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nrc

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Posts posted by nrc

  1.  

    Funtoo doesn't use the eselect news feature anymore. News is normally posted to the web site or the forum.

     

    http://www.funtoo.org/News:Emul_Linux_Packages_Deprecation

     

    I agree that a better user level HOWTO for this conversion is probably in order.

     

    I am not an expert but I'll try to clear few things up. The base architecture of your system is set by your profile, not by the abi_x86_32 USE flag.   You can see arch setting in your profile with these commands.

    epro show
    eselect profile show

    You'll probably see arch: x86-64bit which is 64 bit but compatible with 32bit libraries.   If you wanted pure 64 bit you would have selected "pure64".

     

    Your emerge output shows that you have the app-emulation/emul-linux-x86* packages installed.  Those are 32bit libraries that were provided so that you can run programs that require 32bit libraries - Wine and Steam are examples.

     

    The app-emulation/emul-linux-x86* packages have been depricated.  In order to maintain compatability with the programs you run that require 32bit libraries you need to remove the app-emulation/emul-linux-x86* packages and apply the abi_x86_32 USE flag to build the 32bit libraries that you require.

     

  2. I've worked in IT for over 25 years - starting with AT&T when SysV init was really SysV init.  Now I'm an IT Manager for a non-profit University where we specialize in adult learners.

     

    As for whether or not we teach "bullshit" - every person I've hired that has completed a degree after hire has become a better technical professional in the process.   That doesn't mean that everyone needs a degree to be a good technical professional, just that most are improved by obtaining one.

  3. I would probably update it every other week, maybe once a month, and try and update/upgrade in stages.  I like to keep my systems very usage specific and have noticed that my updates/upgrades have been fairly minimal since using Funtoo to begin with.  Its mostly just been because I am getting the hang fully of using USE flags.

    Libreoffice will probably be the biggest package installed on the laptop.

    Libreoffice is definitely one to go with the binary package if possible. There was something I didn't like about the binary package - the branding, I think - so I installed the full package and it took something over 14 hours on my laptop for that package alone.

     

    I probably only update my laptop monthly and then only if there's something worthwhile or important.

  4. Thank you for a personal example.

     

     

    That is exactly what I will be using it for, so yes I wouldn't be updating it that often either.

    I bought an 250GB Samsung 840 evo for it, which I know I won't fill up, so I will be able to keep spare sectors to reduce write amplification.

     

    I assume you do not use any of the 2GB of RAM for /tmp /var/tmp and you have a swap partition on your SSD?

     

    I guess adjusting the swapiness, using noatime, using binary packages for things like Firefox, and other minor things to reduce random writes would be a good start and see how it performs.

     

    /tmp is tmpfs but that sees minimal use.   Swap and /var/tmp are on SSD.   I don't see a lot of swap use but I don't do a lot of heavy multi-tasking on this unit.  I have it tuned for just two threads on builds because the CPU is really the bottleneck here.

     

    Yes, there's some concern about wear on the SSD from builds but all my reading suggests the SSD should easily outlive the useful life of this laptop.

     

    Just to be clear, when I say it takes "a while" I mean many hours.  I didn't really keep track of how long the original builds took but an update of 60 packages just took about 10 hours.   This is no big deal for the way I use this laptop. 

  5. Seems like we could use a HOWTO on this.   I've had emul-linux-x86-opengl and some other 32 bit libraries installed to support a variety of things including Steam.  I deleted the app-emulation packages but when I try setting abi_x86_32 on packages in package.use I get a pile of blocking message which I'm reading to say that it thinks I'm telling it to compile only 32 bit versions.

  6. I think the general idea is great.  Users sometimes have to spend a lot of time figuring out the right drivers and codecs to load and this will alleviate that. 

     

    On the other hand, you only have to look at the screen shot thread to see that slim desktops are a common theme in funtoo.  Perhaps the base media mix-in could only pull in the mediadevice-base and a new mediaformat-*-essential level of media formats.

     

    Alternately, maybe a new slim-desktop flavor could be created.

  7. Yes, I was a little perturbed that the number of packages that got dragged in last update.  I was already able to play all the video and audio files that I regularly encounter but the last emerge pulled in something like 50 new packages.  That's a bit of a pain for someone who tries to keep things slim.

     

    Looking at my selected profiles it shows the media mix-in as auto, presumably from the selected workstation profile, but should it now show some of the mediadevice mix-ins as auto as well?

  8. I like GNOME less and less.  Now their edict to dispose of proper window manager chrome in favor of "header bars" is making applications that have worked fine under other desktops (e.g. evince and gthumb) look out of place.  

     

    There are plenty of image viewers out there but most of the alternative pdf viewers are either based on a non-gtk toolkit or are focused on keyboard navigation with little in the way of GUI.  zathura seems to be the best choice and works pretty well once you find the commands for the options you use regularly.

  9. Doesn't LVM2 work by finding indexes and volume signatures and the like on disk, rather than in configuration files?  Aren't the configuration files there to help recovery in case of disaster, not for normal use?

     

    I've definitely used multiple Debian systems (like testing and stable) with the (some of) same LVM partitions on the same machine and never had problems -- but then, the Debian default configurations may always just happen to be the same.

     

    I believe that you're correct.  I had no problems mounting my Fedora home directory under Funtoo although I didn't switch back and forth - Funtoo or bust for me.   My wariness is more about the possibility that if one version gets too far ahead of the other it might do something the older version wouldn't deal with gracefully.  Even this seems unlikely if the configuration isn't changing.

  10. There's no reason why you can't.  You just need to make sure that you configure your userids and groupids the same so that ownership is the same in both systems.  It may get a little tricky if your home file system is in a logical volume.  In that case you would probably need to make sure your LVM versions align pretty closely.  No problems there that I'm aware of but it would be prudent.

  11. There are plenty of distros that support systemd.  I believe that it's important that someone is doing the work to make a Linux distro that works without systemd.   The developers are tackling a complicated problem with upstream projects that are not always supportive (one might even say they're hostile) to their goal.   Unless the goal is to attract more users for the sake of having more users it makes no sense to compromise that effort by splitting the userbase and the development effort between installs with and without systemd.

  12. It's not a binary distro, but there's work underway to give Funtoo users an alternative to the traditional rolling release that would be more stable.

     

    http://forums.funtoo.org/index.php?/topic/105-making-funtoo-more-fun/

     

    The problem with a full binary release is that then you have to maintain an installer and a whole array of binary packages.   Maybe a happy medium would be a "Funtoo Live" release that would install a larger core set of packages.  That, combined with what the team is currently cooking up might give many of the benefits of a binary release while remaining Funtoo.

  13. I can't see how you can say this, your whole post detailed the corporate backed reasons for what has happened and where we are, I don't see any reason to suggest it is not a corporate conspiracy of some order. If corporations are backing the direction that is being taken then there is a reason they are backing it, they believe it will make money, that it is an investment. I don't see anything about the community being a factor here except what it will do for these corporations.

     

    Yes, corporate funding and organization have enabled systemd to get where it is.   But did the corporate entities drive that for their own benefit or are they simply supporting wrong-headed people with bad ideas?   I tend to believe the latter but I certainly wouldn't argue strongly against the former. 

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