Re: [Gimp-developer] Portable development environment for GIMP

[Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>]

On 10/02/2015 09:24 PM, Christopher Curtis wrote:
> I've never used it but wouldn't Gentoo be ideal for this? A source-based
> distribution that compiles and installs the latest dependencies?

Gentoo usually is compiled optimized for the specific hardware that it's 
run on. I'm assuming this "vagrant" thing works somewhat like a virtual 
machine? If so, the following post gives generalized settings for 
installing Gentoo as a VirtualBox guest, which might be applicable for 
vagrant:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1017314-highlight-virtualbox.html

And this wiki post has some general considerations on settings for 
make.conf and for compiling the kernel in a virtual machine:

http://gentoo-en.vfose.ru/wiki/Virtualbox_Guest

So if "vagrant" is like a virtual machine and if Gentoo really can be 
installed "not optimized for specific hardware", then Gentoo has some 
advantages:

It's a rolling distribution that has recent software always available, 
with the option to enable "even more recent" that isn't as well-tested 
(but it almost always works flawlessly). Usually with Gentoo the only 
software I need to install in the GIMP prefix is babl, GEGL, and GIMP. 
Whereas other distributions that don't have such recent packages often 
require glib, gdk-pixbuf, etc.

If you start with the right configuration files, profile and use flags, 
and use a minimal window manager instead of a full desktop (I use 
IceWM+startx), you can install GIMP in Gentoo with no gnome 
dependencies, no polkit, no policykit, no consolekit, no systemd, etc, 
etc, etc. In other words, there's a *lot* less required software to 
install and update. And the resulting system uses less memory when it's 
sitting there doing nothing, compared to systems with all the bells and 
whistles. If anyone wants to try Gentoo, I'd be happy to share example 
configuration files for a minimal install.

On the other hand, installing Gentoo and setting up the configuration 
files does require a bit of thinking, and sometimes the Handbook isn't 
as clear as one might hope. But fortunately the Gentoo forums are very 
helpful.

Best,
Elle