Maybe time for a new distro?

[Andrew W. Gaunt]

I've tried a bunch of them at one time or another and we've sort of
settled on redhat or debian here at work (depends on the 
platform/application).

A co-worker has convinced me to look into Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org)
and I must say I kind of like it so far. We are just now installing it 
on a sparc
and will be using it as a backup/restore server using Amanda. The install
process is more 'manual' than that some of the other distros, but, one 
really
gets familiar with the machine after assembling it oneself. The install 
process
is well documented and there are a few different routes one can take. They
provide a trade-off between system optimization and install 
speed/convenience.

Bob Bell wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 11:13:58AM -0500, Randy Edwards wrote:
>
>> <babble mode=ON>
>>    In my warped worldview, there are only two distros: Debian and Red 
>> Hat.
>>
>>    Sure, there are lots of other really slick distros (e.g. Lycoris), 
>> but what I'm interested in is software -- usually the software that 
>> isn't included in the distro.
>>
>>    If I read about something cool I want to be able to go to its web 
>> site and grab it quick.  >90% of the time, it'll be packaged in only 
>> RH *.rpm and/or *.deb formats (or a simple apt-get will install it 
>> because some Debian developer has already packaged it).  Sure, I can 
>> d/l the tarball and type "make; make install" just as well as the 
>> next person, but packages are slick and were invented for a reason.  
>> And I know about alien, but that always impresses me as a kludge.
>
>
> I've starting using gentoo linux at work recently (in part due to peer 
> pressure).  I've found it quite remarkable how may software packages 
> have ebuilds already (probably due to the ease with which an ebuild is 
> created).  If you're not familiar, and ebuild is, in the roughest 
> sense, a scripted "configure; make; make install" installation.  But 
> is does more than that, including dependency analysis.  Installing a 
> package is as simple as "emerge mypackage".  You just may need to be a 
> little more patient, as the software is actually compiled on your 
> system (things like distcc can help).  The flip side of that, though, 
> is that your software is compiled with optimizations for your exact 
> hardware.
>
> Besides the whole ebuild thing, I've found it to be a pretty nice 
> distro all-around.
>


-- 
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