Why not? - Using Portage to keep Sabayon up-to-date

[moschlar]

Hi there!

I'm already using and admiring Gentoo on a production server but never really liked it as my desktop system because its "vanilla" look always was a bit too ugly to my liking.
So when a friend told me about Sabayon, I gave it a look and was very pleased by its concept and its design.

But of course, coming from Gentoo, I would like to entirely use portage as my package manager. But I've read many times, that this wouldn't be the best idea.
Cause I wouldn't want to just start it and sit there with a broken system after three days, I wanted to ask why everyone everywhere is saying, that although you can use portage on sabayon if you feel experienced enough, it can easily lead to a damaged system.

And I was wondering about some/many of the USE-Flags set by default, it would be f**cking great if you guys documented, why they are set or unset
E.g. I installed Sabayon from the Gnome Live-CD and in my make.conf -gnome is set. But I don't understand, why Gnome is explicitly unset in a Gnome environment!

Thanks in advance.
Moritz

[micia]

Hi, welcome to the Sabayon Community

It is not true that portage can easily lead to a damaged system.
It is true that portage can easily lead to a damaged system if you heavily mix it with entropy without some experience.

So, the best way to use Sabayon is to choose a main package manager, entropy or portage, whichever you like the most, and use it as your main manager, keeping the other one as an "emergency tool" or for the packages that are unavailable with the other one.
The USE flags can be easily viewed in the make.conf and package.use files, as you would do with Gentoo. If you want to customize your Sabayon installation, I suggest you to use a CoreCD version of Sabayon, then customize the make.conf and package.use files. After that, just rebuild everything with portage.

The flags are set or unset because those are the USE flags used to build the packages for entropy, since entropy is compatible with portage.
If you check the package.use file, you will notice that many of the choices are documented.
Most of the times if you choose to change the flags, you will notice that many dependencies are pulled to perform the changes, or USE flags conflicts arise.
So the default USE flags are selected carefully to balance the dependencies, efficiency and usability of the system, in order to provide good entropy packages.

[wolfden]

Your biggest concern with gentoo was how it looked? You couldn't install themes or artwork? Our artwork in in our overlay.

If you want to go portage,

install corecd - edit configs - rebuild, than do the rest of your building on that.

[Fitzcarraldo]

But of course, coming from Gentoo, I would like to entirely use portage as my package manager. But I've read many times, that this wouldn't be the best idea.

It's not "the best idea" to mix the package managers unless you know what you are doing, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with using entirely Portage. That's what I do on my main laptop: I don't even have Entropy installed on it. On the other hand, on my nettop and another laptop I use Entropy and only use Portage if a package is not available in Entropy.

[aoliv]

I think I am at same boot as Moritz. I been using Linux for some time and chose Gentoo because I want to have the liberty to configure and optimizing the system as I wish. Unfortunate in Gentoo I am I must have to configure almost all new package. Take me 2 weeks to put my computer as I want and also I need to keep all changes I made in the configure files well documented etc. After some time I got tired to fight with my laptop ever single update, and at this moment I think Gentoo is the best choose for a server, but not so good for a personal computer.

I start to search for a good Linux distribution but all I check have major step back, mainly they are trying to be (and became) more like Windows and less like Unix. It is why I am giving a try to Sabayon. I installed it and seens to work fine, then I read some wiki pages and forum to see if I can find some clues in Howto emerge the system. I like the Wolfden Guide, but it is outdated.

What is the best way to install and emerge Sabayon Linux?

[genfool]

Sorry could not resist, if your gentoo is not up to par

never really liked it as my desktop system because its "vanilla" look always was a bit too ugly to my liking

Is your fault

Why not give entropy a shot?
I love entropy, works great. I post this from a gentoo ~amd64 desktop
I use both sabayon and gentoo, I never mix entropy with portage, have never needed to.
I luvs sabayon, been using it since 3.4
I luvs gentoo, been using it for a few years.
I love how portage gives you the power to control your system, and even testing is very stable for me.
entropy is also powerful, but converts from portage testing to binary.
Imagine a world with no more blocked packages, no editing of make.conf, no circular dependency, I know it is tough to believe.
All those are handled through the team when the packages are added to the entropy mirrors.

I understand that when a gentoo user comes to sabayon, they want the full control that they enjoyed with their current os.
Just give entropy a shot, learn how to use it... then decide if you want to use portage for everything.

[micia]

What is the best way to install and emerge Sabayon Linux?

check out this topic:
viewtopic.php?f=86&t=23202

[aoliv]

Thank you, I will see it.

Alex

[Otomo]

I want to install Gentoo packages, but in my case just a couple of them or so, like Yafaray and Python 3.x. I am specially worried about Python, its safe to install that version and eselect it to be the active one?

Thanks in advance.