Reading Linux

Well, in both the frustration of some idiot's stickied linux gaming howto, and the fog surrounding linux gaming, I decided to write a nice little ducoment on it over at Extreme Overclocking.

[!]

Let me know how it is! :)

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Jun 06, 2005.

The package repository is community managed and as such, grows rabidly.

typo.

other than that, after some ati and intel bashing...well a nice article i must say ^_^

"Life is a queue. You come in, hang around for a bit, get some service, then depart."

Pretty good, but slightly inaccurate in my tests. In my installs SuSe has wiped the floor with every other disto, including Gentoo, in terms of hardware support. X on Gentoo made my laptop LCD screen go into a bad refresh rate and made all the pixels on it start turning white @_@ It was also no help configuring my wireless card. SuSe did these automagically and painlessly.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

Yeah, good for you. :)

I'm bery happy you found a laptop that worked with a canned distro, because most require some manual force-feeding of drivers and settings. For example, my old HP worked with gentoo. Period. Suse, red hat, fedora, you name a distro that can be had for free (suse had a freebie thing going at the time so I tried it), and I tried it on the lappy and watched it fail. What laptop are you using? Make, model?

And uh, gentoo didn't auto set anything for you. You forgot to configure it. Everything you get with all your packages is how they come after a fresh compile. So uh, yeah, don't blame gentoo, you're the fella that didn't compile it right...

Lastly, laptops weren't covered in that. They are special. They have thier own breed of CPU's, GPU's, networking and audio equipment that make installing linux on teh buggers freaking impossible.

Anywho, glad suse worked for somebody. :)

Just keep in mind that gentoo will still perform better once you get off your lazy butt and configure it.

I should be ashamed of myself.

Yeah, good for you. :)

I feel fuzzy inside.

I'm bery happy you found a laptop that worked with a canned distro, because most require some manual force-feeding of drivers and settings. For example, my old HP worked with gentoo. Period. Suse, red hat, fedora, you name a distro that can be had for free (suse had a freebie thing going at the time so I tried it), and I tried it on the lappy and watched it fail. What laptop are you using? Make, model?

Not in the 20th century. Recent kernel version have much much much improved laptop support. It's a Dell Inspiron 8000. Also, SuSe has always been and still is free. In fact, you can get the version you purchase in the store for free. SuSe doesn't provide official downloads, but they have stated it is perfectly legal for people to put up torrents of the cd images.

And uh, gentoo didn't auto set anything for you. You forgot to configure it. Everything you get with all your packages is how they come after a fresh compile. So uh, yeah, don't blame gentoo, you're the fella that didn't compile it right...

Uh, I didn't "compile" anything wrong. The issue was with xorg's configuration. If I just plugged in the standard options that _should_ in theory make the lcd screen on the laptop work (vertical sync and horizontal refresh), I'd still get the weird whiteness issue. Other distros set some option differently, and it worked (I know this is the difference because it was the same version of Xorg -- unless of course it was one of gentoo's patches that broke it, which is even worse).

My point though is that configuring that is a waste of time. For some things, customizability is good. But for stuff like setting up your sound and video cards, there's only 1 correct way to do it. Doing it once for learning purposes is great, but if you're looking to actually get something done, you want a distrobution that handles this grunt work for you. Your logic is infinitely regressive -- why have the kernel initialize your hardware for you? You should just do the interrupts yourself by hand everytime the comptuer boots ;)

Lastly, laptops weren't covered in that. They are special. They have thier own breed of CPU's, GPU's, networking and audio equipment that make installing linux on teh buggers freaking impossible.

