[Klug-general] Shiny New Laptop

[Stuart Buckland]

On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 13:43 +0100, Karl Lattimer wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 21:55 +0100, klug at allen.brooker.gb.net wrote:
> > What exactly is "hackish" about Gentoo?
> 
> 1) You have to write pages justifying it
> 2) You have to compile everything. As previously stated, how many new PC
> users can do this?
> 3) You need _some_ expertise to do it
> 
> Therefore, it is hackish, because you have to hack at it to get it to do
> something, you can't just pop in a disc and install it.

<snip stuff about rawhide>
> 
> Basically, you're a beta tester, its hackish!
> 
> K,

1) No need to write pages to justify anything to anyone.  You use what
you prefer, I'll use what I prefer and everyone else can use whatever
they like.  As far as this list goes, who cares so long as it's Linux.

2) You don't have to compile everything.  There are binary packages
available for a lot of packages.  By using them some of the flexibility
of Gentoo is removed but they are there as an option.

For example, I've just installed a basic Gentoo system in a new virtual
machine in under an hour.  By basic I mean everything I need except for
X as I don't want it in this particular VM.

3) I agree, you do need some expertise to get the best out of Gentoo but
that isn't to say that it's totally beyond the scope of newcomers.
Saying that though, Gentoo wouldn't be the distribution I would
personally recommend to newcomers.

There are circumstances where I don't choose Gentoo.  Most of the Linux
servers I manage at work are RHEL for example.

Sometimes I find Gentoo is far too involved and time consuming if I just
want to set something up quickly.  On the other hand I've run into
issues with RHs bastardisation of various packages too.

Swings and roundabouts.



-- 
Stuart Buckland <stuart at nightime.org.uk>