[clue-tech] Distro musings

[Collins Richey]

On 7/30/06, Ken MacFerrin <lists at macferrin.com> wrote:
>
> > Gentoo- my favorite for years
>
> Why keep writing?  You hit the nail on the head right here.  Since
> trying Gentoo several years ago I have yet to find a superior desktop
> distro.  I wouldn't run it on older hardware and will often use Debian
> for servers, but with Gentoo as a desktop you get:

[ reasons snipped]

Yes indeed. I've been lambasted on another list that I've participated
in for years for exactly that ebullience in praise of Gentoo. I've
been studying and using the alternatives for some time now - just to
see what is offered and (in the case of CentOS) to have a distro on
hand that we use at work (RHEL4)  - but I've reached the same
conclusions I already knew years ago.

Gentoo is not perfect, just miles ahead of the competition for my own
personal use. There are even a lot ofGentoo server installations,
although Gentoo will never have the Debian/RedHat numbers. Piece by
piece I'm getting my system up to speed, but there are a few snags
along the way.

Apache, MySQL, and Postgres were a snap, but there was one little bump
with Postgres. Way back in February someone reported on Forums that
the Gentoo Postgres Guide was inclomplete due to a bug in the Postgres
ebuilds, but neither the ebuilds nor the guide have been corrected to
date. I had to search for the answer. The ebuilds setup an incomplete
postgres user (shadow entry is missing), so you can't assign a
postgres password until you delete/readd the postgres user.

Also, I'm still waiting for anwers to setup my printer with cups. I've
installed all the cups/foomatic/gimp-print/etc. but the list of
available printers is incomplete. All of the Epson CXnnnn definitions
are missing, for example, and I have a CX4200. This printer worked
just fine on Ubuntu.

I had a great deal of difficulty with my sound card (ens1371). That's
more of an alsa problem than a Gentoo problem. Now that the sound card
is working (the ens1371 module must be loaded, removed, and loaded
again to work!!!), no one can tell me how to get KDE sounds to work.
KDE sounds also worked without a hitch on Ubuntu.

So, all is not perfect even in desktop land, but I'll get there. It's
a refrehsing change from work where the oldy mouldy RHEL4 is all the
rage.

The beauty of Gentoo is that no one is putting together an
"Enterprise" version where you have to put up with old cruft for a
long time. It really helps (for a home tinkerer like myself) to find
the current versions of MySQL, PostgreSQL, and PHP out of the box.
Since I have no legacy systems to support, I could care less about the
older popular versions.

Enjoy,

-- 
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.