linux newbie cdwriting

[Dave Andruczyk]

--- Advent Systems <adventsystems at verizon.net> wrote:

> Dave,
> I know this is off the subject but do distros like gentoo, debian, and a 
> lot of the others I've heard of have desktop managers like gnome,kde,etc 
> or are they command line only? I'm new.
> 

It's a lot like the old U.S. army slogan, "it can be all that you it it to be" 
The installer is text based (which isn't bad as the gentoo handbook is
excellent) and you install what you want, whether its kde, gnome, windowmaker,
twm, fvwm, fluxbox or just a text based environment..  It's a very flexible
metadistribution and can be as lean and mean or as bloated as you want... For
the initial install you don't even have to compile anything,  you can install
binary packages from the CD's, or you can choose to recompile to suit your
environment. (recompiling is nice as you can add in features that may not be in
the precompiled packages (like support for certain extensions or file formats
(the file /etc/make.conf defines the flags ("USE flags") that are used for
compiling programs))  I use fairly extensive use flags when I built my box so
that I can do more than he basic packages,  but most users may not need that. 
I did it because I could.

I find it to be very clean and easy to manage. like any other distro you can
screw it up too, but it has tools, docs and an excellent online web forum for
help when you need it.





=====
Dave J. Andruczyk


		
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