On Friday 28 February 2003 22:27, Daniel Carrera wrote: > Hello, > I am thinking of using Gentoo, and I have a few questions. I figure that > this is the best place to ask. If anyone can answer any of these > questions, I would really appreciate it. > > 1) How complete is the set of ebuilds? For reference: I consider Mandrake > and RedHat to be fairly complete distributions. They carry most of what > anyone would want. >
Haven't missed anything yet. (Coming from SuSE) > 2) How quickly do ebuilds follow new code releases? Will I always be stuck > a version behind or will I be able to try out new stuff soon after it comes > out? Very quickly, e.g. Xfree 4.3 is already there but masked unstable. You can still emerge it if you want to. > > 3) One thing I like about Debian's apt-get is that once you have Debian > installed, you can upgrade to new versions without having to reinstall. > This is in contrast to RPM distros. If I have RedHat 7.3, the best way to > move to 8.0 is to backup my data, wipe the disk and reinstall. > Is Gentoo like Debian in this respect? Easy, there is no need to wait for release-numbers of Gentoo, you can easily be up2date whenever you want. > > 4) How easy is it to create my own ebuilds? I often like to install from > source, but I'd like to keep the benefits of package management. > Haven't tried my own. There are docs and they are usually superb. > 5) Is Gentoo really that much faster? Will it make a greater difference on > an old computer (think P133) or on a new computer (think Athlon XP/MP)? > I noticed a remarkable speedup on my box (Celeron 466Mhz 320 MB Ram) compared to SuSE on the same machine. I wouldn't want it on a slow box though. (like a Pentium1) > Thanks for the help. I am very interested in Gentoo, and any information > would be much appreciated. Another thing to consider is the support You get from the community. This mailinglist and the IRC channel #gentoo on irc.freenode.net are very very helpful. You'll see for yourself! Good Luck Roger -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
