To speed up working with slow hardware and for overall convenience, we’re now also offering binary packages for download and direct installation! For most architectures, this is limited to the core system and weekly updates - not so for amd64 and arm64 however. There we’ve got a stunning >20 GByte of packages on our mirrors, from LibreOffice to KDE Plasma and from Gnome to Docker. Gentoo stable, updated daily. Enjoy! And read on for more details!
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Quite the statement that Gentoo has survived for so long compiling from source but, even with ever advancing processor speeds, they’ve finally gone "Nah… Takes to long. ".
I mean, I don’t blame them. Yesterday I left my machine building a PyTorch package for 4 hours on a 12 core processor.
To think the day Gentoo goes binary would finally come…
Next: Slackware get automatic dependency resolution
Well we’ve had binary packages for ages for big builds like firerox and default is still to use source packages.
Still I’m really excited for this, having the whole, or big parts of the package tree, will speed up initial installations by a lot on weak arm systems for example. Now initial installation can be done quick and later you could still compile stuff yourself for the full gentoo experience.
- java ( @java@beehaw.org ) 21•6 months ago
But why? Isn’t building from sources the whole point of Gentoo?
For the ability to mix and match. Makes it easy for newcomers.
There are Gentoo distros that have binary packages, and Funtoo (a Gentoo-based distro that’s 64-bit only) even suggests using Flatpak for certain software that needs 32-bit resources like Steam. Hell, you can install Flatpak on Gentoo if you want. Gentoo also provided binary packages in the past but only for a few packages (mainly web browsers, but annoyingly not qtwebengine. maybe that’s changed here.)
Gentoo is more about having fine-grained control of your system than anything else nowadays. If that’s what you want, go ahead! For most people, Arch or even something with less control like Ubuntu or Fedora will suffice.
I think I will revert some deviations from the default useflag settings to use the binary versions of some browsers.
literally 2 days ago i tried installing gentoo in a vm but gave up because it would take too long to compile… and now this??? guess my timing was pretty bad
if i did use gentoo, i’d probably compile smaller programs from source and bigger things like kernel and web browser i would use as binaries.
Wouldn’t the larger ones be the ones you’d get the most benefit from compiling?
Not really I think optimizing it gives you small performance gains.
Seems kinda pointless to compile most packages unless there are specific performance optimizations or non-default features that can be enabled. I think the way I would use this would be to do binary by default and build only on the occasional instance there is a tangible benefit.
I think it’s a good move. It doesn’t take anything away from people who want to keep compiling everything, but now people on especially old laptops can enjoy the distro too.
Though I will probably continue being a void user this makes me want to use gentoo more then it did before.
Love this change. I wonder if I can install a binary-based Gentoo distro and gradually progress from there, if I wanted to, with locally compiled packages that partially replace the binaries. I hope this is not an all-or-nothing situation, so better read the announcement.
EDIT: Hey, yes we can!
So… Bentoo? Bintoo?
For the uninitiated, does “gen” imply source/compilation somehow?
no, it’s a penguin
No. But “bin” implies “binary” (already compiled).
Gen-toobin
The distro for white water rafters.
Good for them
Been using Gentoo on my server for over a decade now and probably won’t ever leave the compiling front, especially with a 12-core/24-thread CPU making it go as quick as regular binary updates on my mint laptop… But that being said, in happy to see them considering to do this. It’ll bring in some folks who are afraid of (or just dislike) compiling everything from source. I think the biggest packages that’d benefit from this are definitely the browsers and desktop environments.
Isn’t the reason everyone says they use Gentoo is because of “all the optimisations” but if you’re not compiling for your specific hardware doesn’t that go out the window?
If someone claims to do it for “all the optimizations”, you can immediately assume they are full of shit. If anything, the true gain is the control over the features to compile or not compile into your packages.
I’m also wondering who this is actually for. There’s no shortage of binary distributions, I thought Gentoo’s whole use case was if you want to compile everything.
I can see it working if one wants to customize the compilation flags of a few packages they have strong opinions on, but otherwise don’t care about the rest of the system. Sort of like the binary cache in NixOS, where by default you use the binary cache, but you can customize parts of your system triggering a source-based installation for that parts.
Not necessarily. You probably want to optimize the kernel and a few packages. Then there are some apps where you want to build them with specific features. Then there’s a bunch of stuff that takes forever to build where a binary would be convenient. Flags and optimizations aren’t that important for KDE frameworks or Firefox.
Offering binaries is a really nice middle ground. Gentoo makes it so easy to build custom packages from source but it’s always been all or nothing. I don’t want to wait 2-3 hours building updated libraries or Firefox every time there’s a patch.
Personally, I would be interested in a distro that had binary packages, easy builds like Gentoo and something like Arch’s AUR.
that makes it usable! might give it a try.
Wow, when I went to bed yesterday it was only December 28, but now it is somehow already April 1!
This is what Gentoo needed. I’ve been using it for a long time and love it as it is but sometimes when there’s a bunch of slot conflicts or a compile error it makes me wish I just dealt with binaries instead. Now that we have the best of both worlds, it will make Gentoo appeal to a wider userbase and make it less painful to use on older hardware.
This might get me to switch to Gentoo. I just broke my Arch again, so this is the perfect time…
If you like having more finetuned control, Gentoo is pretty neat.
Wait, didn’t Gentoo have a binary cache? I seem to remember many years ago that I used one…