Gentoo desktop?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Jan 11, 2008 at 09:53:00AM -0500, Anthony de Boer wrote:
> 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.

Well running Debian I don't worry about that.  I know the package is
built from the source with the same version number.

> 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.

Many things are modular in which case you only install the parts you
need.  It also means the binary you use is the binary that was tested by
lots of people rather than some unusual config that only you run that
might not even be a configuration the developer of the program expected
anyone to run.

> 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.

Nothing prevents people running Debian unstable release which gives you
things as they come, bugs and issues and all, although most if the time
it just works.

--
Len Sorensen
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