On Apr 7, 2005 1:03 PM, Eric S. Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: > > no, sensibility. gentoo is in a big part a do it yourself distri, way to > > overwhelming for a poor newbie. The first real error will freak him out and > > if he had not some quality time with gentoo before by doing some basic > > stuff, > > he will even not be able to disinguish a real error from a nuisance and so > > will be horrified even more. > > you're limiting yourself and the distribution by this set of assumptions. >
Eric, I agree with you. Strongly agree. Very, very, very strongly agree. I'm still a newbie. I ran Redhat in one way or another for a couple of years before hearing about Gentoo. I'd never depend on Redhat because I didn't understand RPM and didn't know where to get to get something new. Compiling code seemed difficult at the time. The Gentoo install docs scared me off for 6 months. I figured I was going to waste a week trying Gentoo. The first install was flawless. The docs were so good it amazed me. It still does. Two years later and not a single Gentoo machine of mine has really bit the dust. Once your distro, whatever it is, is up and running they all seem quite similar to me now. I'd argue that Gentoo, via emerge & portage, is actually easier to run day in and day out. I have no worries of upgrades with Gentoo. I just do updates. I have one difference of opinion from many Gentoo developers about the value of Gentoo. I don't think USE flags and individual configuration is all that important to me. I want the box to work, and work flawlessly. Mostly it does. Second I want access to apps. Gentoo seems unsurpassed. Performance is third or less by a long shot. I think to most newbies it's likely the same way. Gentoo as a distro is so much more valuable than many people think, and other than getting it installed the first time, I think it's almost the perfect distro for a newbie. I do not really want to see a GUI installer. I think too many newbies like me want Windows like installation and doing that gets in the way of the learning process. Better to take a couple of days, learn how to install, get the basic concepts of disk partitions, USE flags, emerge and portage, etc., in place, and then go from there. They will, end the end, be much better off than being in dependency hell and not able to fix it. Just my 14 cents. (2 cents/paragraph.) ;-) Thanks and Cheers, Mark -- [email protected] mailing list
