I’ve battled through a Gentoo upgrade for the last time. I’ve set my computer compiling for days, restarting after fixing the errors that crop up. I’ve run portlog-info.sh and painstakingly combed through all the little messages and warnings that would otherwise go unnoticed. I’ve run etc-update and meticulously made sure that my custom configurations remained intact. I’ve diligently run revdep-rebuild over and over again to get my dependencies in order. In short, I’ve spent a lot of time.
And I was willing to spend a little more time to get the latest kernel compiled. I decided to start using genkernel and set it work on linux-2.6.15-gentoo-r1. This is what I got for my troubles:
* ERROR: Failed to compile the "EXTRAS="extras/scsi_id extras/volume_id extras/ata_id extras/run_directory extras/usb_id extras/floppy extras/cdrom_id extras/firmware" USE_KLIBC=true KLCC=/var/tmp/genkernel/31155.14552.30166.11430/klibc-build/bin/klcc USE_LOG=false DEBUG=false udevdir=/dev all" target...
Fine, fine. I hit the Gentoo forums and found that the error was possibly caused by the new udev stuff. Looking in /etc/genkernel.conf I found UDEV_VER="077", despite that my installed version of udev was 079-r1. Reemerging udev and genkernel did not fix the problem. So I changed the version in the config file to 079, and was met with an error about not being able to find udev-079.tar.bz2 in /usr/share/genkernel/pkg. I then copied udev-079.tar.bz2 from /usr/portage/distfiles to /usr/share/genkernel/pkg. I tried compiling the kernel once more:
* ERROR: Failed to compile the "EXTRAS="extras/scsi_id extras/volume_id extras/ata_id extras/run_directory extras/usb_id extras/floppy extras/cdrom_id extras/firmware" USE_KLIBC=true KLCC=/var/tmp/genkernel/31155.14552.30166.11430/klibc-build/bin/klcc USE_LOG=false DEBUG=false udevdir=/dev all" target...
I guess I could spend the rest of my Sunday hammering at the problem until it works. And then I could get sound working again since it got messed up by the upgrades. And then I could get my CD-RW working again. And then I could fix all the other problems that I don’t know about yet. And in a few months I could repeat the process.
But I’m tired. I’m tired of all the time, the endless time, it takes to keep Gentoo updated. I could always try not updating, but you know one day I’ll want to install something. And that something will depend on something else, and that something else on something further. I’m a sysadmin and a consultant by trade; I hack on Linux systems, I code, and I get stuff working. I put in the time and I’m reasonably 1337 – hell, all the hours I’ve put into my Gentoo system helped me get where I am today. But now my free time is precious. I don’t have time to…
- … compile every single package from source.
- … learn about every USE flag and what combinations I need so that, for example, I can play music.
- … figure out why XYZ bleeding edge package doesn’t install or won’t work.
- … get all my hardware working after each upgrade.
Maybe I’m getting soft, but I want to be able to use my home computer. Maybe it’s anti-geek of me to not want to spend all my time fiddling with my system. Maybe I’ve sold out. Maybe I don’t believe in nothing no more – I’m going to Ubuntu.
UPDATE: Ubuntu has this retarded no-root-account, run-everything-with-sudo thing going on. Forget it, I’m going with SuSE 10.0 OSS.