Questions & suggestions

[chromatic6]

Hi,

I used Gentoo in the past (from before 1.4) and switched 8 months ago to Arch Linux because I was tired of waiting so much times for the lastest versions of the softwares I use as a desktop user and because I was spending more times fixing stuff and doing administrative tasks than really using my computer.
BTW, Sabayon Linux is the promised land I always dreamt when I was a Gentoo user, cause it gives the possibility to mix precompiled packages and the Gentoo standard way to build from sources.

I tried some Sabayon versions in the past but wasn't really satisfied. I also quickly tried last release but as I don't have a 2nd hard drive to test it, I used virtual box and it was so slow on my old athlon xp that I didn't really go far away with it.

I'm really interested by this distribution and even if I don't use it atm I follow the development and maybe I'll switch to it in the future.
So I have some questions and suggestions, some of them based on my previous experiences (so sorry if things have changed).

From my previous experiences with old releases :

- There was a huge list of packages in package.mask/unmask which drives me mad at some point, is it always the same ?

- The default CHOST was i586 which is bit a strange for a bleeding edge distro giving users support for the latest hardware and 3d desktop out of the box. It's bit contradictory and I think i686 must be the default. Also, an about link on the home page that gives users the goals and a cleary defined philosophy Sabayon follow could be nice.

- The default CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS was a bit strange (in make.conf and for precompiled packages), -0s and other stuff which can lead to bugs, system instabillity and even slowdown. Why don't you use more standard default like -O2 -march=native. This are the default on Arch Linux and I can tell you that the overall performance and speed of my system is far away from what i was used to on Gentoo when I thought using specifics CFLAG and simply compilling everything from sources by myself leads to a faster system, it's false lol.

About the current release :

- The installer puts all the packages on the DVD and then delete the ones you didn't selected. Why ? The installation take so much time, any improvement on this in the future ?

- There's now the possibility to use community repositories which is great. But one thing I hate on gentoo are the overlays because often you only add an overlay to stay up to date on only one package and you end with 10 or more overlays with 3 or 4 versions of the same packages and portage don't handle this very good, this design is really bad.
One thing I really like on Arch Linux is the Arch User-community Repository, why not use the same model instead of the ugly overlays way, one central repository where users can easily provide packages to others and a vote system to decide which one are included and maintained in the official repo. But maybe it brings server/disk space problem as it will be precompiled packages and on AUR its only the pkgbuild (like an ebuild).
Also, I don't find on the site or the wiki, guidelines for the users packages proposed by this repositories. I think rules, about the CFLAGS optimisation used and standards are needed here.

Maybe a dedicated subforum for suggestions and wanted improvements could be nice.

It's all that come to my mind for now, sorry for the long post and my bad english but in conclusion what I look for is bleeding edge without sacrificed stability and performance, clear defined standard and consistant philosophy in all the pieces of the project and ideas leading to a good interaction between users and devellopers (a strong community is the most important).

Hopefully, I'll become a Sabayon user in a near future. Keep it the good work, what you are doing is really great

[Stupot]

Maybe a dedicated subforum for suggestions and wanted improvements could be nice.

We got one: viewforum.php?f=18

[chromatic6]

We got one: viewforum.php?f=18

hehe didn't notice it because the title start by artwork

[xlnagla]

I'm going to address this in-line for convenience, I think.


Hi,

I used Gentoo in the past (from before 1.4) and switched 8 months ago to Arch Linux because I was tired of waiting so much times for the lastest versions of the softwares I use as a desktop user and because I was spending more times fixing stuff and doing administrative tasks than really using my computer.
BTW, Sabayon Linux is the promised land I always dreamt when I was a Gentoo user, cause it gives the possibility to mix precompiled packages and the Gentoo standard way to build from sources.

I tried some Sabayon versions in the past but wasn't really satisfied. I also quickly tried last release but as I don't have a 2nd hard drive to test it, I used virtual box and it was so slow on my old athlon xp that I didn't really go far away with it.

I'm really interested by this distribution and even if I don't use it atm I follow the development and maybe I'll switch to it in the future.
So I have some questions and suggestions, some of them based on my previous experiences (so sorry if things have changed).

From my previous experiences with old releases :

- There was a huge list of packages in package.mask/unmask which drives me mad at some point, is it always the same ?
eh, it's gotten better, but as long as we accept ~x86 there's going to be a ton of package.mask files to deal with. We try to cull through everything at release time to save the user time, but if you want stable just remove the ~x86 keyword and most of the entries in package.mask become unnecissary.



