Thoughts on Gentoo

[Dan Lund]

I'd have to agree.  I've used Gentoo since 2000 and even pushed a
segment of my server platform to it. (56 servers as of currently)
I've since leaned more towards Debian and CentOS (RHEL4 when it comes
to Oracle).

I still use Gentoo on my desktop, but I'm leaning towards changing
that when I have time to reinstall.  I can't take the chance of my
next update taking Glibc or Xorg down, or futzing with it for hours on
end.  Considering I'm using the 'stable' branch (non ~x86) you'd
figure that kind of stuff would be old news.

--Dan

On 9/8/06, Kurt Granroth <plug-discuss at granroth.org> wrote:
> There were six of us in the office at work using Gentoo for about two years.
> One by one, we each finally had enough and switched to something else (mostly
> Ubuntu or SUSE).  In fact, the guy who originally pushed us towards Gentoo
> and was the staunchest advocate of it sent out his "last straw" message just
> a few days ago.
>
> Why?  HORRIBLE quality assurance on the packages.  We grew to dread every
> update because we knew that something else was going to completely break...
> since *something* always did.  If we were lucky, then it would be a little
> package that could either be fixed or blocked or worked around.  If we
> weren't lucky (and it feels like we rarely were), then we would have an
> unusable system for a few hours or day or so.  This was hardly a viable
> arrangement in a work environment.
>
> Gentoo has some great ideas and, in the beginning, showed a lot of promise.
> But if you want a reliable distribution, you had better be in one of the
> following camps:
> 1. Never update your system
> 2. Use it as a LAMP (or other "simple" server) system with minimal packages
> 3. Have a lot of time to mess around with it
>
> I do recommend putting it on your spare partition, though.  It can be a lot of
> fun if you like customizing things and aren't relying on it for anything
> critical.
>
> Kurt
-- 
"Courage is like love; it must have hope to nourish it."
-Napoleon Bonaparte