Gentoo desktop?

[Anthony de Boer]

Andrew Cowie wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-01-10 at 16:38 -0500, Dave Germiquet wrote:
> > I also learned alot from installing gentoo.
> 
> That's actually an interesting aspect. While it is wonderful that most
> Linux and Libre Unix distros have brilliant (and constantly improving)
> installation automation these days, the defining aspect of Unix has ever
> been being able (if you wish) to figure out what is going on and do
> something different if you have need.
> 
> Even if you are a stalwart user of another distro (and there are all
> sorts of reasons why this is fine), doing a few Gentoo installs can be
> really educational.

I use it too, but it's not something I'd recommend to the faint-hearted,
or to anyone who isn't prepared to dig in and learn and apply practical
Unix skills.

Another positive aspect of Gentoo is that it ensures that I get the source
to *all* of the software I have installed, so it's easy to go look at
later, and I don't have to go searching the Internet for it and wondering
if what I found actually builds to the version I have installed.  As a
programmer/sysadmin, the "source" part of "open source" is a key thing to
me.

When I want something that's not already in Portage, rolling my own in
/usr/local/portage is easy enough to do, instead of a manual build, and I
can contribute that back to the project.

Being able to set major USE flags, and say that a server will not have
NLS or X if it doesn't need it, or the workstation might not need LDAP,
keeps the size and complexity of the install down, and reduces the
frequency of security updates that I need to apply.  That beats a binary
distro that has to build packages with everything optional turned on in
case some user wants it.

There's also the incremental nature of the thing; you get the latest
versions of key packages as they're released and tested, rather than
waiting for a distro that has release cycles to cycle around to the
newer software.  That also means that I'm not having to download huge
ISO images and wipe and reinstall either, or getting way behind the
leading edge by being stuck on an older release.

-- 
Anthony de Boer
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