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ok, but i know there is a category of users in europe that will not be very happy about it, and i mean those that never actually payed to get a windows xp kit.
but then again, they are all using XP Professional, right?

on a sidenote, i wonder if they could package a Windows XP Home Edition NWI, where the NWI would stand for "No Windows Included", and everyone installing it would just get a text based ftp client to http://www.gentoo.org/ or a dropdown with all distros available on distrowatch. (ok, Microsobs, if you steal my ideea please leave here your contact details so i can claim on (not so) intelectual property rights. thank you)

>> Do you have to print out 100+ pages of install documentation to install Gentoo?

I wish. I'd much prefer having too much documentation as opposed to having too little.

Fortunately, the authors of the Gentoo installation guide are really quite good. I used their original install guide to get started. They had examples and walked through every step in good detail (Things like fdisk can be very confusing for a newbie). It has since been made obsolete and it looks like they now have a quick install reference and an extended handbook.

>> Do you have to print out 100+ pages of install documentation to install Gentoo?

I wish. I'd much prefer having too much documentation as opposed to having too little.

Fortunately, the authors of the Gentoo installation guide are really quite good. I used their original install guide to get started. They had examples and walked through every step in good detail (Things like fdisk can be very confusing for a newbie). It has since been made obsolete and it looks like they now have a quick install reference and an extended handbook.

The BitTorrent feed seems fine; maybe it's just the traditional download mirrors? I downloaded install-amd64-minimal-2005.0.iso last night and it boots fine.

Gentoo's master mirror was staged with the wrong amd64 livecds which don't boot due to a missing bootsector!

We're currently shipping the correct images to all the mirrors.

"2) Liar. Anyone who's using Gentoo should know about dispatch-conf, which is a better solution that the dev's are moving to replace etc-update with.

I looked up dispatch-conf, since I use Gentoo every day and haven't heard of it.

Basically, it's a replacement for etc-update in a Python script. It exists within the confines of this bug on Bugzilla.

Looks interesting for the future, but hardly something "anyone using Gentoo should know about" or use.

First off, if you run the unstable (~arch) branch, you are SUPPOSED to run into problems - that is how those things get fixed in the stable (arch).

Second, the apache ordeal is well-documented. The docs were published well in advance and were pointed to severl times in the forums and mailing lists. If you run the unstable branch, you should at least be able to check those two places once in a while.

Third, their are LOTS of etc-update replacements in portage and otherwise. Stop spreading FUD.

Gentoo gives you the tools to shoot yourself in the foot. Just because you do so is not its fault.

Pardon a little rant, but gentoo is about to get wiped off all my remaining linux boxen. I've already taken the hard drive out of the gateway and popped in m0n0wall, a CD-based firewall that is the bee's knees and works much more smoothly. Thank god I don't have to deal with the monstrosity that is the webmin "user interface"(aka 5 billion gif images for no particular reason). Oh if only it supported config-on-usb-key!

Last night I updated apache and a bunch of other things (I use the unstable branch because "stable" lags, big time, on many packages I need; yes, I can manually unmask those certain packages, but that wouldn't have solved the particular problem I'm about to describe).

I run etc-update, which absolutely blows chunks and has for years; for example, ALL of /etc is protected. So maybe webmin comes along and touches 70 config files. You're then treated to trying to approve those 70 files along with other files that were also changed by other emerge updates. Attempts to provide better alternatives have been staunchly blocked; cfg-update has been trying to get into portage, but the gentoo team have been sitting on their asses for over two years. Piss-poor configuration management is one sure fire way to get me off your distro, because it's the biggest potential problem maker. PS- not everyone installs X on their servers, guys.

All is well, or so I think. Overnight, the power fails. I go to show someone photos on the server, connection refused. Huh?

Apache's not running. Hmm. 'apache2 start'.

That spits out a big tirade about how my commonapache2.conf file "is present in the old location" and I need to update the current configuration files and remove the commmonapache2.conf file. Then tells me to see this page which tells me about all the internal details, none of which I give a fuck about; I want a simple 1-2-3 migration, and they're yacking about recompiling everything, but they don't actually tell you what versions of everything you need to have at a minimum for that package to "understand" their changes. The page claims mod_php isn't ready for these changes yet (which is not true anymore, I later discover), so I panic and try going back to older versions of everything. More carnage and wasted time compiling.

