Source Based Distro's.

[Josh Johnson]

My response would have been EXACTLY like Dave's. I've had Gentoo installed 
for 
about 2 1/2 years with no problems except for one time when I totally 
hosed the system (accidentally uninstalled glibc...don't ask me why). But 
taht was totally my 
fault, and still recoverable. Just booted the install cd and reinstalled 
glibc. The support in the forums is amazing (from fellow users and 
developers alike), their package management system is hands-down the best 
I've ever used, and because everything is built for your processor it 
freakin 
flies! My P3 550 here runs faster than my P4 at work running FC3. If you 
are looking for a user-friendly install, then don't go source based. But 
if you're willing to put a little bit of time and effort into it you will 
be amazingly happy with the results.

Note: just so that I'm not misleading in anyway; Gentoo (and I'm assuming 
other source distros as well) is not a cakewalk after its installed. Its 
not hard, but most every package (except libraries) will have to be 
configured. eg. sendmail and xorg will not "just work" out of the box. You 
will have to setup the config files. In my opinion, this is the beauty of 
Gentoo: You get exactly what you want. But some people don't like this.

-JoshJ
http://lotuseaters.no-ip.com

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005, Dave Andruczyk wrote:

>
>
> --- mihakriket Steffens <mihakriket at msn.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi All. I have tried many disto's and I keeping hearing alot about the
>> source based distro's. As far as getting better performance or installing
>> only what you want. I have never tried but have seen articles on these
>> distro's. I was wondering if anybody can recommend a souce based distro?
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Harry
>>
>
> Gentoo has worked very well for me.  Been using it for close to 3 years now..
> (The longest I've run ANY one linux distro before I got fed up with it and
> switched).  My primary machine (down cause it's still in boxes) has never been
> reinstalled,  just kept up to date (weekly or so).
>
> The initial installation took the longest of any distro, but I wouldn't label
> it as difficult. Just read the gentoo handbook and be prepared to get your
> hands a little dirty.
>
> Updating the system has been a breeze( "emerge sync; emerge world -uD"), and
> I've only ran into minor issues (mainly due to me not reading the documentation
> nad doing something to mess up the system)  The gentoo forums are very good for
> solving the little issues that can creep up (esp if you fail to keep the
> machine reasonable up to date. (at least do it monthly at the very least))
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dave J. Andruczyk
>
>
>
>
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