On 22 Dec, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Mon, Dec 22, 2003 at 12:45:31PM +1100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > On 22 Dec, Jeff Waugh replied to: > > > > I think it's time to try installing gentoo, and leave all these upgrade > > > > problems in the past. > > > > > > You just need a recent distro - and you don't have to go to extremes to get > > > one. :-) > > > > Upgrading to a new version of a distro is always a big hassle, taking > > days to get working as well as the old one. That's *why* I'm still > > running 7.2 (albeit heavily updated) on this machine. > > If you want to get the mostest for the leastest, > surely something that uses apt (or yum) would be > the best option. I.e. debian or redhat/fedora. > > What are the major inhibiters for your upgrade? > Do you install a lot of software that is not > from rpms/debs? > > Matt
Apologies for this belated reply. The major upgrade inhibitors are: 1) Config file breakages. Things I have to painstakingly reconfigure are sendmail, printing, sound, cdwriter 2) Dead utilities. Things I've come to depend on that are no longer maintained so I have to build them myself. (E.g. Postilion.) Tk/Tcl are classic examples: seems like every new release loses backward compatibility so lots of good tools die. (E.g. TkDesk.) 3) Discovering all the little bits and pieces that I use only a few times per year and no longer work, obviously takes a long time. 4) Discovering where config files etc. have moved to, between versions. This is much less of a problem since the FSSTND became widely adopted. I used to install a lot of programs from source, but gave up after RH 6.2, and started using rpms. Then I got fed up with the dependency hell problem and installed apt-get and synaptic, for RH. That kept me happy for a long time, until the packages for the old system started withering up for RH 7.2, because (fair enough) so many dependencies couldn't be satisfied and fewer people were using it. Very natural. The gentoo system is basically working well now, but I'm only working on it in small amounts of my limited spare time. I still haven't checked out the cd writing, and a few other things. But filling in the gaps seems to go pretty smoothly, and I'm happily pockling away at it as a low-priority background task. (While looking forward to switching over permanently. It's been painful: I wouldn't recommend gentoo to most Linux people yet; but I'm feeling confident that I've made the right choice. I just don't enjoy upgrades, and want to avoid having to do it again. In contrast, I don't mind tiny incremental steps.) luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
