binary repository

[lxnay]

I'd say:
"by adding a binary repository, we'll have one more bullet to shoot at ubuntu zombies"

[wolfden]

I'd say:
"by adding a binary repository, we'll have one more bullet to shoot at ubuntu zombies"

[ajez]

hoping ubuntu has not a kevlar suite, it's bulletproof

[cu8164kp]

There are a few people saying that if you don't compile it's not Gentoo. How about "To compile or not to compile, that is the question" Why not leave it up to the user. I think it's good to have a base of bin apps that users can draw on if they want, but once they decide to modify the make.conf or just want to tweak, they can compile to their hearts content.

This doesn't make it "like all the other distros" it gives you a value add. More options are better right? We're not saying you have to use bin's, or even that you should. It just gives you another option.

[Darksurf]

This isn't gentoo We are our own linux community with our own unique distro.
Second
Do you listen to everything you hear on the net? I once read Dells were the best computers anybody could ever buy! I laughed so hard I fell out of my seat with tears rolling down my face!

You can't believe everything you read. besides firefox-bin isn't compiled from source on your computer or we 64-bit people would be SOL. Its pre-compiled. And that is from the original gentoo portage if I can remember correctly.

[whilo]

There are a few people saying that if you don't compile it's not Gentoo. How about "To compile or not to compile, that is the question" Why not leave it up to the user. I think it's good to have a base of bin apps that users can draw on if they want, but once they decide to modify the make.conf or just want to tweak, they can compile to their hearts content.

This doesn't make it "like all the other distros" it gives you a value add. More options are better right? We're not saying you have to use bin's, or even that you should. It just gives you another option.

Thanks. That's exactly my point. It seems to be a big problem that many people think that Gentoo should be elite. If you don't like to have to tweak everything, then you cannot profit from or even use Gentoo.
I think this is very similar to "If you don't like to pay ( since somebody here said: 'Time is money.' Well it can be and can be considered as money in many cases. ), then you may not use our software." and that again is excactly what commercial software says (Microsoft, Apple, ...) and is exactly not free! Freedom should be for everybody and you don't need to be techno-freak to use free software.

"by adding a binary repository, we'll have one more bullet to shoot at ubuntu zombies"

Well, I like Ubuntu a lot, since it is a) about freedom and b) about usability. I don't want to harm the other distros and they may still have their advantages, but I would like to bring their advantages to us. And this could turn Gentoo from a freaky distribution to the best distribution ever, giving almost everybody what he/she needs.
But in fact I share your opinion, there would be almost no reason for using Ubuntu over Sabayon anymore. The only one which comes to my mind is stability, but I haven't experienced any stability issues in Sabayon yet.

For further discussion what Gentoo is, what Sabayon is and what users seem to identify with, I open another thread here:

http://www.sabayonlinux.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2375

You can't believe everything you read. besides firefox-bin isn't compiled from source on your computer or we 64-bit people would be SOL. Its pre-compiled. And that is from the original gentoo portage if I can remember correctly.

Do you refer to my blog entry here? Your referation is not clear to me...
Additionally you can compile Firefox (Bon Echo) yourself, there is a compatibility library for 32-bit modules. ( I've read that in the forum here... )

Cheers,
whilo

[random guy]

Do you listen to everything you hear on the net? I once read Dells were the best computers anybody could ever buy! I laughed so hard I fell out of my seat with tears rolling down my face!

ya and that whole award winning tech support is a real joke. takes them hours to even talk to. and then you never get someone who speaks the same language as you.

why all the hate for ubuntu? right now i love them for their stand for gpl and it my second favorite distro and i have tried more than a dozen.

thing is portage already has support for binary packages and binhosts. the only difference is that then those capabilities would go to use instead of being vastly idle as they are now. nothing about gentoo says apps must be compiled; if portage has support for binhosts and binary packages then those are components of gentoo itself. plain and simple.

i think the gentoo corp with support from volunteers (maybe from here) should start a binhost, but that is my personal opinion. i dont see gentoo making any moves for it but gentoo has the server space, the bandwidth everything, they just need someone to administer and work on it. there should be more unity between gentoo derivatives (and linux in general) because a binhost for gentoo would be extendable to all gentoo flavors and that is great for everyone.

when you ask me why i think it should exist it is basically because if i think that if there was one then i would look back on it however long later and say 'that was a big improvement for gentoo that may have revoltionized their stand for software'. think a few years from now, wouldnt that be something you would expect to exist? wouldnt that be something you would be glad exists even if you wouldnt use it?

amazing things can be done when no one cares who gets the credit.

[whilo]

thing is portage already has support for binary packages and binhosts. the only difference is that then those capabilities would go to use instead of being vastly idle as they are now. nothing about gentoo says apps must be compiled; if portage has support for binhosts and binary packages then those are components of gentoo itself. plain and simple.

Yes that is my opinion, too. Gentoo gives you all possibilities to do it on your own and to tweak the system in every way, but this is not a must. A problem seems to be that binary packages support in Portage is not that mature in some ways.

The problems can be:

- CHOST, CFLAGS, USE differences are unchecked and you may decide on your own, if you install a binary package. In the case of some dependencies this can be deadly and you most likely do not know what you do, if you install an incompatible version. Portage should check that first and maybe ask you then to ignore the problems or it simply rejects the binary package and uses sources instead.

- Dynamic linking problems. Since your machine may use newer/older libs than the binary distributor, you may get broken packages (which can be found via revdep-rebuild). This is very dangerous, too, and Portage should not install packages, which do have certain linking issues. Once again it should fall back to sources.

- Ebuild differences. The *.ebuild file may sound the same on two different machines, but if you use an overlay for example, a binary package may not contain the same package then the source installed overlay package. That can give some issues, two. Therefore we should check the digest of the original ebuild file with the one on the installing machine.

- Configuration issues. I don't know exactly if installing binary packages respects the configuration protection, but for distributions like Sabayon, there should be a possibilitiy to add a script to tweak your configuration in the 'right' way. Debian and Ubuntu do this in some ways, e.g. in the case of X11. It could be really helpful. You could even integrate a Python/Ruby/Kommander script to give a graphical wizard for configuration of the binary package. Of course this only makes sense on binary sub-distributions like Sabayon not on Gentoo itself ( see below ).

I've posted all that in the PDF document on my blog in more details. As it seems this is not very interesting here, these are still VERY important problems. We have to solve them first, which should not be too hard, once we've figured them out.

You think that a Gentoo binhost makes sense. Well it may make sense, but in my opinion Gentoo can live without binary packages, since Gentoo is really about tweaking everything and they mostly do that in their distribution and community. In my opinion sub-distributions should preconfigure and tweak Gentoo and therefore they should ship binary packages. Gentoo can stay a source distribution but Gentoo derivates need not to.
A further problem here might be, that a binhost is not the best option for small Gentoo sub-communities. Therefore I propose a trackerless BitTorrent approach.

Cheers,
whilo

[Appleman1234]

If we are going to make a binhost, it should be of the latest Sabayon releases only. But I believe binhosts aren't currently necessary.

[whilo]

But I believe binhosts aren't currently necessary.

Why not?

Cheers,
whilo