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List:       gentoo-dev
Subject:    [gentoo-dev] Re: minimalistic emerge
From:       Duncan <1i5t5.duncan () cox ! net>
Date:       2014-08-09 3:07:36
Message-ID: pan$c88af$9fc1fc5b$dfc093d0$2759ed68 () cox ! net
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Igor posted on Fri, 08 Aug 2014 17:12:27 +0400 as excerpted:

> About 60% of all the packages are installed and work with nodep flag
> without any problems for years. Most of the maintainers just depend on
> new packages not knowing if it's necessary or not resulting in a really
> HUGE update that in the absolute majority of cases destabilize GENTOO
> making it not operational and WORSE than it was before. You then
> STABILIZE it again spending hours and then the story repeats itself.
> 
> Experience show that out of 20 new dependencies pulled by emerge only 1
> is critical and really needed to assemble the target.
> 
> Is there any option in emerge to pull MINIMUM packages to get the result
> -
> install the application you need, leaving everything else AS IS
> untouched and stable?
> 
> I would rather prefer and many would agree to use this kind of install
> instead of a full system update by default.
> 
> Is there any USE flag that can switch system to this kind of update
> instead of conventional? If no such USE flag, what about stabilize
> gentoo with STABILIZED flag implementation in make.conf?
> 
> Whoever needs everything new - can continue fighting with nature,
> the rest of us who has a limited life span - well, they might go for
> STABILIZED flag and live happily ever after.
> 
> What do you think?

The above reads to me like gentoo is an inappropriate distribution for 
your use.  Gentoo doesn't claim to be all things to all people, and 
there's no shame for either gentoo or a user in a user switching to 
something else if gentoo simply doesn't match their needs.

In general, gentoo strongly emphasizes a number of things, including:

1) Rolling updates.  Install once, run for years doing frequent 
incremental updates.

2) Staying /relatively/ current.  For many packages, Gentoo removes older 
versions from the tree relatively quickly, certainly compared to the 
distros listed below, and once it's no longer in-tree, there's zero gentoo 
support for it -- you're on your own.

3) Build from source.  Gentoo does have rather limited binary-package 
support, but it remains fairly rudimentary, and the general assumption is 
that binary packages are locally built and distributed, not as part of 
the distribution.  (Tho at least in the past there have been binary-
package ISOs distributed, but without regular update and with Gentoo's 
relatively rapid update cycle they're outdated rather quickly.  I really 
don't know if there's current binpkg ISOs available or not.)

3a) There are, however, some independent gentoo-based distros that are 
binary-based, at least one of which allow more or less seamless switching 
between gentoo's source-based ebuilds and their binary-based packages.  
Tho I don't know of any long-term-support distros doing this.

Get outside of those norms and while gentoo may work, there's likely some 
other distribution that will work better.

If you only want to update the minimum necessary, and in particular, if 
you're keeping versions that have been removed from the tree, then 
something with a *MUCH* slower update cadence, where people sticking to 
versions that work for years at a time regardless of possible updates, is 
far more likely to match your needs.  Among the possibilities are:

Red Hat (RHEL) and clones: CentOS, Scientific Linux, Oracle's Linux 
(forgot the name ATM).

Red Hat is the gold standard, very long term commercial support, IIRC 10 
years, and very good community relations as they employ many of the 
developers on a number of core Linux upstream projects.  Oracle's Linux 
is commercial too, and is said to undercut RH in price, but has rather 
horrible community relations.  CentOS and Scientific Linux more community 
oriented and supported, free to install and update.  CentOS is now 
directly supported by Red Hat as a community version much like Fedora, 
only unlike Fedora, CentOS is a direct RHEL clone and long-term 
supported.  Scientific Linux is an independent RHEL clone, I believe 
primarily developed as the platform CERN standardizes on.

Debian: Stable and old-stable.

100% community distribution with an emphasis on free as in freedom.  
Larger than most, certainly larger than gentoo.  With a rather long 
release cycle and stable and old-stable, the support term is extended, 
but I don't believe it reaches that of Red Hat.

Since I strongly believe in both software freedom and in the free and 
open source software community, this would probably be my choice if I 
needed longer term version stability and support.  (FWIW, Arch Linux 
would probably be my choice for rapid-update, rolling-update, binary-
core, source-based extra packages, distro, but that's not the focus of 
this thread and thus not on this list or mentioned elsewhere in this 
post.)

Ubuntu LTS editions.

Quite popular, longer term commercial support available, but Ubuntu/
Canonical do sometimes have somewhat contentious community relations and 
go their own way on some projects, with little non-Ubuntu/Canonical 
uptake.  I'm not sure of the support term but I think it's three years 
full support on the LTS editions, 7-year extended.

SuSE: SLED/SLES.

I don't know so much about these.  The OpenSuSE community edition seems 
to be well received, but of course doesn't have the longer term support 
of the commercial editions.  Corporate ownership changed a few years ago 
and I know little of the new owners, but they do appear to be continuing 
active community involvement and project support (KDE, etc).  Seems to be 
more popular in Europe and especially Eastern Europe than in the US, tho 
some US retailers have standardized on it for what amounts to locked-down 
kiosk and register type systems with outsourced maintenance and 
effectively zero local store user control.

Those are all binary distros.  If you want from-source and are willing to 
do more of your own support, there's

Linux From Scratch (LFS)

AFAIK this is 100% community and primarily consists of a maintained set 
of instructions for doing your own builds from sources in the common LFS 
context.  It's thus less automated than gentoo, comparing to gentoo much 
like gentoo compares to the binary distros.  But since you're doing all 
the building yourself, simply following the LFS instructions, you get to 
choose what and when to update on your OWN schedule.  To my knowledge, 
there isn't a whole lot of support, but it doesn't really need it, since 
it's primarily a set of build instructions.  You'd be on your own in 
terms of updates and security tracking, presumably being able to follow 
the same instructions for newer versions of individual packages for 
awhile, but at some point, you'd either migrate beyond the LFS context as 
the instructions you originally followed would no longer apply, or you'd 
need to grab a new set of release instructions and install again, using 
them.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman


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