On Fri, 2003-02-28 at 14:27, Daniel Carrera wrote: > 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.
It is extremely complete. I have found everything that I have ever needed in portage. > 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? Usually within a few hours! If you want a bleeding edge system, then Gentoo is perfect. > 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? I used to be a Debian user, and as far as upgrading goes, it works very similar. There are usually less broken packages with Gentoo though :-). > 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. Honestly, I can't think of any time that you would need to do this. There are so many packages in Gentoo, and the best feature of Gentoo is that *everything* is installed from source and compiled to fit your machine. > 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 difference right away on my AthlonXP 2000, and on my AthlonTB 900. Everything is much faster because it is compiled from source. As I mentioned, I was a die-hard Debian user, and once I used Gentoo I was hooked. My only complaint is that Gentoo is much slower when it comes to installing packages because all of then have to be compiled. But that is a small price to pay for a distribution as fine tuned as Gentoo. I suggest that you give it a try! -- Jon Ellis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Software Developer LDC, Inc. dba Liberty Distribution Company -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
