Thoughts on Gentoo

[Kenneth]

> I always recommend Gentoo over Debian and Slackware as a person's first 
> "advanced" operating system, as the documentation in Gentoo is the most 
> gentle one out there, and after learning it, I'm comfortable with rpm, 
> rpm-source, or raw ./configure && make && make install with custom 
> configure flags in many other distros, and I would know how to approach 
> rolling my own distro if given the time and need.

I agree completely about the learning.  Although I've worked with LFS before,
and at my previous job, we got Linux set up running on custom embedded
hardware, so I know a bit about the internals already.


> You don't have 9 hours of "free time" to compile Gnome?  You sleep, 
> don't you?  Let it run overnight.  Regardless, I'm starting to prefer 
> fluxbox after seeing DSL's application of it.

Well, sure I sleep.  Unfortunately, this computer is used by others, and some
of them are awake when I'm sleeping...


> I agree with the idea that Gentoo works best on a LAMP or similar 
> setup.  If you have a server which has a razor-sharp task, like doing 
> nothing but SAMBA share, doing nothing but PostgreSQL or doing nothing 
> but MySQL, then Gentoo really shines, whereas a desktop kinda has 
> "everything" in it anyway, so the benefit over an all-binary repository 
> is lost.

I never thought about it that way.  Why would having everything installed
lose benefits?  Part of the reason I like this way of doing everything is
that I can keep it cleaner, and not have as much junk as the big distros
typically install.


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