services

[Kristian Erik Hermansen]

On Jan 30, 2008 1:47 PM, stu <wien33 at cox.net> wrote:
> IIRC, the main differences between Gentoo and Debian is that Debian uses
> binary files from the Debian repositories, while Gentoo is essentially
> compiled directly from source code, which is why it takes so long. With
> Gentoo, OTOH, you can get the latest "bleeding edge" stuff, while Debian
> tends to use the "stable" versions that have been around for awhile. (I
> remember having to compile Inkscape 4.3 because the Debian repos were still
> using 4.1)
> What other differences might make one system preferable to the other?
> (Not trying to start a Distro war here! I believe the real strength of Linux
> is hidden within it's diversity!)

You can get up to date versions of software from Ubuntu's 'backports'
repository, or if you are quite daring, running the unreleased alpha
of Ubuntu as it is being tested.  People think I'm crazy because I
routinely use ubuntu+1 starting the first day of the alpha1 release.
This puts me 5 months ahead of everyone else and gives me a chance to
partake in making Ubuntu better for everyone.  I only do this on
machines where I can deal with issues, such as a home computer.  I
would never do something like that in production or on a corporate
machine.  However, you would be surprised at the surprisingly low
number of bugs I have encountered even running Ubuntu Hardy (8.04)
since last November :-)  You can find some of my bug reports on
launchpad.net...
-- 
Kristian Erik Hermansen
"Know something about everything and everything about something."