Mostly wrong nowadays. Linux has much better support for all this then it use to. The only two things that are seen on laptops alot that linux doesn't support well are winmodems (software modems) and "smart batteries" (software batteries). Wireless support is decent but not great, but ndiswrapper lets you use windows wireless drivers so it's ok. Also, the difference between a normal video card and it's mobile version is usually small enough that the same driver can be used for both. For example, my Inspiron's Rage 128 Mobility uses xorg's r128 driver, the same as a desktop with a normal Rage 128 card in it.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

Not mostly wrong. I am right when I say that many laptop apparatus are hard to configure. They just are. For example, wireless niccs. They are a pain in the arse and lack linux drivers. Video cards are thier own animal (CPU's are CPU's granted, but some tech requires special drivers). The point is, you're just mad that you forgot to set the right feature. :)

My boot time is faster because I manually configured my kernel. My system is easier for me to reconfigure because I know how, and my system can read files faster than yours can because I use something more or less only used in gentoo. Sure, use canned distros. I am not telling you to do it... But gentoo is ideal for any system and you know what, it won't always be like this (manually configuring shit). Some day, vendors will realize taht a single driver should always and forever work until an update works (*cough* nvidia *cough*) thus negating painful setups. There will be a preinstall discs released soon enough, and you know what, portage eats any package manager alive. And uh, there are standards, but nobody cares to follow them. And there are reasons for that:

They are all centered around red hat.

Gentoo actually had an april fools joke on that. :)

Point is, I use gentoo for my own reasons, and you use suse for yours. There are times when configuring things is required and when taht time comes I can do it and you'll have to do what yoshi so elegently described in a similar thread:

Reinstall. Because everything was handled for you in it's own little way, and when you can't manually set it up of fix it, you're fucked.

Granted, automation is nice, but it only works well when a vendor puts it's I back this stick on it. Linux hasn't and probably will never get that.

And I genuinely meant the "good for you". It's surprising at the very leasy because literally, most lappies have issues with linux. Well most that are worth using... Unfortunately, AMD + nVidia laptops are scarce so laptops in general suck for linux (unless you are a tarded' intel user).

Anyway, I don't care to argue about it. I have my choices, and I genuinely beleive gentoo is better for gaming. Suse simply don't cut it.

In short, all your complaints are about gentoo's strongest sides. If you don't like it, use Suse. gentoo has a bigger user base for a reason: it works and lets me make it work when neccessary. That's what the pros (the people who are using linux for a reason) need and want. Not automagic bullshit.

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Jul 12, 2005.

Not mostly wrong. I am right when I say that many laptop apparatus are hard to configure. They just are. For example, wireless niccs. They are a pain in the arse and lack linux drivers.

Go read my post again. Ndiswrapper takes care of this. And distros with good hardware support can set it up for you.

The point is, you're just mad that you forgot to set the right feature. :)

Which was? Judging from your skill level and posts on the gentoo.org forums I can virtually guaruntee my system was more tricked out than yours.

There will be a preinstall discs released soon enough, and you know what, portage eats any package manager alive.

Like? I mentioned before I missed emerge, but apt-get seems to be "good enough." Also, emerge really really really sucks badly at binary packages. So in that sense, it looses to almost everything else.

Reinstall. Because everything was handled for you in it's own little way, and when you can't manually set it up of fix it, you're fucked.

Amazingly, the tools other distros use to configure things for you edit the same files you would edit by hand. There's nothing stopping you on SuSe or any other distro from cracking open /etc/X11/xorg.conf and hacking it by hand if you need to.

Unfortunately, AMD + nVidia laptops are scarce so laptops in general suck for linux (unless you are a tarded' intel user).

There are a lot of satisfied Pentium M users on the gentoo forums. Maybe you should read up on your own distros laptop support.

Anyway, I don't care to argue about it. I have my choices, and I genuinely beleive gentoo is better for gaming.

Don't care to argue or can't? You don't have any evidence to back you up.

In short, all your complaints are about gentoo's strongest sides.

Yeah, 36 hour installs are a strength! Right...

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

Sorry for the multiple postings, but everytime I come back I notice some other BS Aynjell has stuck in here :)

My boot time is faster because I manually configured my kernel.

That doesn't mean anything. I can manually configure my kernel under any other distro. And I can do it in such a way as to make things a lot slower too. I'll just specify my architecture to be 486.

