> Just remember that Gentoo takes longer to install than a binary distro.
How is that relevant? Comparing my Linux server, and my Windows server (from memory, I don't have any anymore). Windows was faster. >Upgrading packages in Linux always takes less time that in Windows. >Whether it's apt, up2date, urpmi, or YOU it is just a matter of telling >it to upgrade and off it goes, d/ls all the packages and installs them. >It took me 3 hours to upgrade a Win 98 box since I had to reboot after >every upgrade, and once the system came back up there would be an >upgrade for the upgrade I just installed. That alone is reason enough >for me not to want to use Windows. Samba needs an upgrade before it can be installed. Binary Distros are old, and Compile-on-the-fly need to be DLed and Compiled. Windows has no such need. Same with Email, Bind, Apache, etc. Closed source doesn't allow that kind of tuning, so it simply doesn't happen. How much configuration needs to be done to get Samba running as a PDC? What about Windows? Windows IS faster at some things. >I don't have any problems with printers. Modern versions of Red >Hat/Mandrake/SuSE always seem to detect and configure my printers at >home and at work. Samba on the other hand can be a bitch, but once you >have it setup for your network you can just copy the config. file to any >new installs and it will work fine. Mandrake is pretty good about >setting up a simple samba server. You just tell it to let users share >files, and with the GUI any user can share a folder in their home dir. >just as easily as in Windows. Ummm, connected to the box, maybe. But not network printers. I'm not saying it's hard, I'm just saying that it takes longer on Linux than on legacy. Regardless, this isn't a good or bad thing. It just is. Initianl setup is irrelevant. I care about the "once it's moved into production" and forward timeframe. Linux easily wins there... Kev.
