Gentoo Linux

[Kurt Granroth]

On Saturday 21 September 2002 04:33 pm, George Toft wrote:
> Quick question - What version of xfree86 are they using?  I looked on
> the web site, and short of downloading it and installing it, I cannot
> tell.  I ask, because I need 4.2.99.2 or later, and Red Hat does not
> offer it yet.

Gentoo has normal release packages as well as alpha packages.  The release 
packages are listed on the website.. I'm not sure if the alpha packages are 
listed anywhere.

HOWEVER, you can see the packages themself in 'gentoo/gentoo-sources' on any 
of the mirrors: 
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo/gentoo-sources/

I see the following X packages:
X4299-1.tar.bz2
X4299-2.tar.bz2
X4299-3.tar.bz2
X4299-4.tar.bz2
X4299-20020827-1.tar.bz2
X4299-20020827-2.tar.bz2
X4299-20020827-3.tar.bz2

Not 100% which is which but it sure looks like what you are looking for.

I've been using Gentoo at work now for a few days (expertly installed by 
Kevin) and really like it.  It's *by far* the most up to date distro I've 
ever used.. and it's trivially simple to keep up to date.  It's like debian 
only without the years-out-of-date packages!

On the other hand, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to a newbie (other 
than the livecd version) or even a moderately experienced Linux user.  One 
sort of gets used to having everything already configured for you when you 
use SuSE or Mandrake or the like.  Even debian seems to configure a *few* 
things for you.  Gentoo pretty much installs the packages and lets you 
loose at the config files.

IF you (not "you = George", this is "you = generic person") are already 
Linux experienced and IF you are willing to spend some time waiting for it 
to compile and IF you know how to edit all of the /etc files, then Gentoo 
is a wonderful distro.  If, instead, you just want a Linux system that is 
preconfigured almost exactly right, is easy to use, and can put of with 
packages that are a few months(!) out of date, then I'd still recommend 
SuSE or Mandrake.
-- 
Kurt Granroth - "KDE -- Conquer Your Desktop"
KDE Developer/Evangelist | granroth@kde.org
http://www.granroth.org  | kurt@granroth.org