--- Meir Kriheli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tuesday 26 August 2003 18:53, Chris de Vidal wrote: > > Volunteers needed! > > http://debtoo.org > > What about Gentoo's best feature: dependency and feature customization > utilizing USE flags ?
According to Gentoo.org, that's not necessarily Gentoo's best feature: "Larry the Cow was a bit frustrated with Linux. The latest distros seemed to be just a bunch of the same old stuff. Nothing new - nothing innovative. Then Larry tried Gentoo Linux. He was impressed. He found a BSD-style ports system witch a bunch of advanced features. He discovered lots of up-to-date packages that could be auto-built using the optimization settings and build-time functionality that he wanted, rather than what some distro creator thought would be best for him. All of the sudden, Larry the Cow was in control. And he liked it." DebToo has: BSD-style ports system? No, but apt is close (handling dependancies). Apt-build is closer (handling dependancies and building from source). I'd rather not recompile _everything_, so I usually use packages even on BSD. DebToo will give the user the option not to compile if he/she desires. Lots of up-to-date packages? Yep. Debian "unstable" (quite stable for me, thank-you) is very current. Not as current as Gentoo, but certainly more current than, say, RedHat or Mandrake. As an ex-RedHat user, it's impressive. Auto-built using optimization settings and build-time functionality that I want? Yep. Apt-build supports extra compile-time options. To answer your question: USE flags? No, but apt handles dependancies, and I've never installed more bloat than I wanted with Debian.. the minimum install is tiny; I don't use Gnome and it didn't get installed for my Gnome apps. Close enough. Something you didn't mention: Gentoo lets the user install multiple versions of one app. AFAIK this isn't possible with Debian/DebToo; the user that needs this might want to investigate Gentoo. I will point him/her at Gentoo.org and ask them to have a nice day. A DebToo user will only need to recompile what he/she wants. Even BSD gives you this option with its packages. A DebToo user might like the way Debian does things; I do. For instance, I like having 20,000 packages* and very good RPM compatibility with alien. I like other things Debian does, and perhaps a new DebToo convert will, too. * Rough guess, counting the "official" 9000 packages + countless thousands of "unofficial" user-contributed packages. There are some things Gentoo does better, I will quickly admit this. Nonetheless, DebToo will be quite good at what it does, and offers some things Gentoo can't. Use what you like. I like Debian/DebToo. ===== /dev/idal "GNU/Linux is free freedom" --Me __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
