[Sussex] Searching for a distro....

[Stephen Williams]

Matthew,

On Thu, 2008-02-14 at 21:51 +0000, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've been using Ubuntu for about a year now on my laptop and I figure
> that it's time for a change! :o)
> 
> Here's my wishlist:
> 
> 1) A distribution that has no "free vs. libre vs. open" zealotry
> attached to it
> 2) A distro that has good package management (portage/apt etc)
> 3) A distro that is highly customisable (a la gentoo) yet does not have
> huge build-times (??based on binaries??)
> 4) A distro that use SysV init, _NOT_ upstart
> 5) A distro that has a huge amount of software available for it (this is
> probably a repeat of 2!)
> 
> Here's my reasoning:
> 
> 1) I just want my distro to work.  Freedom (as in speech) is nice, but
> for me it doesn't even figure on my "I want" list.  I want to watch
> youTube, listen and watch RealMedia/MP3/WMV/WMA encoded formats on my
> laptop _without_ having to add deb repos from people I don't know/trust.
> It's my opinion (and I'm aware that it isn't shared by a lot of people!)
> that Linux will never make it as a desktop until the community (or at
> least part of it) drops the "you can't use that, it's proprietary"
> attitude. (/me dons the flame-proof suit of pragmatism...)
> 
> 2) Whilst I am prepared to download and compile from source when I need
> to, a system that drags all the dependencies in for me is definitely
> high on my "that would be really nice" list.
> 
> 3) If I install software onto a server when there is a known issue with
> library compatibilities (I'm thinking PHP5 and nusoap here), it would be
> really, really nice if various things that are obviously modular (i.e.
> are switches on the command line of the base package such as SOAP!) were
> extra modules.  I've recently setup a couple of LAMP stacks based on
> Ubuntu and had to recompile the PHP libraries without Soap support so I
> can use nusoap to run things like SugarCRM and Joomla.  Gentoo is
> fantastic for this (/etc/make.conf and package.keywords solve
> everything!) however the fact it takes five days to compile a basic
> Gnome Desktop with Open Office and FireFox is too long for me and my
> clients!
> 
> 4) SysV has been brilliant up until now.  It is still used (AFAIK) on
> the majority of Unix-based systems.  Upstart is a pain when it comes to
> securing systems as none of the examples in the books work (and they are
> relatively new books!), things I have configured for years in inittab no
> longer work in the new layout and the documentation (AFAICT) is minimal
> to non-existant! </rant>
> 
> 5) It is important to me that I can install various programs quickly and
> efficiently however (as I've stated above) I don't want to be editing
> the distro-recommended setup to do it.  Adding 3rd party repos to a
> production server is (IMHO) non-negotiable.  It does not happen. It is a
> security risk.  
> 
> So I guess what I'm after is a cross of all the good bits of debian (but
> without the `cat "FREE!=LIBRE!=OPEN" > /dev/throat` FSF mentality!) and
> the handy config of Gentoo.  Is this possible?
> 

Sounds like you're talking yourself into Gentoo here. I know that
compile times can be tedious, but you can cure that with the fastest
possible hardware! And it's a good excuse to get yourself some!

Just a word of warning though. Gentoo isn't too bad at working "straight
off the shelf" once you get the hang of it, but there is a bit of
learning to be done.

Steve W.

> Cheers,
> 
> M.