week, more or less. It's just Arch, nothing surprising. The installer did not offer a lot of options, I might make that a minor complaint, I've had to do all of my customizations post install instead of during. I didn't like the partition setup at all; I seem to recall the vanilla Arch doing it really well but I don't remember exactly how that was.
The package manager gui is a nice addition. Makes searching much easier.
I've gotten several update notices and so far nothing has broken or even thought about causing a problem, but that could change.
 
Vanilla arch basically just gives you fdisk/gptdisk and lets you use it to create the partitions you want manually, and then format them yourself, and then mount them. It does provide a script so that once you've done that it'll install the core packages to that and copy across various configuration files you've already touched, and write your initial fstab based on what you have mounted currently which is neat. But then you have to write your MBR/VBR or do what you need to do to make gpt discs bootable and if you balls that up you'll need to boot off your install medium again, reconnect to the internet, set your keymap, maybe mount your discs and try again, which can be a puzzle the first time you do it at least.
 
I may get a lot of hate for this but the distro I use needs to be Ubuntu based. It is just easier to get packages I want/need. Gentoo really got me into Linux for this reason, it had everything and it was always the latest version. Before that I used Redhat, Mandrake, and others back in the day but they were never able to pull me from Windows like Gentoo did. Problem is I started paying attention to how much time was being spent maintaining my system vs actual productivity/entertainment and couldn't justify using it anymore. That is when I discovered the Ubuntu spins and eventually Mint. . .
 
different priorities. i don't want to wait half an hour (or more) to compile a new package i want installed (e.g. in gentoo), though i did try it out. when it took a long time just to compile grub, i knew i was in trouble... i much prefer my slower apps that can be installed in a second or two, so i'm also on an ubuntu-based distro now. though debian should also work for that.

i did create my own "in RAM" based ubuntu, like puppy linux, which did load programs noticeably faster. but i couldn't be bothered to keep my tmpfs-installed packages and disk-installed packages in sync. probably needed to write more utils...
 
@WizardStan You got rid of Arch for Manjaro or just trying it out? BTW I got that same error with ffmpeg and x256 but decided to wait a bit, no clue if it was 1 or 5 days but today I did a Syu and everything went on great. Other than once that I had to manually rm a file, I never had an upgrade fail me. While some years back, everytime I upgrade to a newer version (not rolling distros) something would go wrong and it was clean install time. Thank god my debian testing desktop and all my arch laptops keep going strong.
 
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