My system is easier for me to reconfigure because I know how, and my system can read files faster than yours can because I use something more or less only used in gentoo.

Again, I call bullshit. "Something more or less only used in gentoo." Like WHAT?

You keep telling me that I should just look the other way and that different distros are good for different things, but you're grasping at straws to hold onto Gentoo against all reason as if you don't really believe that.

I do think different distros have their place. But you don't have to defend Gentoo at all costs. Lay off the distro fandom and try to look at things objectively and in the end you'll find the best distro for you. But contending that Gentoo is better, because it just is, because I said so, so there, it has some special thing you don't even know about but I won't say, and I did it myself so it must be better, is dumb.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

That's not what I'm saying. You said suse is better for gaming, and better for hardware. But I contend that there are several machines that suse cannot install on that gentoo can simply because of the low level nature. If you were able to install suse the way you install gentoo (and I'm sure you can in some round about undocumented way) you could get them to work (ATI 320M).

Another thing I can use that most distrobutions cannot is Reiser4. Most do not allow it on initial install and are simply not available. Due to my freedom in initial install (and range of installation medium and methodology) I am able to take advantage of such technology.

I am not contending that gentoo is better, only that your reasons that it is worse are simply not true. Perhaps I am caught up in teh moment. And BS it isn't...

I should be ashamed of myself.

You said suse is better for gaming

Where?

and better for hardware

I said it's better if you don't want to have to reinvent the wheel setting up by hand configuration files that would be setup the exact same way by an automatic tool.

But I contend that there are several machines that suse cannot install on that gentoo can simply because of the low level nature

Hate to break it to you, but gentoo is not that low level. You never touch a single line of code. Emerge does all of the compiling for you. Although Gentoo has a reputation for a hard install, a chimp could do it as long as it could follow directions. It's not point and click, but it's well documented and pretty easy. If you want to get low level, google for "Linux From Scratch."

Another thing I can use that most distrobutions cannot is Reiser4.

Actually, any distribution can. Just download the Reiser4 kernel patches and recompile your kernel. Also, to say that Reiser4 is mostly a gentoo thing is just wrong -- you could probably poll the Reiser4 developers and I bet not a single one of them is running Gentoo. If I had to guess they're probably mostly on Debian and Slackware.

Perhaps I am caught up in teh moment.

Just a little misinformed. Don't sweat it. I was once where you were -- majic ws kind enough to download 5 or 6 distributions, burn them to CD, and ship them to me back when I had dial-up. Got to start somewhere. :)

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

This post was edited by Tetrazome on Jul 12, 2005.

Oh no, I'm not misinformed. Not at all. I know what I'm talking about. Gentoo is nitty-gritty, it makes you do the work. That's what I meant by low level. And uh, who the fuck are you to reccomend LFS to me? Yeah, this conversation is over. As for the documentation, if it was so easy, how come you couldn't set your monitor up with it? I know it's easy, I got all my stuff set up with it and game all day in it. Dual monitors is prolly a tad bit harder to set up with gentoo than a single itty bitty laptop flat panel.

And I never said it was gentoo only. It more or less is because very few distrobutions make it so accessible. I just emerge reiser4progs and morph-sources and I'm set. No fscking around an automated installer disc. They may not be using gentoo, but uh, most people I know that are the developers I care about do.

So, anyway, this is over. Even if you like Suse, you still accused gentoo of all the wrong things.

I should be ashamed of myself.

And uh, who the fuck are you to reccomend LFS to me?

Don't listen to me, listen to anyone. The general consensus is that LFS is more low level.

. As for the documentation, if it was so easy, how come you couldn't set your monitor up with it?

The documentation on the issue was correct I think. There was a software bug somewhere. But the original argument is that I shouldn't have ever had to try setting it up. There's only 1 way to do it.

And I never said it was gentoo only. It more or less is because very few distrobutions make it so accessible.

