[linux-audio-user] FC2->Fc3->Fc4->Fc5->FC6->FC*: it's crazy!

[Paul Winkler]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 06:39:33PM +0000, Rob Fell wrote:
> >I have to admit, it sounds like a lot of crunching. What kind of
> >problems do you run into?

* occasional major system upgrades (eg. major version of gcc or glibc,
or the modular x.org transition) take a lot of time to compile
since you may have to rebuild pretty much everything at least once.
and in some cases a fair amount of fixing outdated config files.
These are rare.  Only really a problem if something fails part way
through and you have to figure out how to proceed.  Yes, that's happened
to me. I've always found a solution on forums.gentoo.org.

* occasionally dependencies get wedged where you have to remove
a package before an upgrade, finish the upgrade, then reinstall the
thing you removed.

* the etc-update script isn't particularly user friendly (but god
it's a million times better than having no help at all)

* changing your mind about architecture is a pain.  I built my current
amd64 desktop with everything compiled 64-bit. Mistake.  I haven't
switched back yet because I haven't found the time to back up my data
and start over.  Normally people don't have that problem... I should've
paid more attention before starting this particular install :)

* occasionally you stumble on a bug where foo version X is incompatible
with bar version Y but the ebuilds haven't been updated to avoid
that problem yet.  this means a trip to the search bar on
forums.gentoo.org to find a workaround.

* the gentoo proaudio ebuild is a bit bleeding-edge and occasionally new
stuff doesn't work right away ... people are pretty on top of it though,
it's a lively community.

* I've still not found a no-hassle way to set up a roaming laptop.
When I go somewhere new I end up using wifi-radar to see what's
available and then end up manually configuring the new access point.  

That's about it.  I've been mostly happy with gentoo for a couple years
now.  Upgrading does eat a little more of my time than I'd like,
but I have never used a distro where that wasn't the case, and
at with Gentoo there's a lot more control over what you
do and don't get installed.

-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com