I'm currently using mandrake 9.1 Whenever there is a new mandrake, i need to upgrade (in theory). Doing so is painfull and usually requires a partition wipe and lengthy reinstall-back-to-the-way-it-was process. This is bad. The reasons i use mandrake: - central system management. All the tools that manage the system are in the Mandrake Control Center. I can change the time, add a mount point, add a printer, etc, all very easily, ala Windows. - URPMI makes package installation relatively painless. - I want to do my work, not be consumed with the OS itself. - Installs over windows easily (partitioning tool is very easy to use) I'm kinda looking at Debian or Gentoo, but i'm not a linux power-user. I'm more of an advanced desktop user. However, i would like a system that basically takes care of itself. I've read about Gentoo's "emerge sync" and it sounds appealing. Debian is also interesting in a similar way. How much work is it to maintain these systems? Is software installation as difficult with RPM based distros? I'd like a system that sets up rock solid and continues to update itself. With mandrake, it seems "monolithic". You install it and live with it until the next one comes out, wipe the drive and install the new one :-) I'm also particularly concerned about "major" upgrades, like KDE ad GTK which can effect many other programs. Are these easy to upgrade as well? Thanks for your input. Please don't turn this into a distro flamewar :-)

In gentoo, you can upgrade all packages to the latest (compatible) versions with a single, simple command (though it can take a long time). I'd imagine debian is pretty similar (although they have 3 different "latest" versions of all packages - stable, testing, and unstable).

you can also choose to use "unstable" packages in gentoo (of course these are usually considered stable by the developers but haven't yet been tested fully with gentoo), but the difference between using these and only stable ones is less than in the case of debian (a lot of packages will be the same either way, and the difference in version numbers will be less)

I can't say with objectivity, but Gentoo seems more progressive in supporting current development. You sound like someone who likes to have the latest & greatest and Gentoo is architectured for this. This is more total work that dropping in CDs and watching the installer go, but it's spread out over time.

Let's put it this way, if more than four days pass and a newly released package isn't supported, I'm annoyed by the lack of progress in Gentoo. Some distros, such as RedHat, are /years/ behind new releases (Fedora should help). For instance, Mozilla's Firefox 9.1 is already in Gentoo.

The part I liked the most about Gentoo, is that you can make an overlay over the portage tree, and make your own ebuilds. You can submit them to Gentoo through the bugzilla site (bugs.gentoo.org), and a dozen ebuilds I've written or updated are in the portage tree.

There are no Gentoo releases like there are with Mandrake or RedHat; heh, Gentoo's like a Continuous Build (agile development) machine for the open source community.

Gentoo is currently designed to be a from-source distribution, but there are binary packages available to get you started, the so-called GRP install. Installing Gentoo isn't hard per-se, but it's not the animated walk-through GUI many other distro's have. It's more like installing DOS (so simple, you don't need a GUI ;). If you're a Linux veteran, installing Gentoo should be easy. If you're not, installing it will help teach you how Linux works and how to use it. The instructions are very good, and are also kept very up-to-date.

You can have multiple versions of many programs installed at the same time with Gentoo, we called these 'slots'. GTK 1.2 and GTK 2.x are slotted, and every version of gcc gets it's own slot.
Be sure to build a binary package whenever you emerge something (-b), then you can quickly and easily revert if anything breaks.
For example, automake 2.58 made some breaking changes and so old code doesn't compile with it. I had to install an old version of cyrus-sasl, so I just temporarily downgraded automake to v2.57, emerged cyrus-sasl-1.5.27, and upgraded automake back to v2.59.

To update KDE you type `emerge kde` (`emerge -b kde` to build binary packages too) likewise for gtk+, unless you need the older 1.x version, which requires some more typing to tell it the older version, `emerge =gtk+-1.2.10-r11`

There's no special tool to add mount points in Gentoo. However, it applies a kernel patch called SuperMount that behaves like Windows does - CDs, floppies, & USB drives automatically mount (so long as there's a supermount entry in /etc/fstab for them).


I run several Gentoo machines at home, maintain a Gentoo lab, and work on embedded Linux products using Gentoo. If I had to use something else, I think I'd use Debian.

Gentoo is great if you don't mind compiling everything from source. Although it doesn't have all the nifty configuration tools that mandrake has, the documentation is great and the community is active and helpful.

Yeah, Gentoo is great (or so I'm told) if you REALLY know what you're doing - at least while you're installing it. I'm still working on that... after a couple of hiccups, everything was going really well and it was booting quite nicely into the console. I installed X (worked all right; even had my video card's acceleration working right) then KDE, made the changes necessary to get that all going... and then everything borked on me when I tried to start KDE (froze up and died).

While I don't consider myself a guru by any means, I thought I was pretty good at Linux and then I found myself being stared in the face by a lot of things I didn't understand, hadn't yet heard of, and errors galore.

I haven't yet mustered up the courage to go back and try some more with it... may go do that now...

-Auron

I am currently a Gentoo user. I had used Fedora, Red Hat, and Mandrake in the past. However, I learned the most about how Linux work while installing Gentoo. It's quite a good learning experience if you're new to Linux.

If you're going to install Gentoo, do it right and go from a Stage 1 (though, it will take forever, so best to have a backup to use in the interim).

I learned more from installing Gentoo and having to do all the builds than I could have in months of using Linux. You're forced to learn things while installing, so if you have the patience and don't mind a few bumps along the way, it's excellent. The longest compiles are the initial system utils (including the GNU C libraries, etc.) and then building gnome or kde (kde especially).

Quote: Original post by Desert Fox
If you're going to install Gentoo, do it right and go from a Stage 1 (though, it will take forever, so best to have a backup to use in the interim).

Mine took 18 hours on a PII333MHz.

Quote: Original post by Desert FoxI learned more from installing Gentoo and having to do all the builds than I could have in months of using Linux. You're forced to learn things while installing, so if you have the patience and don't mind a few bumps along the way, it's excellent. The longest compiles are the initial system utils (including the GNU C libraries, etc.) and then building gnome or kde (kde especially).

And not to forget Mozilla.

Open office is the worst single compile, kde might take longer overall since it's split into different packages

fluxbox doesn't take long though :p