It then takes me 2 hours to sort out the mess because they've got HARD LINKS to some directories, soft links to others, there's a full configuration file tree in /usr/lib/apache2, there's no clear delineation between the "common" and (???) apache conf files, their migration page claims the server root changed to /usr/lib/apache2 but it really didn't, it's all still in /etc/apache2/...Oh, mod_user_dir for no particular good reason now has to be TURNED ON with a -D option. I spend another 30 minutes fixing all the crap that was in my old apache configuration files, because apache2's error messages consist of "an access directive prohibited you from loading that". WHAT access directive? Or, my personal favorite, an "internal server error". Whee.

It's a unholy mess (at least part of it is apache's fault, for having one of the worst configuration schemes and error handling I've ever dealt with) and I was completely caught off guard- why? Because as portage merges things, if there are extremely important notes printed to the console, but so is EVERY detail about a compile along with all the files that are being merged/unmerged/whatevered...so chances are, it scrolls right out of the terminal buffer. At the end of a multiple-package emerge, there's no one block of text that says "IMPORTANT STUFF CHANGED".

I used to think the compile-from-source stuff was a godsend, but lately, it's nothing but a curse. I run a sync and then emerge -up world, and I get a list 3 pages long of mostly minor little version bumps. Fantasti

Pardon a little rant, but gentoo is about to get wiped off all my remaining linux boxen. I've already taken the hard drive out of the gateway and popped in m0n0wall, a CD-based firewall that is the bee's knees and works much more smoothly. Thank god I don't have to deal with the monstrosity that is the webmin "user interface"(aka 5 billion gif images for no particular reason). Oh if only it supported config-on-usb-key!

Last night I updated apache and a bunch of other things (I use the unstable branch because "stable" lags, big time, on many packages I need; yes, I can manually unmask those certain packages, but that wouldn't have solved the particular problem I'm about to describe).

I run etc-update, which absolutely blows chunks and has for years; for example, ALL of /etc is protected. So maybe webmin comes along and touches 70 config files. You're then treated to trying to approve those 70 files along with other files that were also changed by other emerge updates. Attempts to provide better alternatives have been staunchly blocked; cfg-update has been trying to get into portage, but the gentoo team have been sitting on their asses for over two years. Piss-poor configuration management is one sure fire way to get me off your distro, because it's the biggest potential problem maker. PS- not everyone installs X on their servers, guys.

All is well, or so I think. Overnight, the power fails. I go to show someone photos on the server, connection refused. Huh?

Apache's not running. Hmm. 'apache2 start'.

That spits out a big tirade about how my commonapache2.conf file "is present in the old location" and I need to update the current configuration files and remove the commmonapache2.conf file. Then tells me to see this page which tells me about all the internal details, none of which I give a fuck about; I want a simple 1-2-3 migration, and they're yacking about recompiling everything, but they don't actually tell you what versions of everything you need to have at a minimum for that package to "understand" their changes. The page claims mod_php isn't ready for these changes yet (which is not true anymore, I later discover), so I panic and try going back to older versions of everything. More carnage and wasted time compiling.

It then takes me 2 hours to sort out the mess because they've got HARD LINKS to some directories, soft links to others, there's a full configuration file tree in /usr/lib/apache2, there's no clear delineation between the "common" and (???) apache conf files, their migration page claims the server root changed to /usr/lib/apache2 but it really didn't, it's all still in /etc/apache2/...Oh, mod_user_dir for no particular good reason now has to be TURNED ON with a -D option. I spend another 30 minutes fixing all the crap that was in my old apache configuration files, because apache2's error messages consist of "an access directive prohibited you from loading that". WHAT access directive? Or, my personal favorite, an "internal server error". Whee.

It's a unholy mess (at least part of it is apache's fault, for having one of the worst configuration schemes and error handling I've ever dealt with) and I was completely caught off guard- why? Because as portage merges things, if there are extremely important notes printed to the console, but so is EVERY detail about a compile along with all the files that are being merged/unmerged/whatevered...so chances are, it scrolls right out of the terminal buffer. At the end of a multiple-package emerge, there's no one block of text that says "IMPORTANT STUFF CHANGED".

I used to think the compile-from-source stuff was a godsend, but lately, it's nothing but a curse. I run a sync and then emerge -up world, and I get a list 3 pages long of mostly minor little version bumps. Fantasti

please check here.

just sub 2004.3 for 2005.0.

The software is called Catalyst. More info here.

You must be new here? That's called Free/Open Source software. Use whatever suits your needs. If you like A, use A. If you like B, use B. If it's not good enough, (help) fix it, or make something better yourself. Either way, don't bitch about it.

