[Sussex] About Gentoo..

[Geoff Teale]

Dominic,

1. emerge works very well, but like anything it can break on
   occassions.  If you stick to stable packages everything should be
   fine.  Just be careful about updating you're /etc files (Gentoo nags
   you about this a lot, but it's automatic tools for updating them
   need to be used with extreme care).

2. Have you considered Arch linux?  (http://www.archlinux.org) It's
a lot like gentoo, but by default binary.  Its a very, very, simple
distro which gives you a lot of room to manouver and do things your
way.

3. Installing things manually can mess with emerge, but only if you
install things that mess with libraries they shouldn't do.  If .so's
and .a's are properly named and numbered you shouldn't have a problem.
In short, your problems are no worse than with any other distro.

-- 
Geoff Teale