You "more or less" did. Look at what I said before, anyone can do it. Just because it's easy in gentoo doesn't mean it isn't easy in other distros. Anyone who can edit their grub.conf to use morph-sources is also probably perfectly linux savvy enough to apply a kernel patch.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

majic ws kind enough to download 5 or 6 distributions, burn them to CD, and ship them to me back when I had dial-up.

I remember that. Haha.. the good old days =)

Anyway, to wrap up what started this argument: Gentoo supports millions of more devices than suse does. First and foremost because gentoo supports every single practical architecture avialable and even some of the crazy ones. Suse barely supports outside of x86, gentoo has several (x86, x86_64, PPC, PPC64, MIPS, ALPHA, SPARC, SPARC64, not to mention others that may not be listed). Hardware support belongs to gentoo as far as linux goes.

Anyway, I got mad and I forgot...

You are one of those automagick is support peoples. One of those Cedega is an API retards. Get fucking real. And then you were dumb enough to insult my intelligence? Ha... Glad that you have so much more experience, skill, and sheer brain power. I'm sorry to hear that you found posts from only 6 months ago without seeing that I am already well versed in several areas of general computing as well as advanced development. Can you develop that fast? can you gain proficiency with such efficiency? Get bent because gentoo pwns your pussy nancy boy Suse anyday.

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Jul 13, 2005.

Anyway, to wrap up what started this argument: Gentoo supports millions of more devices than suse does. First and foremost because gentoo supports every single practical architecture avialable and even some of the crazy ones.

I was thinking exclusively of x86, because if you're looking for a desktop/laptop OS, chances are that's what you've got. I thought this was clear since gaming has been mention several times and basically doesn't exist on any other architecture. Remember I said SuSe had better support, "in my experience?" Dell Insprion 8000's run on P3s. And my desktop is an AthlonXP.

We're also using different definitions of "hardware support." You're thinking "can be made to work with once a thousand configuration files with different obscure syntaxes are hacked by hand." I'm thinking, "plug and play."

You are one of those automagick is support peoples. One of those Cedega is an API retards. Get fucking real.

Not sure what you mean by either of those statements. Way to stereotype me based on random tangents. You're clearly one of those funroll-loops.org peoples. And for the record -- Cedega is an implementation of a subset of the win32 and DirectX APIs. That's not something you can argue, that's a fact. What do YOU think it is?

And then you were dumb enough to insult my intelligence? Ha... Glad that you have so much more experience, skill, and sheer brain power. I'm sorry to hear that you found posts from only 6 months ago without seeing that I am already well versed in several areas of general computing as well as advanced development. Can you develop that fast? can you gain proficiency with such efficiency? Get bent because gentoo pwns your pussy nancy boy Suse anyday.

I don't care who's smarter or who can develop faster. You also have no idea where I was a year ago, and smarts is a lot more than *nix knowledge. I just think your Gentoo fanboyism is stupid behavior. Smart people still do stupid things.

When you start calling people "retards" and say your distro "pwns your pussy" that's a clear indication you have no real arguments left, not to mention it conveniently insults your intelligence for me. In a debate, if you have ammo, you use it. If you don't, you can either fess up, or take your route and just dive into as many personal insults as possible.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

This post was edited by Tetrazome on Jul 13, 2005.

Just keep in mind that gentoo will still perform better once you get off your lazy butt and configure it.

P.S. Not true. There isn't any evidence supporting this. What exactly does gentoo do to make itself faster?

Q: But it's specially compiled for my hardware!

A: This actually makes very little difference for most applications. And a lot of distributions are offering i686 binaries now so it makes 0 difference.

Q: But there's no extra services running!

A: Most services only take up a couple MB of RAM. Not a problem on a modern system. And there's no reason you can't disable them in other distros.

Q: But gentoo uses prelinking!

A: So can every other distribution. Just install prelink.

Q: But USE flags make my system leaner!

