On Friday 02 Dec 2011 14:41:29 LinuxIsOne wrote: > Hello, > > Does one have the experience for the following: > > gentoo vs openSUSE > > for ease of use, better navigation, applications working perfectly > without any crash(es), better up gradations, smooth working, > etc..etc... > > Best Regards.
If you want *exactly* what OpenSUSE have included in their distro then OpenSUSE is for you. Some applications and the whole system will run slower than Gentoo. Invariably some applications could experience crashes and what not - any distro would from time to time have such problems and may not be distro specific anyway, but application specific. If you want to include additional applications or versions of applications that OpenSUSE repos do not cater for, then you may run into dependency hell. At best, some apps will just not install or work as intended. At worst you could break the underlying distro if you try hard enough and have to reinstall. With Gentoo you have higher flexibility on what you install and portage is definitely thousands times better than YaST, in terms of configurabilty. You will still get the odd application that is buggy, but as a rule your system will run lighter and faster because each binary is compiled from source with the CFALGS and USE flags that you have specified for your system. On the other hand it will take some time and effort to keep your Gentoo up to date. Another difference between OpenSUSE and Gentoo is that you will not need to reinstall Gentoo to get the latest desktop, or init system or what-ever system wide upgrade is next. With OpenSUSE upgrades imply a reinstallation (unless YaST got cleverer since the last time I used it). Invariably you will also never need to reinstall Gentoo to fix any breakages - most problems you may come across you will learn how to recover from with clever use of portage. In conclusion: If you prefer quick installation and easy/quick updates, but with limited choice on what gets installed and how it is configured, and the OpenSUSE suite of packages will meet your application needs comprehensively, then OpenSUSE is a well polished distro that will fit the bill. If you value higher performance and a much higher degree of configurability, then Gentoo will be your choice; but that comes at the expense of a protracted installation process (especially if you have not done this before) and some admin time on a regular basis to keep your system and applications up to date. With Gentoo you will be *forced* to learn a lot to install your system and keep it running. With OpenSUSE the learning curve will likely be considerably flatter. It would be advisable to try them both out in LiveCDs (or even install them in VMs) to see which you feel more comfortable working with. For a Gentoo based LiveCD you could try Sabayon: http://www.sabayon.org/ and this may also be used for a quick (binary) installation of a Gentoo-like system. HTH. -- Regards, Mick
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