Hello. I have been poking around with Mandrake Linux for a while now, and I would like to install something more different now. I have heard good things about Gentoo, and Debian but I cannot decide between the two. I know there are other distros out there that are probably just as good. I come from a BSD background, working with FreeBSD for some time now, with experience with NetBSD (a few months until my SPARC died.) I would like you to list some pros and cons about the current distro that you use. Most importantly, list what you don’t like. From this, I will conclude myself what is better for me. I am looking for something that has a port-style way of managing packages. The ports collection is FreeBSD’s prime, and I love it. Thanks for any input.

I''m using Gentoo at the moment, and liking it.

Pros:
-Portage. The nicest package manager i''ve used. It''s derived from FreeBSD ports, but you probably know that.
-There''s nothing there that you didn''t install yourself. Not entirely sure why it''s a pro, but I like it.
-Any config setting is in one place, and one place only. It irritates me when you need to change some obscure setting in some config file, and then it gets overwritten next time you use a distribution''s configuration utility.
-You can decide whether you want to use ''stable'' packages, or whether you want the newest version of everything. I''m on the unstable packages at the moment, which means you get newer versions before stable (Python 2.3 was in a month or so before it was marked stable). It does have its problems though- you end up rebuilding glibc every week or so. You can even tell portage to install known-broken packages if you want to.

Cons:
-I''m running on a Pentium II for now, and installing packages takes anywhere up to a day. I did the basic install from binaries, but when Gnome 2.4 came into portage, it took a couple of days to build fully. On the other hand, in that time not using Gnome I started using fluxbox, and haven''t gone back.
-The installation is anything but simple. You get dumped at a Bash prompt with a tarball of a basic system.

From my limited experience with Debian, some things stand out:
-APT is a very nice package manager. I prefer Portage overall, but APT does have a lot more packages, and definitely comes second.
-The stable releases tend to have very out-of-date packages (Woody has KDE 2.2 and Gnome 1.4). I''ve not used unstable, but its packages are supposedly pretty up to date.

Another vote for Gentoo. Portage is bar none the best package manager there is, assuming you have a fast machine. Compiling Gnome or KDE is pretty good way to waste a day or more. (Use XFCE4 instead, it''s great).

You get full control over optimization flags (although it''s not as big an improvement as some would have you believe), as well as easy access to all sorts of cool new stuff like 2.6 kernels and NPTL, or the BMG ebuilds, such as Gnome 2.5, love-sources, Freedesktop.org XServer, KDE 3.2, and all sorts of other bleeding-edge stuff.

When installation is as simple as emerge whatever; wait;, how can you go wrong? It really is a very nice system.

The Gentoo docs and forums are also top notch; probably the best resource for using linux there is.

Aside from installation being a little tricky (no more so than *BSD), it''s easy to use. I like it cause it''s so easy to break things . If Linux is working, something is horribly wrong. I do most of my "real" work in Windows (since I prefer MS Office to OpenOffice, and until yesterday my printer didn''t work under Linux), so Linux is always there to tinker with.

I think I''m gonna recompile glibc with NPTL this weekend. It''s easy as USE="nptl" emerge glibc. Gotta love Gentoo.

Slackware would be a nice BSD''isch solution and with slapt-get / swaret you get nearly the same comfort as with debian..

I like the idea of Gentoo, but I don''t think it''s for everyone.

I like BSD, but linux appeals more to me, and linux appears to be a better desktop system at the moment (video card drivers, nvidia just got them for BSD / wine is still mostly for linux).

I like Slackware, but the package manager is rather weak. I don''t know anything about slapt-get, but it wasn''t around when I used slack 8, so I''m guessing it''s a relatively new thing.

I use Debian Sid on my main desktop, and ever since trying this distro I''ve never looked back. It''s the fastest growing distro (according to possibly-biased polls :D), and with Knoppix / Mepis / Bruce Perens'' UserLinux all those other Debian-based distros, it could really be coming to the forefront of the distributions.

Pros:
--
Community-based (Gentoo has this too)
Good developer backing (Gentoo has this too)
It''s tried and true.
Multiplatform, and even multikernel (i.e. you can run Debian/Hurd and possibly others in the future)!
Kick-ass binary package system!
Debian Policy, for all you card-carrying Free Software-o-philes

Cons:
--
Not so easy to install (Gentoo has this too )
Binary packages allow less hardcore software tweaking (but there''s PLENTY of tweaking to do!)

Woody has old software. Sid sometimes has old versions of software (still don''t have XFree 4.3 officially), and sometimes Sid will have minor breakages in unstable versions of software - you can always rollback though!

Well... I am in the Gentoo LiveCD right now, and the kernel is compiling. I am using links to post this So far, things have been going pretty well. Gentoo, as I guessed, is not extremely easy to set up -- especialy with Windows XP dualboot. I think I have learned a lot from going this far. The documentation has a lot of cool information that I needed to know, and someone in #gentoo dedicated a couple of hours to hold my hand as I did all the dirty work. I am really thankful to him.

Go Gentoo

Between the two, my vote goes to Gentoo. Actually, I use LFS, but that''s just because I really wanted to learn how a linux system was put together. I''d say Gentoo would also be good for that, but I suppose with enough motivation, it could be true of any distribution.