Is Gentoo Worth Switching to FreeBSD for a More Stable System?

[klusener]

Can i make a lfs system with 500 mb space? What is the minimum I would require for a stable and secure system.. Has anyone here (dduardo) done this sort of thing before?

 

[dduardo]

I wouldn't waste my time with LFS. I would just do a gentoo install from stage 1. With LFS you have to keep track of all the packages you install and what dependencies they need. With gentoo, portage keeps track of the packages you install and installs any dependencies needed.

Download the minimal cd (50MB) and follow the documentation for setting up your system. It is utimately your responsibility what gets installed on your system. The docuementation is just a roadmap.

And yes, 500MB is enough.

Btw, I'm running on gentoo stage 1 and works better than any other distro I've tried.

 

[klusener]

thanks a lot.. I will definitely start as soon as i get some free time.. in the past, the one thing that kept me away from gentoo is that people said it took too long to install, but i am going to try it now...

 

[dduardo]

If you think gentoo takes too long, how long did you expect LFS to take?

 

[klusener]

by that i mean that the first time i got introduced to gentoo, the person doing the introducing told me that you decide what packages you want to install and it takes a whole weekend for gentoo itself to install the packages, but on the other hand lfs, I didn't think it would take too so long and i get to do the process.. But i guess i was basically given the wrong introduction, so i made a mistake in staying away from it...

anyways, do you think gentoo is better than slack, which is what i am using right now, but the whole point of me switching to some other form of linux is because speed is the only thing i want, so that's why i am looking at a really small os...

 

[dduardo]

I can't really tell you if slackware is better. You have to try gentoo out for yourself. Personally, gentoo is the best distro I've ever used. And yes, it is faster than other distros.

 

[klusener]

thanks again for the info, before getting into gentoo, should i make an attempt to memorize atleast most of the bash commands? right now, i just know the basic stuff, i don't know if that will be enough..

 

[dduardo]

Knowing the basic bash commands is helpful. You'll also need to use commands like chroot and modprobe. It is also useful to know where basic configuration files are located in /etc. Don't worry though, the documentation explains it very well.

 

[klusener]

hi dduardo, which one do you recommend, starting from stage 1 or stage 2?

 

[faust9]

I run Gentoo. I'd recommend stage three then recompile your kernel and individual components after you get the system up and running. You can recompile a kernel while your cruising the net and when it's done simply move the new kernel to your boot drive, set up the appropriate links make a GRUB entry and your done.

If, If you feel the need to install your system from as close to scratch as possible then stage 1 is the choice for you. Bootstrapping takes a while though. If you have a free 48 hours to build an entire system and want to optimize it as much as posible from the beginning then this is the best choice.

Stage 2 is a little faster (its already bootstrapped) and the optimizations are 'usually' as good as any you'd do yourself. If you want to actually build a system but want to shave off a few hours then go with stage two.

I'd do stage one as a last resort. Stage two if you feel the need to build a system and stage three if you want something up and running quickly.

Good luck. Hopefully you'll have a gentoo box up and running soon. Have fun. If you mess the install up (I did, it took me two attempts the first time I installed Gentoo almost three years ago) don't get discouraged.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=2

 

[klusener]

thanks for the advice, stage two seems nice to me, because I really don't want to spend too much time on the specifics, but at the same time, I have a need for some form of optimization.. I am planning to keep slack and gentoo, but after i get gentoo installed, i will remove slack... anyway, how did you partition your drive? for example in addition to swap and root, like usr and home or something..

 

[faust9]

/boot 48Mb
/ 10Gb
/swap 256Mb
/home rest of drive (around 30Gb)

If I were to do it again, I'd probably go with /boot,/swap,and then the rest in / without seperating /home, or /var. I might put /opt on its own partition but probably not (I'm lazy).

[edit] Also, /boot is ext2, / is ext3 and /home is reiserFS.

 

[klusener]

ok, i finally got gentoo running from stage 2, but i went to the gentoo forums and saw this topic on freebsd vs gentoo.. I realize that freebsd has a better kernel and stability, etc... is it worth switching to freebsd, the only thing of value i find in gentoo is the portage, but the ports tree of fbsd seems to somewhat match it.. Can someone please give me a comparison of the two..

 

[graphic7]

ok, i finally got gentoo running from stage 2, but i went to the gentoo forums and saw this topic on freebsd vs gentoo.. I realize that freebsd has a better kernel and stability, etc... is it worth switching to freebsd, the only thing of value i find in gentoo is the portage, but the ports tree of fbsd seems to somewhat match it.. Can someone please give me a comparison of the two..

FreeBSD is much more stable than any Linux distribution, with the possible exceptions being the commericalised ones, like SLES and RHEL. FreeBSD also makes a fairly decent workstation. I use mine for the occasional DVD watching, audio editting/playback, other workstation tasks.

FreeBSD ports are just as good as Gentoo's portage. Both have the same functions and about the same number of ports.

FreeBSD allows you to update your system sources (this includes the entire userland and kernel) via cvsup (a cvs-like clone). Once you update, updating your system with new config files, new userland utils, and a new kernel takes about 5 commands.

FreeBSD also features a Linux binary compatibility mode. While, you won't be able to run some of the more complex Linux apps, like Matlab, etc. the ones that you can run will run just as fast, if not faster than what they would run on Linux. At the moment, I'm running Mathematica on my FreeBSD workstation, and it runs just as well as it would in Linux.

I haven't found anything yet that Linux can do that FreeBSD cannot do. I'd be much more willing to place FreeBSD in a production environment that I would a typical Linux distributions (non-commercialised).

Addition: FreeBSD also has an installer. Which, makes it much less of a pain to install it than Gentoo. You can get a FreeBSD install underway in less than 30 minutes to an hour, update the sources, and recompile (usually all under 2 hours). Getting Gentoo installed, alone, takes around that if you know the installation procedure like the back of your hand.

 

[faust9]

ok, i finally got gentoo running from stage 2, but i went to the gentoo forums and saw this topic on freebsd vs gentoo.. I realize that freebsd has a better kernel and stability, etc... is it worth switching to freebsd, the only thing of value i find in gentoo is the portage, but the ports tree of fbsd seems to somewhat match it.. Can someone please give me a comparison of the two..

So, what exactly do you want from an OS? If you want a rock solid, fast, reliable, easy to update, large software repository then go with Debian. Debian has a GREAT installation system and if you want to optimize your system (deb runs pretty fast already) then simply recompile. You can get packages using apt-get -i package_name (it's that simple). You can download packages from the stable(exceedingly stable) or the unstable(by deb standards; however, more stable than most distros) file trees.

Mmmmm FreeBSD. Great OS... Mac OSX is built on BSD and is a solid-as-a-rock OS. Linux has a little more developer attention at the moment, more software/hardware is supported under linux, but BSD has years and years and years of maturity.

If you are putting a system together for a production or a high reliability environment then you might want to get rid of Gentoo. Gentoo is cutting edge re: more likely to crash. If you need a system with a good uptime then go with Debian or BSD.

If you want a more reliable system then decide on which OS you want to run (based on your hardware/software needs) and install only the components you need (SUSE, Fedora, and the other production Linuxes seem to install too many programs by default IMO. You need a PhD to wade through the myriad program choices) and use a reliable harddrive format (ext3) and you'll be sound as a pound.

Congrats on getting Gentoo running.