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Compared with Debian or Red Hat, Gentoo is really a meta-distribution. It's a nice basis for creating your own distribution. In theory, Gentoo lets you mix the

Compared with Debian or Red Hat, Gentoo is really a meta-distribution. It's a nice basis for creating your own distribution. In theory, Gentoo lets you mix the latest version of some packages with well-tested, old versions of other packages and generate a release perfected for your organization. If the Gentoo release of some package, Ceph for example, isn't as up to date as you want, you can easily update it yourself and publish a new release to your servers. In practice, many people don't understand that Gentoo is a meta-distribution and try to run it like a simple distribution, leading to arbitrary ABI breakage and chaos. If you want to run Gentoo on servers, you need to test all upgrades on build machines before rolling them out. You need to publish your own binary packages. You need to do a lot of the testing that Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc. would be doing for you. I have some friends who set up their own hosting business based on Gentoo and they seem to be doing it right. Their servers are very stable. Testing updates is an ongoing expense, but I think it has worked out well for them.

jakobdabo 9y ago
Thank you for this information. So the bottom line is that, when comparing to more traditional distros, it's a lot of work to do it right.
mastax 9y ago
Thank you, that's a very interesting point. I suppose shared hosting providers already do their own builds of PHP, MySQL, Apache, etc. so a distro that's designed for that can work well.
cies 9y ago
I do not want to sound annoying, but this is how I read your very informative comment: > Compared with Debian or Red Hat, Gentoo is really a meta-distribution. It's a nice basis for creating your own distribution. I do not want that on my production server. We're in the $SOME_BACKEND_SERVICE business, not in the distro creating business. > In theory, Gentoo lets you mix the latest version of some packages with well-tested, old versions of other packages and generate a release perfected for your organization. I want a hyper stable base that is tested by the masses and when possible has some big org behind it who's supporting it (and thus very conservative when changing stuff). On top of that base I might roll my own packages or include a fringy package repository. Never I want the base to be different for everyone. > If the Gentoo release of some package, Ceph for example, isn't as up to date as you want, you can easily update it yourself and publish a new release to your servers. This is not too hard for any distro I've used. > In practice, many people don't understand that Gentoo is a meta-distribution and try to run it like a simple distribution, leading to arbitrary ABI breakage and chaos. If you want to run Gentoo on servers, you need to test all upgrades on build machines before rolling them out. You need to publish your own binary packages. You need to do a lot of the testing that Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc. would be doing for you. So may we conclude, as GP said, that running Gentoo on production servers is just not a good idea? > I have some friends who set up their own hosting business based on Gentoo and they seem to be doing it right. Their servers are very stable. This is a little too anecdotal for me :) I've done my share of Gentoo, and this system in intriguing. But when I need stability, as I need for backend services, then it will not even be on the long list. I found some similar-level intriguing features in NixOS. I'd probably still not run it for backend services, but I might be compelled to run it on the application layer in some cases.
- hathawsh 9y ago
  It depends on the application. I can easily imagine supercomputers running Gentoo, since Gentoo lets you build the world with risky optimization flags that just might work for you. I can also imagine high-security environments using Gentoo because Gentoo lets you eliminate unnecessary dependencies that may be a security risk. But honestly, I think most people who run Gentoo do it for the learning experience and for fun. :-)
  - cies 9y ago
    > I can easily imagine supercomputers running Gentoo Yeah, nice one! Very customized flags required. I was more talking about typical backend services, like Ceph or, say, a Riak or Postgres cluster.
    - emmelaich 9y ago
      You can get source rpms for say Centos or Scientific Linux and maintain your own set of patches and flags. Minimise your deviation from the stable stuff that everyone else is using.
      - cies 9y ago
        Which I expect is more common in super computers. But still, maybe there is some stuff with special processors that needs all to be compiled specifically with support for that type of thing, in order to make proper use of the underlying machine.
- nikanj 9y ago
  >> Compared with Debian or Red Hat, Gentoo is really a meta-distribution. It's a nice basis for creating your own distribution. > I do not want that on my production server. We're in the $SOME_BACKEND_SERVICE business, not in the distro creating business. A lot of companies know that Google and Facebook have their own distros. Ergo, to become as successful, they too must build their own distro.

jakobdabo 9y ago

Thank you for this information. So the bottom line is that, when comparing to more traditional distros, it's a lot of work to do it right.

mastax 9y ago

Thank you, that's a very interesting point. I suppose shared hosting providers already do their own builds of PHP, MySQL, Apache, etc. so a distro that's designed for that can work well.

cies 9y ago

I do not want to sound annoying, but this is how I read your very informative comment: > Compared with Debian or Red Hat, Gentoo is really a meta-distribution. It's a nice basis for creating your own distribution. I do not want that on my production server. We're in the $SOME_BACKEND_SERVICE business, not in the distro creating business. > In theory, Gentoo lets you mix the latest version of some packages with well-tested, old versions of other packages and generate a release perfected for your organization. I want a hyper stable base that is tested by the masses and when possible has some big org behind it who's supporting it (and thus very conservative when changing stuff). On top of that base I might roll my own packages or include a fringy package repository. Never I want the base to be different for everyone. > If the Gentoo release of some package, Ceph for example, isn't as up to date as you want, you can easily update it yourself and publish a new release to your servers. This is not too hard for any distro I've used. > In practice, many people don't understand that Gentoo is a meta-distribution and try to run it like a simple distribution, leading to arbitrary ABI breakage and chaos. If you want to run Gentoo on servers, you need to test all upgrades on build machines before rolling them out. You need to publish your own binary packages. You need to do a lot of the testing that Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc. would be doing for you. So may we conclude, as GP said, that running Gentoo on production servers is just not a good idea? > I have some friends who set up their own hosting business based on Gentoo and they seem to be doing it right. Their servers are very stable. This is a little too anecdotal for me :) I've done my share of Gentoo, and this system in intriguing. But when I need stability, as I need for backend services, then it will not even be on the long list. I found some similar-level intriguing features in NixOS. I'd probably still not run it for backend services, but I might be compelled to run it on the application layer in some cases.

hathawsh 9y ago
It depends on the application. I can easily imagine supercomputers running Gentoo, since Gentoo lets you build the world with risky optimization flags that just might work for you. I can also imagine high-security environments using Gentoo because Gentoo lets you eliminate unnecessary dependencies that may be a security risk. But honestly, I think most people who run Gentoo do it for the learning experience and for fun. :-)
- cies 9y ago
  > I can easily imagine supercomputers running Gentoo Yeah, nice one! Very customized flags required. I was more talking about typical backend services, like Ceph or, say, a Riak or Postgres cluster.
  - emmelaich 9y ago
    You can get source rpms for say Centos or Scientific Linux and maintain your own set of patches and flags. Minimise your deviation from the stable stuff that everyone else is using.
    - cies 9y ago
      Which I expect is more common in super computers. But still, maybe there is some stuff with special processors that needs all to be compiled specifically with support for that type of thing, in order to make proper use of the underlying machine.
nikanj 9y ago
>> Compared with Debian or Red Hat, Gentoo is really a meta-distribution. It's a nice basis for creating your own distribution. > I do not want that on my production server. We're in the $SOME_BACKEND_SERVICE business, not in the distro creating business. A lot of companies know that Google and Facebook have their own distros. Ergo, to become as successful, they too must build their own distro.