..when Gentoo 2005 comes out.

Arrived recently at a mirror near you ;-)

Portage would never be ported (no pun intended) to *BSD, because we already have Ports.

Don't tell these people.

Anytime you as a software developer want to release software, you have to try to get it pushed out to all the mirrors (which you have no control over) in order for people to access it.

This is why Gentoo developers don't consider you an official mirror unless they have complete control over the machine. Here's the list of sites that don't mind that. Also, very few packages in the portage tree are as big as the Windows service packs. The network bandwidth involved with keeping Gentoo up to date is comparable to keeping Windows up to date, even counting all the little things.

After reading about this in the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter on Monday, I emerged acroread 7, and it works like a charm. It's a definite improvement over version 5.

Yesterday I have tried Xgl, Which also uses OpenGL to draw X. I think Luminocity and xgl are tightly related, but I am not really shure.

Anyway, what I got was a stable desktop with nice shadow and transparency features. It looks totally cool to have a transparent mplayer behind a transparent xterm that drops a soft shadow on it :-)

Trying it out is fairly easy, just follow this description.

At least Gentoo apparently. That's how linuxhardware was able to get benchmarks of various linux software on 64-bit AMD and Intel, and compare the speeds of 64 vs 32 bit binaries on both. Presumeably other AMD64 distros shouldn't have a problem.

EMT64 is basically identical to AMD64, by design since they went off of pre-release documentation for AMD64 in order to be compatible (ha! what a historic reversal of roles!). The only differences that exist between EMT64 and AMD64 are almost certainly due to errors/changes in the documentation that Intel used. These differences don't seem to stop OSes for AMD64 from running.

The Gentoo discussion thread, with hard and soft resource limit recommendations, is here.

It is just sad that it's written i Python. I like Python for scripting, but production software should not be written in dynamically typed scripting languages.
Yeah, we all know scripting languages suffer from buffer overflows and other serious flaws. So sgi, NATO and Viacom and gentoo did it all wrong:
http://www.zope.org/Resources/ZopePowered/
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/portage/index.xml
The fact that the use of Python is listed as one of the top features indicates that the programmers behind this project are either immature, untalented, or both.
For what reason?

Gentoo is for those who want to live on the bleeding edge. Like me (I was also involved in the original formation of Gentoo, so I am defensive:). If stable is important to you, have a look at Gentoo Stable. I know folks who run gentoo on computational clusters and such, so it is certainly possible :)

It seems that all the "automatic" updates do is download the lastest installer, and reinstall it on top of the old one. Notice how (in Windows) they leave a copy of the installer on your desktop? Or if you goto the add/remove program options it still lists both FF 1.0 and 1.0.1? Of course my main 'automatic update service' doesn't tend to have these problems ;)

corrected XML and PDF links

trustedgentoo.xml
tcpa_rebuttal.pdf

Hmm... there appears to be in a bug in slash. The first time I tried to post those links the same thing happened that happened to the OP. Thankfully I previewed.

If Linux gets in on the game then surely this could be a positive thing for computer users.

See the Trusted Gentoo project for example.

Until we see locked down BIOSes then this is hardly a threat to Linux if it responds quickly.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

this: http://www.gentoo.org/news/20050202-trustedgentoo. xml and, linked from there, this:

http://www.research.ibm.com/gsal/tcpa/tcpa_rebutta l.pdf

Guess what dick, if you'll look at Gentoo's forums you'll see that people were successfully building KDE 3.4 before it was officially released. Nice uneducated flamebait, though.

emerge kde-meta

You only need to recompile the package that actually changed with gentoos new split ebuilds. http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kde-split-ebuilds.xml

To be honest I like what Gentoo has done with the KDE 3.4 ebuilds. They basically split up the packages so that you can only install what you want and leave all of the fluff out.

More information here:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~danarmak/kde-split-ebuilds. html

If you're interested, here's a (long) discussion which makes reference to many of the things coming in the new GCC.

gentoo runs quite a few mips architectures.. check out their support here:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/mips-requirements.xml

The difficultness is overstated, if you just RTFA. Really. I setup a Gentoo router over my week-day weekend (Tues-Thur). The hardest part was loading the correct driver for one of my NICs (I have two mobos, A7N8X-E Deluxe and A7N8X Deluxe (rev 2.0)). The problem with that was I was loading the right driver, but for the wrong mobo (was loading sk98lin which is for the A7N8X-E Deluxe instead of 3c59x for the A7N8X Deluxe). I spent 3 hours trying to figure out what I did wrong. After that, it's simply a matter of following the easy-to-read Gentoo handbook, sysadmin guides (which guided me through how to set up the actual router), and Gentoo wiki.

