On 2012-09-12, Alex Schuster <wo...@wonkology.org> wrote: > It takes some more time though to maintain it, compared to the other > distros.
My experience is the opposite. Before Gentoo, I used mainly RPM-based distros (first RedHat, then later Mandrake). I find Gentoo requires much less maintenance effort than RH or Mandrake did. RH and Mandrake were fine right after install, but they gradually deteriorate over time. Eventually you get to the point where everytime you need to install or update something you end up in RPM dependancy hell: package A requires one version of a library but package B requires a different version. You then spend _days_ trying to find a compatible combination of applicaation and library RPMs. This continues to get worse and worse over time, until... ... there's a major version upgrade. Upgrading between major versions always failed miserably, so you end up having to do a reinstall from scratch every couple years. None of that is a problem with Gentoo. Occasionally, an upgrade requires some tweaking of keywords or use-flags, but it's nothing like the RPM dependancy hell and major-upgrade fiascos I had to put up with from other distros. I also used Debian on a few machines. They tended to be less hassle than the RPM-based machines, but they were fairly minimalist server machines (no X, no "desktop environments", no monster application packages, just mail servers for a couple mailboxes). > And the installation is much more complicated of course. The installation itself is more complex, but when you're done the system works. With CentOS and Fedora Core, there's always hours of futzing around after the install trying to get things like networking running. For most things, anything other than the one or two cases allowed by the installer turns out to be a mess. Don't get me started on RedHat's two completely separate network configuration subsystems that don't get along with each other... And try telling Ubunto to install the bootloader in something other than the MBR. It gives you that option if you click enough buttons, then it claims to have done it, but it just doesn't work... -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I threw up on my at window! gmail.com