Gentoo linux

[Raz Meister]

Ok, I was GOING to upgrade KDE, but I couldn't even figure THAT out :-\

Maybe I should start all over with Gentoo?

As root do 'emerge kde' - thats it.

From my understanding, they have won against everyone they have filed lawsuits against so far. The lawsuit against IBM is going to take a while through.

If I had the rights to an operating system and the whole world gained the ability to get the source code for free, I'd want to charge licensing fees. So, I think SCO's problem with showing the code to the public is that it will be removed from newer versions while people will still be able to access it freely and SCO will get brushed aside even through they deserve the ability to charge licensing fees to the Linux community for irreversible damages.

Mate, gets your facts right. SCO have won ZERO lawsuits. WHY? Because they have not proved they own the rights.

The lawsuits are a last ditch effort by a dying company. They were about to go bankrupt before they started this controversy.

Plus, if some code by some minute chance has been included. Simply removing the code will void their license.

[Shining Arcanine]

Microsoft owned parts of the FAT file system. So they received a patent for the entire FAT file system.

So actually, SCO is in a position to possibly gain the rights to Linux as a good portion of it is SCO's property to begin with.

[splooge]

Microsoft owned parts of the FAT file system. So they received a patent for the entire FAT file system.

So actually, SCO is in a position to possibly gain the rights to Linux as a good portion of it is SCO's property to begin with.

http://www.groklaw.net

Start reading, buddy.

[tamarian]

RE: SCO vs. IBM

1. There's a misconception that SCO owns some Unix copyrights, but it is not true. They simply own a contract to sell Unix licenses on Novell's behalf, simply as an agent, and take a percentage of the sales and renewals. This explains why Novell revoked SCO's actions in terminating IBM's Unix license for AIX.

This also explains why SCO is now suing Novell, demanding a transfer of Unix copyrights to them. Such a transfer was allowed under their contract, but requires approval from Novell, on a case by case basis.

2. In addition, SCO's name is new, their official name a year ago was Caldera. Caldera made a Linux distribution under the GPL.

3. SCO sued IBM, in the hope that IBM will buy them out, as the company was about to go bankrupt. Being bought out by IBM was a way to get some money for their shareholders. This is according to the architect of the law suit, Mike Anderer, and they were taken by surprise that IBM didn't even consider this option.

4. All the source code that has been released by SCO so far as evidence to stolen code by Linux, proved to be source code stolen by SCO from BSD, with the copyright notices removed. In court, SCO have stalled twice, from showing the remaining code they claim was stolen, and now being compelled to do so by the court, a 3rd deadline has been set for them to show the code they claim was stolen.

5. As to the reference to SCO always winning lawsuit, so what? Even if true, they were not Linux related lawsuit, and the most famous of their lawsuits, when they were called Caldera, was against Microsoft, and it was related to DR-DOS, which they bought just prior to the lawsuit.

There's a lot more to it, and this site has all the details (with PDF copies of all the ancient contracts, etc):

http://www.groklaw.net/

Edit: I need to clarify the usage of the word "stolen" in #4. SCO is allowed to use BSD code, in accordance with the BSD license. However, since they tried to claim ownership of that code by showing the diffs to Linux (Linux does copy some code from BSD) as "evidence" to Linux copying from SCO Unix, it is essentially stealing someone else's code, by claiming it's ownership.

[Jerry]

I dev on Gentoo .

[cirisme]

2. In addition, SCO's name is new, their official name a year ago was Caldera. Caldera made a Linux distribution under the GPL.

Fascinating.

I had no idea!!

[tamarian]

Fascinating.

I had no idea!!

Check it out: ftp://ftp.caldera.com/Legal_Notice
and ftp://ftp.sco.com/Legal_Notice

NOTICE: SCO has suspended new sales and distribution of SCO Linux until
the intellectual property issues surrounding Linux are resolved. SCO will,
however, continue to support existing SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux
customers consistent with existing contractual obligations. SCO offers at
no extra charge to its existing Linux customers a SCO UNIX IP license for
their use of prior SCO or Caldera distributions of Linux in binary
format. The license also covers binary use of support updates distributed
to them by SCO. This SCO license balances SCO's need to enforce its
intellectual property rights against the practical needs of existing
customers in the marketplace.

The Linux rpms available on SCO's ftp site are offered for download to
existing customers of SCO Linux, Caldera OpenLinux or SCO UnixWare with
LKP, in order to honor SCO's support obligations to such customers.

[MarkB]

As root do 'emerge kde' - thats it.

'command not found'

[Martz]

SCO
The SCO part of this thread seems to be troll bait imo, but yeah SCO (Calendra) haven't got a hope in hells chance of winning all of the arguments in court VS IBM, which is what their claims are all about. Even if the Unix code which SCO claims to have had stolen from them by IBM and injected into the Linux kernel, they the linux community will remove it. However, even though it is open source and many thousands of people around the world are familiar with it, SCO refuse to identify what exactly, is at fault here. Until that time, they have no feasible case.

