I am not on a Mandrake Jihad, though it may seem like it sometimes. Like Chris and Nick, I have tried a fair few distros but always came back to Mandrake for 2 reasone, a) it's what I know best through use, b) it suits my needs.
I am sure that Gentoo is awesome, it sounds it. BUT, I cannot be arsed compiling from source for EVERYTHING I want to install, I have better things to do with my time. Plus, I don't have the expertise to "optimise" my packages properly anyway. I honestly wonder what the performance difference is on modern hardware anyway...and if you are not using fairly modern hardware, I would think it precluded the use of Gentoo anyway due to compilation time.
Add to that, Mandrakes almost idiot proof (good for me) config utils and it is a great distro FOR ME. Thank heaven for OSS and CHOICE!! Long may it reign...
Cheers
Jason
Gareth Williams wrote:
On Sunday 08 June 2003 16:20, Christopher Sawtell wrote:
I have been most impressed with Gentoo Linux, which is a kind of cross between Linux and the *BSDs. They have essentially borrowed some of the better ideas behind the *BSD Ports system while retaining the Linux kernel etc. This allows _you_ to control the whole updating bit. They, Gentoo Central -- for want of a better name -- control the ports tree with extreme rigour, but do keep it up to date really pretty well, with _working_ programs too what's more. If you want to cut yourself on the bleeding edge then you can too. They now offer pre-compiled binaries.
Certainly, Gentoo offers, in my experience, an infinitely superior method of package management than either of the commonplace alternatives.
Definitely a much less risky way of doing things than trusting that some anonymous pfy has got everything correct when he built an rpm file.
Seeing as the compilation / installation is automatic, I really doubt you go thru the code by hand first (no?), then how is this any better than a binary distribution? Is there a reason why one should trust Gentoo developers (or BSD developers, in Jim's case ;-) more than anyone else?
Sure, installing packages (whatever form they be in) provided by your distro is a better idea than installing 3rd party apps, I'm not disagreeing. But how is Gentoo (or BSD) unique here?
It seems Chris trusts Gentoo developers. And Jim trusts BSD developers. Well I just want to stick my hand up and say, damit, I trust Debian developers! ;-)
I would assert that official Debian (stable) packages are controlled just as rigourously, and of just as high a quality as any of these other systems. Would anyone like to disagree?
Sure I could mess that all up by installing 3rd party apps (and frequently do, heh ;-) - but why can't I do that, compile 3rd party apps from source, on *BSD or Gentoo? hmmm?
Just because your distro of choice provides official packages, controlled by those who control the distro (what a novel concept eh? ;-) .... that doesn't make your distro:
a) unique
or;
b) better
in any way that I can tell. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.
</rant>
Cheers, Gareth
ps. all in good fun - I'm just as zealous as the rest of you (hey... where is Jason? can't we expect to see some Mandrake comments added to this? ;-) I'm not trying to start a distro flame war, honest :-)
pps. I downloaded Knoppix for the first time the other day (on a 56k modem - so that should be 'the other week', heh ;-) via bittorrent. Bittorrent is impressive. Knoppix more so. My brother has a computer that will only run windows 95, we've tried and failed many times to install various versions of windows and linux - put the Knoppix CD in and it detected everything perfectly, sound,video,network, the lot - all up and running in about a minute. I was very impressed.
