> I was comparing the installation instructions for Gentoo with that of > other Linuxes. I currently have Libranet, SuSE, two KNOPPIXes, UBUNTU, > installed and of course some decisions, such as you mention, were needed > but not to the extent that Gentoo requires. They didn't have a 100 > page set of microinstructions and rhetoric All I had was two sheets of > paper for each of these distros.. I'm not claiming that Gentoo can be > installed without requiring ANY decisions but surely, > the installation of a basic workable Gentoo that then could tailored to > whatever you want, could be made as simple as other Linux distros, > couldn't it?
Picking a linux distribution is like buying a car. There are many different flavors and each comes with its pros and cons. The user manual for a ford escort is shorter than that of a Hummer; that's not an indication of which vehicle is better. The choice, in the end, is to find a distribution which meets your requirements. If all you're concerned about is the length of the installation documentation, then maybe gentoo is not for you. If, however, you want a custom built system that is tuned to your specific hardware with detailed control over what packages are installed, then the binary based distributions will let you down. The difference in the installation documentation size relates to these alternate means of installing linux. We welcome new gentoo converts and assist them to get their boxen up and running and celebrate their decision to use (IMHO) the best distribution available. If the size of the installation documentation keeps a few folks from moving to gentoo, I don't think there's much we can do about it. -- [email protected] mailing list