What helped me best in setting it up is after having sshd running so I could ssh into the server from my main PC. Have that running in putty on one side of the screen (or another screen if you have 2 monitors) and the handbook on the other, it was dead easy.

The difficultness is overstated, if you just RTFA. Really. I setup a Gentoo router over my week-day weekend (Tues-Thur). The hardest part was loading the correct driver for one of my NICs (I have two mobos, A7N8X-E Deluxe and A7N8X Deluxe (rev 2.0)). The problem with that was I was loading the right driver, but for the wrong mobo (was loading sk98lin which is for the A7N8X-E Deluxe instead of 3c59x for the A7N8X Deluxe). I spent 3 hours trying to figure out what I did wrong. After that, it's simply a matter of following the easy-to-read Gentoo handbook, sysadmin guides (which guided me through how to set up the actual router), and Gentoo wiki.

What helped me best in setting it up is after having sshd running so I could ssh into the server from my main PC. Have that running in putty on one side of the screen (or another screen if you have 2 monitors) and the handbook on the other, it was dead easy.

I give you the geeky linux install back: here

>- the software support isn't there. No CATIA, no
>ProE, no etc. Can't be an engineer using Linux
>alone.

They sound like rather obscure/unusual applications. What is their function?

>it is still fucking slow. Hate to break it to
>you, but as a long time xfce4 user, XP is still
>faster.

Get a 2.6 series kernel, and compile it with the pre-emptible feature turned on, and SMTP support turned off if you've only got one processor. Make sure you also have a swap partition. In terms of distributions, this one might interest you.

In terms of window managers, if speed is important to you, don't use KDE. Compile a stripped down version of Enlightenment and use fbpanel in conjunction with it. I will be very surprised after you've done that if your RAM usage (before any other applications) is above 50 Mb. What hardware are you using?

>But it's slower for getting things done because
>double-clicking an icon is easier than typing
>/usr/share/baoeu/otehu/ -x -die. Pressing a
>flurry of keys might feel faster, but it isn't
>actually faster.

I strongly recommend that you familiarise yourself with the contents of this document, and also this one, if you have not already done so. You can download a version of make compatible with that tutorial from here.
You may also be interested in downloading this program and learning about its use.

If after having a look at some of these tools and taking some time to learn/evaluate them, you still desire to remain GUI based, that's fine. Some people genuinely *are* more visually oriented, neurologically. But in order merely to set the record straight that use of the command line can indeed be remarkably powerful for those who are oriented towards it, I would invite you to as I said at least evaluate the above documents and tools. The command line takes some time and mental effort to become confident with, but once you are familiar with it, the levels of flexibility and automation it can offer you truly are unavailable anywhere else.

I don't know if this good, but I get about 1400FPS from glxgears on my T41p that has a FireGL T2. I'm using ATI's drivers (version 8.8.25) in Gentoo.

But, instead of posting off-topic here, you should go over to http://forums.gentoo.org/ and search for info there -- even if you're not using Gentoo it is a good resource for information.

I feel quite honored to have the same computer as the father of linux himself.... although I kinda gave up the linux thing on my G5... Knowing him (not that I do) he will probably want to run a 64bit SMP variant, being that... well.. he has multiple 64 bit processors. As of last summer, when I tried playing with putting linux on my box, the only viable option was tgall's PPC64 project Unfortunately, as of last summer, the cds were buggy and it took me quite a lot of work to get it working. Not being the creator of linux, I wanted to keep OS X, so I decided to keep multiple partitions: one for OS X, one for gentoo and it's requirements (swap, etc), and one that would be a common partition that would be mounted as /home in linux and /users in OS X. This turned out to be HELL. In OS X 1.3 (highly reccomended for a G5) the files like passwd and shadow are almost a buffer for what's really used by the system. You have to load it to net info. This is all fine and dandy - there are some guides out there, but every time my system crashed (MUCH more than a mac ever should, but that was cause of buggy software more than anything else) net info would go to default and I'd have to redo some of my work to get my system back in order. All in all, it took a month and I never got it working to my satisfaction. Perhapse this kind of toying with OSs isn't his thing? I think it'd be pretty obvious that if he had to make a decision he'd choose OS X. Ah well... even if you can't use firefox, it's reeeeaaaaly cool to emerge KDE in 40% the time it takes my P4 ^_^

In windows, there's the other quickload option. In Linux, use the script at the bottom of this thread. You'll get your faster loading times.

