The biggest advantage that I like is the fact that it only installs what you need, not all the extra crap (which represents a security hole, as well as extra bloat for no reason) that Red Hat does.
The other major advantages for me is the portage system for installing new software, and as Cryonic said, it optimizes everything you install for your personal system.
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.
The nice thing about redhat is that when I'm not in the mood to read install docs and compile something for a hours, I can simply drop in the rpm and use that to get the job done until I feel the need to remove it and install the source version. It sounds like gentoo uses nothing but source balls, but has it found any way to automate this for near download-and-play ability? I understand there is no way to get around the compile process but somethign that could automate it for you would be nice.
I'm gonna go read up on gentoo some and if I answer any of my own questions, I'll add them to this thread.
I haven't had the time this morning to really dig into Gentoo, but if models ports just like FreeBSD, it's going to compile the source for you. I don't have any real FreeBSD experience, but someone did show me how incredibly convenient ports is including, if I remember correctly, parsing for depends and grabbing any appropriate dependent source. Yes?
Well, I'm going to be building a new gaming box soon so I'll have some trickle down opportunity to change my kids' machine that they never use into a test box. P'raps I'll give Gentoo a try then.
Do you get a medal for converts, Ratt?
Sam, you're exaxtly right. It works much like Debain's apt-get system, but it's called portage. It uses what they call ebuild scripts to do the job. Say you just got done setting up your system and you want to install KDE. You just type "emerge kde" and walk away for 10 hours. The source is downloaded, unzipped, untarred, compiled, and installed. It gets and installs all dependancies automatically, so it would get X if you didn't have it, Qt, etc.
For most packages, this is all pretty quick. Gentoo isn't something you would run on a Pentium 133 though. With a decent machine, something like "emerge tcpdump" would take just 2 or 3 minutes, while "emerge qt-3.1.1" might take 3 hours.
Really, though, once you have your big stuff installed it's great. It took me 2 days of near constant downloading and compiling to get my laptop set up the way I wanted (X, Qt3, OpenOffice, KDE), but after that it's great. And -so- fast. Also, their documentation is top notch. Follow 2 docs (install guide and desktop guide) step by step and you'll have a working KDE/Gnome system without much hassle other than the compile time.
I tried 1.2 when it came out. I really liked the concept, and it was very well documented. I had no problems until I got to X. For some reason the X server it used by defualt for my Intel graphics wouldn't work at all. I found the version of the driver that redhat was using for the same chipset and compiled and installed that. At that point it worked but the screen would never center correctly and the refresh rates were out of whack. I configured the X server exactly as it was on my Redhat 7.3 box on the same hardware but it still wouldn't work right. In the end, I gave up on it because I needed the machine I was installing.
I'm going to give it another shot next time I get some time and some available hardware.
"What you've just said is one of the most insanely, idiotic things i've ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherant response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you NO points, and may god have mercy on your soul."
I chose Redhat 7.3 over 8.0 because SEQ was slow as hell on RH 8.0 system. To many bells and whistles for my poor little PII 266 Mhz to handle.
Redhat is now making people pay for an account to get the updates from the redhat network. Even if you bought a Redhat product in the past you will have to buy a subscription to the update feature. Starting to sound more like Micro$oft. Buy the product then have to keep on paying to keep the software running.
Maybe I'll give Gentoo a try.
This still works great on RH9. Just thought I'd drop that info on this discussion.
I found a good compromise for RH8 between space constraints, and taking the time to install each package one by one, was to choose 'development libraries' from the installer, and add qt-devel and xfree86-devel at the end.
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