- The default CHOST was i586 which is bit a strange for a bleeding edge distro giving users support for the latest hardware and 3d desktop out of the box. It's bit contradictory and I think i686 must be the default. Also, an about link on the home page that gives users the goals and a cleary defined philosophy Sabayon follow could be nice.



We still do support older hardware - i586 works perfectly well, and is better for older processors in the intel family than i686 (for obvious reasons). Sure i686 is more bleeding-edge optimized, but using i586 won't do much to cut performance and will work well with more machines.


- The default CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS was a bit strange (in make.conf and for precompiled packages), -0s and other stuff which can lead to bugs, system instabillity and even slowdown. Why don't you use more standard default like -O2 -march=native. This are the default on Arch Linux and I can tell you that the overall performance and speed of my system is far away from what i was used to on Gentoo when I thought using specifics CFLAG and simply compilling everything from sources by myself leads to a faster system, it's false lol.


Yeah, a lot of the optimization for speed these days is all in one's head - but the optimization for size, especially with as many packages as we ship, still isn't. On modern hardware the speed difference between 0s and O2 really depends on your gcc version (though I've heard tell that O2 is faster, and also heard tell that it doesn't really matter). 0s is, however, definitely going to result in smaller packages. So we keep it around, figuring the difference has become almost negligible anyway. You're not the first one to bring it up though.


About the current release :

- The installer puts all the packages on the DVD and then delete the ones you didn't selected. Why ? The installation take so much time, any improvement on this in the future ?


entropy is fabio's (and joost's) thing, so I can't quite speak to this, but I'd imagine so. The files are currently copied to the computer the same way they've been transferred since at least 3.3, which was before entropy, so our old method of installing kinda forced the removal afterwards - my guess is that if you're not removing too much the speed is around the same. Again, look for the 4.0 release, as I'd imagine with the improvements constantly being made to entropy that this will evolve again.


- There's now the possibility to use community repositories which is great. But one thing I hate on gentoo are the overlays because often you only add an overlay to stay up to date on only one package and you end with 10 or more overlays with 3 or 4 versions of the same packages and portage don't handle this very good, this design is really bad.


use plaudis. And yes, there are ways of dealing with this in entropy for the binary side.


One thing I really like on Arch Linux is the Arch User-community Repository, why not use the same model instead of the ugly overlays way, one central repository where users can easily provide packages to others and a vote system to decide which one are included and maintained in the official repo. But maybe it brings server/disk space problem as it will be precompiled packages and on AUR its only the pkgbuild (like an ebuild).
Also, I don't find on the site or the wiki, guidelines for the users packages proposed by this repositories. I think rules, about the CFLAGS optimisation used and standards are needed here.


actually, atm one of the draws of a community repository would be to have different CFLAGS and CHOST, perhaps even O2 and i686 as you suggested. As for a central repo, you did hit on the problems. Maybe in the future.


Maybe a dedicated subforum for suggestions and wanted improvements could be nice.

It's all that come to my mind for now, sorry for the long post and my bad english but in conclusion what I look for is bleeding edge without sacrificed stability and performance, clear defined standard and consistant philosophy in all the pieces of the project and ideas leading to a good interaction between users and devellopers (a strong community is the most important).

Hopefully, I'll become a Sabayon user in a near future. Keep it the good work, what you are doing is really great




And as for our goals and development schedule, check out the nlnet proposal. It's what we're sticking too.

Hope that covers everything,

~xlnagla

[chromatic6]

...
~xlnagla

About paludis, I thought it was not supported by Sabayon and that entropy was only compatible with portage to keep the list of installed packages synchronized between the two. I tried paludis sometimes ago, but was too lazy to learn the huge list of options available on the command line and had some problems with it, but the project probably evolved a lot.

The nlnet is what I was looking for, thanks to firefox for finding the link for me, too small for my eyes
Nice features are planned.

Hope that covers everything,
~xlnagla

Yes, it does. Thank you for the answers.

[xlnagla]

you're basically right about entropy and plaudis, but plaudis (while not supported) will still work fine, especially if you're one to use a lot of overlays. As for entropy, it does maintain the world file across both package managers so you can use them both, just not with a different make.conf from the one used to generate entropy's binaries (unless you're really careful). And it does have a way to manage overlapped packages between a community repository and entropy main.

~xlnagla