Gentoo. You can configure to your humble heart's content.

As opposed to Slackware, Gentoo, Debian, Trustix, Tiny Sofa etc. These are designed for making toast. Why they have everything required for an out-of-the-box LAMP installation is beyond me, I've never had to use PHP to make toast before. Maybe my toaster just has it integrated in firmware?

Most people recommend a combined approach including mandatory access control, chroot jails for services on the internet, stack smash protection, address space layout randomization, non-executable memory pages, firewalls, virus and spyware scanning, intrusion detection, regular vulnerability patching, and user education (did I leave anything out?). No one will tell you that you are safe after implementing just one of these solutions, but the more you do implement, the more secure your system will be.

All of the above have been available on Linux for some time, but are not implemented by default in any popular distribution that I am aware of, which is a shame because I believe it is only a matter of time before someone writes a really nasty worm for Linux. Most Linux users I know seem to believe they are safe with only regular patching and a firewall.

Gentoo is the best distro I have found for implementing these security measures and tries to build them in as an option wherever possible. Gentoo has great documentation on security and is all about custom configuration and compiling. Since some of the above solutions require special compiler technologies, Gentoo is a perfect fit.

Each of those solutions take a certain amount of effort to implement and will break certain existing applications in different ways. Basically, Microsoft is taking the next step and implementing the least disruptive and easiest solution that will provide some protection for all software running on the system. They should probably also compile their own software with stack smash protection and make address space layout randomization available as a next step.

The GPL version of open source is not going to work, especially if you want an entire system from thousands of different vendors to be 100% open source. It's hard enough to get industry-wide standards adopted WITHOUT requiring everyone to give their products away for free.

How does something that directly contradicts reality get modded insightful ?

The only thing that will work is to either reinvent the wheel from scratch, in your own country, under communism, and hope you'll succeed where no one else has. (China seems to be making progress).

The current scarecrow to throw at your enemies is terrorism, not communism. Please follow your times.

Also, if you meant that shared ownership implies communism, it logically follows that any company with more than one shareholder is communistic.

Come up with an open source license that doesn't take away control of finished products from companies who haven't yet had a chance to earn a profit from their work

AFAIK most open source projects are (or at least started as) the work of people, not corporations.

The GPL doesn't work, it requires immediate release of source that can be used by competitors or would-be customers, and eliminates the profit motive.

Um, isn't this exactly what the company releasing its code would want ? That anyone who distributes products based on the code must release any enhancments to the code under GPL as well ?

You do realize that just because you, the original author and copyright holder, released version 1.0 under the GPL, doesn't mean you that you are under any obligation to release version 1.0.1 under any license - assuming, of course, that you own the copyrights to all the code in version 1.0.1 ? Licenses are used togrant rights, under certain terms, to people who don't have the copyright to whatever is being licensed.

Or were you bemoaning over companies inability to take GPL'd code, add some features, and sell the result as their own proprietary product ? If so, keep on lamenting; you won't get any sympathy from me.

I was thinking more along the lines of the GNU Hurd kernel plus glibc/gcc/GNU userland plus Portage for app/sw installs and updates. A frankenstein-type melding of different technologies to be sure, but one with as many core deficiencies and limitations removed as possible, IMHO.

I agree entirely, which is why I invested the time in learning how to use rpm properly - it can do everything that portage and dpkg can do (note that rpm is not and was never meant to be analogous to apt-get; yum or the rpm port of apt are the appropriate comparisons).

Of course, what makes Gentoo and Debian special is the number of packages that are available as native distro packages from the respective standard repositories. RH/Fedora has been behind both those distros for a long time, but with Fedora and repositories such as freshrpms.net, dag and atrpms, it's catching up.

If a ready-built package isn't available for the version of the package you want to install, then it does come down to rolling your own RPMs if you want to keep your system sane. This is the same situation as exists for Gentoo and Debian, but most users don't experience this as a) they're not distro developers or package maintainers and b) they find new enough versions of the packages they wish to use already present in the standard repositories (because some distro developer has already done the work for them already).

I've read the instructions for creating your own Gentoo Ebuilds, and the process is almost identical in complexity (or simplicity, if you prefer) to creating your own RPMs. Debian is a bit easier, because it's considered acceptable to roll all the changes you make into a single über-patch.

