lisa86

Hi! I just installed gentoo with xfce from the minimal CD. Is emerge the only way to install packages in gentoo? I read that gentoo can install binary packages, but couldn't find sufficient info in their wiki. It was confusing. Any help would be appreciated.
TIA

reed9

Well, I don't know Gentoo too well, but my impression is that there is no official repository of binary packages. So if you want binaries, you would have to find someone hosting a 3rd party site from which to download.

What they do have available for binary package creation and installation seems to be more geared towards creating your own packages or local repository, to make reinstallation or uninstalling and reinstalling programs more convenient.
Gentoo Linux Documentation -- Portage Features

I would say if you want something with good support for binary packages, but also has a ports-like system for building your own packages, Arch Linux is the way to go.

Other options are PC-BSD, or Slackware also has a ports like system available. (I prefer Arch to Slackware due to Arch's package manager, Pacman.)

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lisa86

Well even I use Arch, just wanted to play with gentoo for a change.
Well it's not that I don't know about gentoo's compile everything policy, and it is certainly not the 1st distro I have tried. I just wanted to to know that after 14hours of setup, I still have to compile small things like firefox, pidgin, even they take a few minutes to compile. I just wonder what if I want to install a game like nexuiz or supertux, it's going to take forever! I guess that's gentoo's way. It's a bit of overkill imo. So I was looking for an alternative way of installing precompiled packages.
Thnx for ur reply.

Jonathan183

You will find some packages like firefox-bin and openoffice-bin available in portage, there are others as well (I think they usually have -bin on the end of the package name).

You may be able to find other repositories and overlays with binary packages in. I have not really looked for them ...

phulaeo

If all you want to do is browse the web and chat... yes, Gentoo is overkill for that purpose.

It's by far my favorite distro not because it fits every niche, or even for speed... it's the customization possible thanks to Portage that makes me love it. If you want to have absolute control over what goes on a box (for instance, if you're building a server and want only a specific stack running), Gentoo becomes a much more useful choice.

If compilation is something that bothers you, then I'd definitely go with something else.

MikeTbob

I agree, although I cry and moan about Gentoo always crapping out on me, I have always managed to work my way through it. I don't see myself getting rid of Gentoo because I think it's the gravy train with biscuit wheels. I think Gentoo is pretty darn fast when compiling if you have a decent machine to work with, so programs like Firefox and Nexuiz only take 20 minutes (If that long) to build.

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phulaeo

Yeah... my own machines are pretty outdated at this point (newest machine I have is a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo laptop, and my home servers are Athlon X2's), but they still build everything I run on them reasonably quickly.

One of the few times I have been rather irked by Gentoo was when I put it on my Eee 701... i.e. the weakest possible netbook. Granted, this was my mistake... but I did get it working.

Plus, an update is usually a fire-and-forget process... there's the occasional emerge crap-out, and sometimes things get really strange with major software updates, but it's usually not bad. I've been running the same installation of Gentoo on my laptop since April 14, 2008, and have been very, very remiss in doing regular updates... despite going through some large and painful rebuilds and upgrades (including at least one profile update), it's still my daily driver.

After putting openbox with Debian on my Eee, I've been wanting to do a fresh Gentoo install on the laptop and use that instead of Gnome as my GUI... my god is it fast!