A: Actually true :) But how much leaner? This isn't going to matter unless you specify individual use flags for every package you install. You can also usually accomplish the same effect on any other distro by compiling from source and using ./configure optons.

Also, if gentoo is faster, why does KDE take over 36 hours to install? ;)

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

That is true. Portage has long compile times, but you know what, there is a community at stake too. I have freinds that use gentoo and we are better freinds because we have somethin' in common. Ever gone to the irc channels? Ever been on teh forums?

The other communities suck. I started using gentoo, and it's imbedded in me. People that are power users prefer gentoo. After years of another distro called crux, one dosage of gentoo converted a good e-freind of mine. If you want automagick, linux isn't a good place to look. I'm not going to suggest linux, but you may be expecting the wrong thing. Linux users aren't nancy-boys. They are people who enjoy control over their system.

I for one switched to linux for that very reason. My ability to make every fucking little choice. It makes my system my system and no distro does it better than gentoo. :) Period, end of story. I use gentoo, and that doc was written by a gentoo user. and you know what, I never said a damn thing about praciticallity on teh desktop.

You may never notice the speed increase, but by the numbers, it's usually around 1/3 faster. And that will show up in big games like doom 3 that eat 512 MB of video ram for breakfast, like it or not.

I should be ashamed of myself.

You may never notice the speed increase, but by the numbers, it's usually around 1/3 faster. And that will show up in big games like doom 3 that eat 512 MB of video ram for breakfast, like it or not.

I call bullshit. Give me benchmarks.

(P.S. I agree that gentoo has a really good community around it though. The forums were very helpful when I used them.)

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

This post was edited by Tetrazome on Jul 12, 2005.

Hehe, like I said, I conceded to the compile times.

And maybe you missed my obvious hate for intel? Guess you have eye problems. Is that why your pixels seemed to turn white?

As for a tricked out system and skill level? You don't even know me. I ask the questions I don't know on teh forums, and I learned alot fast. i guaruntee in a year I'll have learned more than you have in your entire life. I started using this shit naught but a year ago. As in started with my first computer in 2k4. I had been in jail and such before that, I call anyone that can comfortably sit in an entirely manually setup system in a year of experience skilled. And you know what, I already know most of the C++/C and am strated to work into bigger things like GTK+ and Open GL. Do not question my skill, because you have no clue what you are talking about.

Also worth noting, most programs that use use flags on my systems are manually configured in /etc/portage/package.use.

And uh, compile times aside, my system eats a stage one for breakfast (4 hours before emerge -e system). Perhaps you should stop considering intel viable and use a chip made by people with heart? Intel shits chips out for companies like dell, toshiba, and the like who are then sold to idiots in the mainstream that aren't mac users (who are slightly less idiotic, fault on them or not). If you have slow compile times (36 hours) get with some more badass hardware. And uh, kde compiles in an hour on my system because I emerge kdebase. Perhaps you should try that? I beleive kde 3.3 compiled in a night (I tend to sleep for about 8 hours).

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Jul 12, 2005.

As for a tricked out system and skill level? You don't even know me. I ask the questions I don't know on teh forums, and I learned alot fast.

Same here. Want a cookie?

i guaruntee in a year I'll have learned more than you have in your entire life.

That'd be pretty sweet. Good luck.

I had been in jail and such before that, I call anyone that can comfortably sit in an entirely manually setup system in a year of experience skilled.

Didn't say you weren't.

Do not question my skill, because you have no clue what you are talking about.

I'm not saying you're not talented. I'm saying you probably have more limited knowledge of linux than myself. The questions you're asking on gentoo.org are the kind of questions I asked a long time ago. That doesn't mean you won't eventually be just as or more knowledgeable than myself.

And uh, compile times aside, my system eats a stage one for breakfast (4 hours before emerge -e system).

I just installed ArchLinux to try out on my laptop. It's a P3 800. Took 30min. That's a bit faster.

