Gentoo desktop?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2008 at 02:37:14PM +0100, Christopher Friedt wrote:
> I give gentoo a thumbs up and have used it for everything from laptops 
> to servers. It's also very easy to set up a cross-compiler and 
> cross-compile easily extractable tar.bz2 packages using gentoo.
> 
> The packaging system allows for both binary packages and packages built 
> form source (giving you quasi-automatic, fine-grained control over 
> dependencies, library usage, etc)
> 
> On the downside, there is no central binary package repository (some 
> unnoffical ones), but you can easily create your own. With that in mind, 
> if you count the number of cycles that gentoo's entire userbase has used 
> to build packages from scratch, that must take some toll on power 
> consumption.

Probably a scary amount of pointless waste yes.  At least folding at home
and such have the potential to accomplish something with the cycles they
chew through.

So Gentoo both wastes your time while you wait for software to compile
and it is bad for the environment too. :)

> Also, gentoo has probably the most extensive forum / mailing list / 
> online documentation support base that i've ever seen, so it's easy to 
> get the answers you need fast.

lists.debian.org not to mention a bunch of irc channels along with lots
of places I have never looked at (I know they have forums, but forums
are a lousy interface compared to mailing lists and IRC).  I doubt any
distribution is anywhere near that size of support base, although ubuntu
is getting there (although it does to some extent share with debian on a
lot of things which is handy).

--
Len Sorensen
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