We use gentoo most places now. The new installer is pretty but very much alpha software (as of 1 month ago at least).
We've got it running on AMD64, PIII, PIV and P-M all tuned and boy does it make a difference. Distros I've compared are Ubuntu on a PIV and Debian on AMD64. It is faster than both standard installs if compiled for the platform. Of course, there are probably ways in those distros of getting similar performance so YMMV. This is particularly relevant to my install base, 1/2 of which has old hardware. Downsides. the etc-update stuff is not good. It is being worked on though. Not everything is there. But a lot is and ebuilds are easy to add to the herd. Upsides. - emerge sync/-up world keeps you up to date with the latest stuff. - Everything is source. Good for security. Good for getting the latest quickly. - Java is well supported and an easily integrated part of the environment which makes this the first linux platform in my scope to work well with java. java-config enables you to spec VMs by user, or defaults for the whole system. config tools and setup are excellent. - You can build for a platform and store the binaries for download to that platform. The build can be automated to take advantage of the latest versions. So you can set a fast build machine to create PII for example then have the PII's emerge binary only from that build platform. As for your auto-mounting USB issue, DBUS and HAL are supported (I use them on the laptop). I used one of the wiki pages from gentoo.org to set it all up. Tool about 30mins of fiddling. Now (almost) all hardware is recognised when plugged in and appears in the /media directory. Nice. Gentoo is definately not for the end-user but it is excellent if you know your stuff. Esp. if you want to remain current. I think for ma and pa go ubuntu, mandrake or fedora. HTH Stu > I have been using Gentoo for 3-5 months, and have found it to be less > bloatie, and a little more reliable compared to RH, Mandrake. I never > enjoyed Debian. I started getting annoyed with precompiled packages. I > have > been told I'm a source junkie, and Gentoo suites me to a T. > My windowmanager of choice is E17, and gentoo allows me to compile and > install it easily. The only thing I find lacking is automounting of usb > devices. Other than that I am very happy with Gentoo. > > > Im not usually a Gentoo fan boy, but the latest screen shots for there > next >> release are really making me thing about installing it. >> >> http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=460&slide=1 >> >> I like the look of the new installer (I can imagine the ricers >> complaining >> right now) and for once a live boot option with two smp kernels. >> >> Regards >> >> Richard Neal >> >> "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright >> infringement, >> or even outright piracy." >> Seen on Slashdot 30-09-2005 >> -- >> SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ >> Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html >> >> > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
