[CLUE-Tech] gentoo evangelizing

[Collins Richey]

I've tried a lot of distros (Caldera, Mandrake, SuSE, Linux from
Scratch, jblinux, etc.), but now I've settled on gentoo.  I've been
running this distro for about a year now, and it is a rock-solid
stable offering.

If you prefer a slick, installer-does-all, shrink-wrapped packge with
RPMs, stick with Red Hat or Mandrake or SuSE.  If you like to tinker
and stay up to date, give this one a try. Here are some of the basics:

	* gentoo is (at present) an install-from-sources distro.  You
download an ISO image, boot from it, 
	   install a basic system, then install any packages you desire from
the sources.  There's a pretty
	   good install manual on the site
	* gentoo uses a unique package manager called Portage which was based
on the BSD ports system.
	   Gentoo packages (called ebuilds) consist of dependancy logic, urls
to locate the pristine source
	   tarballs, and  instructions on how to compile  the package into
your system and how to  remove
	   the package safely from your system.
	* There are ebuilds for most everything you would like (KDE, gnome,
X, databases, etc., etc.).  The
	   developers keep up to date with most new releases.  For example,
the ebuild for the 2.4.15 kernel
	   (with or without additional patches) is already on the system.
	* There are not a lot of post-install procedures.  You need to know
how to setup and run a given
	   package.
	* The only real drawback is the compile time required to install some
of the packages.  It took me
	   about a week to get the KDE and gnome series integrated (K6-II
300MZ).  But of course, I use
	   XFCE most of the time, so it wasn't a big problem to wait on the
others.
	* Another difference is the boot scripts.  Gentoo has developed a new
integrted boot scripts
	    methodology that is not quite the Sysvinit sequence you are
familiar with.  It takes a little
	   getting used to!
	* I've been running the _rc6 version of gentoo on reiserfs and ext3
(last week) for about 8 months now
	   with no failures.  During that period of time, the Portage
packaging system has been revamped	   
	   several times, and the KDE and gnome related packages have been
overhauled as well.
	* In the future, gentoo will offer binary install packages as well,
but that's not available today.
	
The url for gentoo is http://www.gentoo.org/.  There are active
gentoo-dev and gentoo-user lists.

Give it a try, if you have a spare partition.

-- 
Collins Richey
Denver Area
gentoo_rc6 k2.4.15-pre5+ext3+xfce+sylpheed+galeon