Intel shits chips out for companies like dell, toshiba, and the like who are then sold to idiots in the mainstream that aren't mac users (who are slightly less idiotic, fault on them or not). If you have slow compile times (36 hours) get with some more badass hardware.

Laptops are expensive. This one was kindly donated to me. My desktop is an AthlonXP 3000+ with 768MB of PC2100 DDR. That's way more number crunching power than I could get if I bought a fairly high end laptop right now. And the compile times for Qt, Kdelibs, and Openoffice were still really long and annoying.

And uh, kde compiles in an hour on my system because I emerge kdebase.

If you've already compiled kdelibs and its dependencies, sure.

I beleive kde 3.3 compiled in a night (I tend to sleep for about 8 hours).

Took an hour to download on my P3 800. That means my old insulted hardware outperformed you by 8 fold. Downloading binary packages is much faster than compiling from source, no way around it. And installing software overnight is a pain. If you bought a game in the store, wouldn't you be pissed if it took overnight to install?

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

If you've already compiled kdelibs and its dependencies, sure.

I beleive kde 3.3 compiled in a night (I tend to sleep for about 8 hours).

Took an hour to download on my P3 800. That means my old insulted hardware outperformed you by 8 fold. Downloading binary packages is much faster than compiling from source, no way around it. And installing software overnight is a pain. If you bought a game in the store, wouldn't you be pissed if it took overnight to install?

Sorry to hear you are stil on dialup.

Hehe, takes me less than a minute to download it. But seriously, taking different tests to compare distrobutions? You've never seen a need to test other distrobutions as hard as you have gentoo. If you had everything binarily installed in gentoo, which is very possible if you have freinds that can provide packages, you'd be just as well off. And you know what, that p3 800 bullshit is like comparing 3Dmark 2001 to 3Dmark2005, and your 3000+ is that one of those cute little bartons?

Try getting an athlon 64. The numbers may not seem to be much bigger but they have proven to be twice as fast on average.

Also worth noting, my laptop cost me 900 when I bought it and was only slightly less powerful than your desktop. I fail to see how they are expensive. Hard to set up, yes... Expensive, nah. When you get into high end gamer gear with the latest cards, you can raise that price by a few grand, but who needs gamer gear in linux?

As for configuring monitors, there are at least 2 ways to configure mine. Xinerama, and twinview, twinveiw being completely different in behaviour. So there is NOT just one to configure everything, because sometimes I need to do things manually, and I'd rather always do things manually than fish through what I do and don't.

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Jul 13, 2005.

Sorry to hear you are stil on dialup.

I'm not. I'm on DSL. I'm talking about the CPU time to compile, not the download.

You've never seen a need to test other distrobutions as hard as you have gentoo.

And you know this how? Care to reveal your crystal ball? I usually run a few benchmarks when I install a new distro to make sure everything is working correctly. For instance, if hardrive access is slow, I might need to mess with hdparm.

If you had everything binarily installed in gentoo, which is very possible if you have freinds that can provide packages, you'd be just as well off.

Um, sure. If I got enough friends to find every Gentoo source package, compile it, and make a binary package for me, I'd be just as well of as using say Arch Linux, which uses binary packages from the start. Or I could spare me and my friends a lot of trouble and just install Arch Linux.

And you know what, that p3 800 bullshit is like comparing 3Dmark 2001 to 3Dmark2005, and your 3000+ is that one of those cute little bartons?

Um, the point with the "p3 bullshit" is that my slow ass p3 still installs KDE faster than whatever monster rig you have, because it's using a distribution that uses binary packages.

Try getting an athlon 64. The numbers may not seem to be much bigger but they have proven to be twice as fast on average.

My roommate has one. By the time I finish loading the HL2 intro, his has loaded it and played it all the way through. I agree their faster. Infact, I'll buy one. As soon as you give me the cash.

Also worth noting, my laptop cost me 900 when I bought it and was only slightly less powerful than your desktop. I fail to see how they are expensive.

