[CS-FSLUG] FriendlyDistroWar [WAS: ... Distrowatch!]

[Josiah Ritchie]

On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 14:43 -0600, Tim Young wrote:
> The great thing about gentoo is that you get the absolute latest in bugs.  You
> want the latest buggy version of anything, and you can get it!  Awesome.  Just
> download the bugs, compile them, and WoW! Eat your hard-drive (or is that "eat
> your heart out?"  Some expression like that)  Great thing to do to a server.
> 
> Of course, I use Fedora.  ;)
> 
>     - Tim Young [adding a few layers of cushions to my firewall for when the
> fur really begins to fly..]

Gentoo is surprisingly stable if you treat it right (and that isn't
hard). You only get miserably buggy software if you ask for it. I'm very
comfortable using it in production and have for longer than I've been a
part of this list. My problems have been limited to issues with my
configs or bad hardware. From a server perspective, Gentoo is no less
stable. As a workstation, I'd say it is less polished and individual
programs may have their moments, but as a whole is very stable
especially taking into account the flexibility that is maintained. I can
say that having run it on stacks of hardware of various quality and
purpose.

Compilation also isn't an issue once you get used to the concept and out
of the rpm rut. :-) Realy, updating can all be scheduled during computer
downtime and once you have one version installed you rarely 'need' the
latest immediately. This really provides much improvement over the more
arcane systems when the USE flags are used appropriately.

JSR/