SCO it seems, has also accepted $86 million via a 3rd party company, which inturn came via Microsoft.

Microsoft cannot win vs open source. They cannot beat free, they cannot compete against a company which does not exist, or competes at any level with other operating systems. Linux doesn't care if you use it or not. MS really really cares that lots of people use their products. Who has the most to lose?

Gentoo.
Now onto the good stuff Since my reply to this post I've been busy trying to convert other people to gentoo lol.. and it's been an experience.

MarkB: emerge is Gentoo's package system. You can use your Knoppix or slax CD to create a Gentoo installation on your system, or the Gentoo live CD. Since Gentoo doesn't come with a GUI installer of any sort, what you do is basically this:

• Start the machine with a linux boot disk like the Gentoo CD itself or the knoppix live CD etc. This will let you get a linux prompt up from a ramdisk.
• Format and partition your disks so that you have somewhere to install the base system too. Setup a /, /boot and swap partition. Format them to reiserfs or ext2/3
• chroot into your installation so far, and bootstrap, and emerge system.
• Setup the grub/lilo bootloader, and reboot.
• Your off!

OK, so install is generally a lot tricker than this, but like I said - read the docs. If you are very inpatient or don't have the time to sit and read documents, search through forums and threads etc - gentoo (and probably most linux distso) are not for you.


The benefits of compiling your own system from source code are great. For every single library, dependancy and piece of software you install - it is only compiled for compatibility with your system. Imagine WindowsXP and how many devices/drives and pieces of software it supports. Its very unlikey that you're going to use all of those devices in your system at once.

Gentoo benefits from this by only compiling your programs for your architechure, and what it supports. So for example, I compile everything for Pentium 4 support with SMP for dual processors, and support for KDE desktop only instead of Gnome as well. This means that all the AMD/Sparc/Mac support is not downloading and installed, and that my system is as sleek as possible, and free from as much bloat as I tell it. For 1 application, this make not make a great deal of difference. When its for all of your applications, Xfree, KDE, Open Office, XMMS, Xine etc, you start to notice the improvements. It also becomes quite an addictive hobby - you're connected to 1000's of pieces of software you can install with minimum fuss on your behalf, and compile them specifically for the hardware your runining!
Example:

emerge openoffice
(MS Office equivilent, not quite as good but enough for most Word processing and spreadsheet jobs)

emerge xchat
(IRC client with good scripting support, and lots of addons on their site)

emerge bluefish
Great little text editor which is stuffed full of functionality, and a godo replacement for TextPad on Windows.

Once you've typed a command like emerge xchat you can go and make a nice cup o' tea and sit and wait for it to finish. Once it has, the software of your choice is installed, you've got a nice Icon on your KStart Menu and you can start using it! Even easier, and free'er than using Windows.

[Raz Meister]

'command not found'

Either you don't have Gentoo installed or the emerge program is not in your path.

Do a 'locate emerge' to get an idea of where it is, if you have completed the Gentoo install.

[MarkB]

I never said I had Gentoo installed I have Mandrake, which I was planning on ditching in favour of Gentoo because it didn't have everything I wanted

Confuddlement abounds! Thanks though!!

[Jerry]

I never said I had Gentoo installed I have Mandrake, which I was planning on ditching in favour of Gentoo because it didn't have everything I wanted

Confuddlement abounds! Thanks though!!

That would explain it ! Gentoo is the way forward

[splooge]

emerge is gentoo specific.

The package system is called 'portage', not 'emerge.' It's akin to the BSD's ports system.

I've been a gentoo user for well over a year now. It's my distribution of choice. One of the things that makes it so 'speedy' is that you can compile your binaries without 'bloat'. eg: Why compile PostgreSQL support into PHP when you don't need it? Or Java, for example. Say you have no plans on ever using Java, but there's like 100 programs out there that support it, so they have Java support built in. With Gentoo, you can keep java support out of ALL your binaries.

Smaller binaries = quicker to read off disk & you can fit more of them into RAM.

Then of course there's the processer optimizations. Why run binaries compiled for 386 architecture when you can run binaries compiled for 686 and beyond? Some argue that there's no noticible speed increase between the two (though I disagree) but it's all the small things like these above two examples that just give it that bleeding edge performance.

I was running a VB which would peak at 100 users on a P2-350 using Gentoo. No way that would have worked with Windows.

It's certainly not for the feint of heart, and I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner unless that person has a good knowledge of computers.

[MarkB]

Damn, and I just downloaded 3CDs worth of Mandrake 10 LOL.

[Jerry]

Will make some nice coasters then