Gentoo


javaJake

Jacob Godserv
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Can straight Gentoo ARM be used on the Pandora? I mean, straight Gentoo with no porting. Some extra drivers, obviously, and perhaps a patch here or there, but for the most part can pure Gentoo survive?

I don't expect the users of this forum to answer, by the way. This is more or less directed at the crew behind the Awesome Device We All Love And Adore Ever So Dearly (also known as ADWALAAESD).
 
javaJake said:
Can straight Gentoo ARM be used on the Pandora? I mean, straight Gentoo with no porting. Some extra drivers, obviously, and perhaps a patch here or there, but for the most part can pure Gentoo survive?

I don't expect the users of this forum to answer, by the way. This is more or less directed at the crew behind the Awesome Device We All Love And Adore Ever So Dearly (also known as ADWALAAESD).



I love Gentoo - it's a great distro. But do you really want to compile EVERYTHING for your Pandora ON the device itself? It's not powerful enough for Gentoo to be a good distro for it. You'd have to wait days to get the dependencies and everything compiled and installed.

EDIT: Read your post a bit better. Would Gentoo work at all? Sure. You're still using the same Linux kernel as you would be if you were running Debian. Also, since you'd be compiling the software for your device on the device itself, you'd know that the programs would be compiled for the right architecture. Have fun setting up the correct build environment though. (-march/-mcpu, CHOST, CFLAGS, the other make.conf stuff, configuring and compiling the kernel, etc.)
 
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Vorporeal said:
javaJake said:
Can straight Gentoo ARM be used on the Pandora? I mean, straight Gentoo with no porting. Some extra drivers, obviously, and perhaps a patch here or there, but for the most part can pure Gentoo survive?

I don't expect the users of this forum to answer, by the way. This is more or less directed at the crew behind the Awesome Device We All Love And Adore Ever So Dearly (also known as ADWALAAESD).



I love Gentoo - it's a great distro. But do you really want to compile EVERYTHING for your Pandora ON the device itself? It's not powerful enough for Gentoo to be a good distro for it. You'd have to wait days to get the dependencies and everything compiled and installed.

EDIT: Read your post a bit better. Would Gentoo work at all? Sure. You're still using the same Linux kernel as you would be if you were running Debian. Also, since you'd be compiling the software for your device on the device itself, you'd know that the programs would be compiled for the right architecture. Have fun setting up the correct build environment though. (-march/-mcpu, CHOST, CFLAGS, the other make.conf stuff, configuring and compiling the kernel, etc.)


That's not a problem, you can always use Distcc and use big powerful machines as slaves for Pandora :)

I'm a Gentoo user and would love to use it on Pandora. Are there more Gentoo users interested in Pandora? We could create a Gentoo-Pandora overlay and then put that upcoming scene productions out there (being open-source or not, binary only packages will have "-bin" prefix) :)

QUOTE

distcc is a program to distribute builds of C, C++, Objective C or Objective C++ code across several machines on a network. distcc should always generate the same results as a local build, is simple to install and use, and is usually much faster than a local compile.

distcc does not require all machines to share a filesystem, have synchronized clocks, or to have the same libraries or header files installed. They can even have different processors or operating systems, if cross-compilers are installed.
 
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Speed of compilation is obviously an issue (unless you use distcc... but I'm wary of methods like those). Obviously there's no way I'll be compiling KDE or, heaven forbid, GNOME! It'll be Fluxbox or something similar.

Vorporeal said:
Have fun setting up the correct build environment though. (-march/-mcpu, CHOST, CFLAGS, the other make.conf stuff, configuring and compiling the kernel, etc.)
Oh, I will. That's what Gentoo is all about, after all. :lol:
 
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javaJake said:
Speed of compilation is obviously an issue (unless you use distcc... but I'm wary of methods like those). Obviously there's no way I'll be compiling KDE or, heaven forbid, GNOME! It'll be Fluxbox or something similar.

Vorporeal said:
Have fun setting up the correct build environment though. (-march/-mcpu, CHOST, CFLAGS, the other make.conf stuff, configuring and compiling the kernel, etc.)
Oh, I will. That's what Gentoo is all about, after all. :lol:


Yup. Gentoo's a great distro except when you're first learning it... I remember my first time installing Gentoo... Accidentally did --march=k8 instead of -march=k8... Nothing would compile. Took me a week to figure out why.
 
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I just bought another 8 core dell with 8GB ram for $1280 shipping & taxes.
It's a monster for compilation and chews through gentoo like butter.

Really for a device like pandora or for the EEE it might make sense to build a whole system with desired configuration, package it up into squashfs and drop it onto the flash drive. Perhaps do this with unionfs or equivalent for incremental updates and drop a new firmware on every couple of months or so.

Although doing it this way the only thing it really buys you over something like debian is that its a bit easier to "turn off" features you really don't care about. I always use "-kde -gnome" in my flags in addition to lots of other stuff I disable. Building Qt does bring that 8 core to its knees.
 
Have you tried OpenOffice yet? I think that might be even worse than Qt. :p

Well, the reason I like Gentoo, and use it now, is because it provides all the latest versions. With Ubuntu you're at least 6 months behind all the time, or it felt like it. Now I can compile KDE4, knowing I can also remove it and still have a stable system. Ubuntu cries when you try to do this, especially with third-party repos, "./configure && make", etc. :)

I don't want to wait 6+ months for the latest version of Firefox or Pidgin for my Pandora. Bring on teh Gentoo! ;)
 
javaJake said:
Have you tried OpenOffice yet? I think that might be even worse than Qt. :p

Well, the reason I like Gentoo, and use it now, is because it provides all the latest versions. With Ubuntu you're at least 6 months behind all the time, or it felt like it. Now I can compile KDE4, knowing I can also remove it and still have a stable system. Ubuntu cries when you try to do this, especially with third-party repos, "./configure && make", etc. :)

I don't want to wait 6+ months for the latest version of Firefox or Pidgin for my Pandora. Bring on teh Gentoo! ;)
Yeah, it might work. Having a binary package server would be nice though, for those times when you just want a program and you don't want to wait for a while; you could always compile and reemerge it later.

You want something worse than Qt? Try evolution-data-server. Took me probably as long as all of the packages directly under the "kde" meta package (meaning kde-libs, kde-base, kde-etc.)
 
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My suggestion:
Don't run gentoo if you just want a canned kde/gnome system.
 
bnolsen said:
My suggestion:
Don't run gentoo if you just want a canned kde/gnome system.
Lol course not. It's helpful in the creation of a good devel environment, cause gcc and most of the needed libs are already there. Woulda had a hell of a time coding for the iPod without it.
 
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