[CLUE-Tech] Debian: gpm not installing by default

[Collins]

On Sat, 20 Apr 2002 22:02:43 -0600 (MDT) jbrockmeier at earthlink.net
wrote:> On Sat, 20 Apr 2002, Collins wrote:
> 
> *snip*
> 
> > I've been a gentoo afficionado from the early days (mostly on
> > gentoo since early last year).  It is now a really good (tm)
> > product.  If you can handle "build a system from source" with all
> > the downloads and compiles (3-5 days for a complete system), it's
> > the only way to fly.
> 
> I read a recent review of Gentoo - according to the reviewer,
> some of the compile scripts (I forget what they're called) aren't
> of the best quality. Have you had any problems with any of the
> packages for Gentoo. (I realize they're not pre-compiled
> packages, but I can't recall the word for their ports scripts...)
> 

There are occasional problems with the install scripts (portage is the
package maintainer system), but the developers are very responsive. 
Nothing remains unfixed for long.

There's a lot of discussion on the user group about how best to fix
the problem permanently.  Quite a few people are recommending tagging
the fixes as stable (3 months behind current), current, and
experimental.

If you install a system from scratch, you won't encounter any of these
problems, and your system will be rock solid.  The KDE 3.0 package,
for example, was perfect if you hadn't tinkered with the Beta
releases.

I've really only encountered two major problems in two years.  One was
about 8-9 months ago when a major revision to the boot scripts
occurred.  I did a reinstall to cure that.  About a month ago, a
binary incompatible but source compatible update to libpng was
released without any warning.  This broke and required recompile of
most X-based stuff (kde, gnome, xfce, etc.).

Once again, you would never encounter this type of problem when
installing from scratch.

Except for the occasional update snafu, gentoo is the most rock solid
distro that I've used.  You just need to stay a little behind the
times with updates.  There are plenty of bleeding edge afficionados
who will try it out and report what's broken.

The other side of the coin is this.  Like every linux distro,
installing on a laptop or on unusual new peripherals (RAID, etc.) can
be problematic.  Also, gentoo requires you to download lots of source
packages.  If you have only a 56K modem, this will be a trying time. 
My cable router/modem works OK, but some people have had difficulty
with getting some of the more unusual DSL setups to play nicely.

I'm onboard for the duration, but YMMV.

-- 
Collins Richey - Denver Area - WWTLRD?
Gentoo_rc6-15(1.1a) 2.4.19pre - xfce + sylpheed + mozilla