First off, I said my laptop was donated. As in, you know, free. As in, like, a lot cheaper than 900$. If you want to pony up 900$ so I can buy a newer one, please do. If what you say is true laptop prices have come down quite a bit since I last looked (I'm not trying to be sarcastic here), care to give me a link? And what brand is it? (since everyone who buys Dell and Toshiba is retarded according to you)

As for configuring monitors, there are at least 2 ways to configure mine. Xinerama, and twinview, twinveiw being completely different in behaviour.

Ok, but assume for a second you have a matrox video card. Sure you may choose between Xinerama and twinview, but are you going to go pick the ATI driver? Of course not. Also, consider how many brain cells you're using up to learn each config files different rules and syntax. You can spend your time figuring those out, while I'll just use a GUI that has two radio buttons, one for Xinerama and one for Twinview. If a GUI makes something less customizable, it's not because by hand is always better, it's because you have a crap GUI.

When you get into high end gamer gear with the latest cards, you can raise that price by a few grand, but who needs gamer gear in linux?

Wasn't your article about linux gaming? You'll still want to get a decent card for Composite extension effects. America's Army, Doom3, and UT2004 are all fairly demanding and have linux versions. And of course there's wine and cedega. Or maybe I'm looking to make some 3D apps on linux (that's actually what I'm hired to do right now).

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

When I talk about gamer gear, I talk about the really heavy duty shit. Like the dual 7800GTX's that anandtech eat for breakfast. I'm talking the 6800 ultra go's that inhabit only the most powerful laptops. A 1300$ Toshiba (with a Pentium M and a 6600) is prolly better off than the 4,000 dollar laptops I was referring to. Those are gamer gear, the toshiba I'd buy would be a casual user machine that I could live with, providing I was willing to buy prebuilt. As for my 900 dollar laptop:

Hewlett Packard Ze4630Us. It was 1100 in store with ass loads of rebates. it boiled down to about 950 or 850 or so. I can't recall.

Anyway, enough of this. I'm tired of name calling, I got mad and launched some stuff at you (though some but not all was accurate), and it doesn't need to go on anymore. GUI's are nice, but as I've said before, GUI's tend to second guess the user, as is thier job. A crap GUI it'd be too, it's a shame they aren't so easy to implement. And you know what, i was able to do all that configuring and have my system up and running exactly teh way I wanted it. It's really not that hard...

But I agree, usability needs to increase. That will come in time. Such projects are under way. I do not however, beleive that a single binary distrobution needs to happen. I like using gentoo for many reasons, and one of them is knowing that I can hack my packages right from teh start before I install them, if I need to and had teh skill to do so.

I am sorry for being a dick, but you know what, I'm gonna still love gentoo, love my community, and represent everything gentoo is: -funroll-loops YO! (I've never used that flag, surprsingly, I prefer to remain on the stable side of things)

Oh, one more thing. Some part of it is scarring, the manual configuration. Some of us prefer to do it so we know EXACTLY what is happening 100% of the time. That's a comfort to me, I know and I don't doubt a large portion of the community as well.

As for testing your distros, it can be easy to assume that gentoo brings out it's best in it's packaging system. With compiling and optimizing each package, it gets easier and easier to do it granted you do it with certain features. Anywho, I'm done. GUI's are nice, but some of us like to do things manually. Us being a GREAT BIG portion of the linux using community. In fact, I wonder who has the biggest linux market. I know gentoo is up there...

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Jul 14, 2005.

Np.

Us being a GREAT BIG portion of the linux using community. In fact, I wonder who has the biggest linux market.

Pretty sure it's redhat. That's why they end up being the standard. Everybody plays follow the leader.

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

In fact, I'd daresay all the commercial distrobutions are ahead of the pack simply because they have a commercial (trustable by consumers) face and charge for thier product. Of the free distrobutions (which I prefer), I'd say gentoo is at least 2nd. I can see something like ubuntu having a strong following, but it wasn't for me.

I should be ashamed of myself.