In the end, I've stuck with RH/Fedora as I want to continue to leverage the experience I've built up from running it over the last ten years. I also usually agree with their package/version choices and the changes they make to the upstream packages.

Just for fun about a year ago I installed Linux on an old 486 SX my in-laws were throwing out. There is something surreal about combining software with up to the minute security and bug fixes with a ~10 year old computer and a ~6 year old network and sound card, and then turning around and using pretty much the same software to interface with digital video and still cameras and wireless network cards that weren't even conceived of when 486s were cutting edge.

If you haven't checked out Linux in a couple of years, look again. In my opinion, Linux is well beyond the catch up stage and is starting to lead the pack in some areas. As an example of free software being ahead of its time, one of my recent configuration frustrations has been trying to keep a handful of applications like mplayer from using IPv6 by default. Look at the hardened gentoo project for another example of Linux leading the pack.

While my PC is a single CPU, I also own a Mac G4 500Mhz dual CPU system. It's not the fastest thing in the world, but what impresses me is that I can be building something on it (e.g. Mozilla) and the desktop is still responsive and fast. That's what a dual CPU gets you. I recently tried a Mac mini (clocked at 1.25Gz) and the different in performance was very noticeable - if I launched a video or something, and ran the mouse over the dock the desktop would start getting all jerky as it tried to service both tasks. My venerable G4 has a slower clockspeed than a Mac mini, but I've never seen anything like that before.

It's all about the RAM. Notice that i'm comparing a 500 MHz single G4 to a 1000 MHz single G4, and calling the faster one slow as ass. this is because the faster one only has 25% of the RAM! the faster machine also has a 2.66x faster bus (100 MHz SDR vs 266 MHz DDR used as SDR) and a loads better GPU, but it's still a PITA to run because it doesn't have enough RAM to run a web browser, (Safari) and a [word processor (Pages) || email program (Entourage)] at the same time without swapping.

How much RAM do you have in your Mac mini? how much in your PM G4? i'm willing to bet that you have a similar ratio i do. try upgrading the RAM on that mini and see what happens.

I build lots of source code. Things like Mozilla take 30 minutes or more to build. On my current system drags down other tasks such and the whole system is stilted and slow.
You should give gentoo a try. That metadistro does a good job at staying responsive while you build code. even with a single CPU/Core.

The Gentoo package database lists e and says it's "the e17 window manager" and Enlightenment, with the description "Enlightenment Window Manager" and version 0.16.9999
<obvious joke goes here>
Maybe I'll emerge e later.
It might be a fun dissonance, to have a little shell script that randomly flops between Enlightenment and Ion3, my current WM.
Because, really, when did Emacs care fig #1 about the WM, much less X? ;)

I am using an AMD 1700+ CPU with 1 GB memory, an nVidia GeForce FX 5700 128MB board. I only have 80+GB space on the system right now (enough for around 5 hrs recording time ) but I will probably upgrade it later this year.

I bought this card because it does not have the broadcast bit and since it was made before July it will not be encumbered with all those restrictions.

I do not, however, plan on abusing that flexibility by sharing my recordings and thus ripping off the content owners. It is the thieves that feel it is thier right to steal from people just because they can that have brought this onerrous situation upon us.

RPM is just doing its job, detecting a failed dependency.

If A.rpm depends on B.rpm, and B.rpm depends on A.rpm, you can install neither A nor B. That is not a failed dependency. That's a fucked up package management system. When I stopped using RPM, I never had to worry about that again.

There's nothing that says a modern package management system has to be wrapped up in a single tool, in this case RPM.

Well, nothing except, say all your competition. But you want to ignore that? Fine. Try this on for size...

Gentoo has never once stomped on a config file. It's package management system includes etc-update, a tool for merging changes in config files when you updated packages. with RPM, you have to hope and pray whoever put the RPM together wouldn't stomp your config files.

Did redhat go after $ in the enterprise and lose sight of Linux developers? I'd say yes.

They co-opted the fedora project,gave it ver little resources and virtually *NO* promotion, and tried to downplay it's even existence to all the corporate customers that they are pitching yearly per-server RHN contracts to.

People who had used SuSE before went back and tried SuSE and discovered that SuSE had newer software versions than Redhat

People who might have thought that Debian was only for masochists discovered Ubuntu and decided it was fast, easy, and didn't become "legacy" in 12 months

People who wanted more updated packages and hated breaking RPM dependencies and like to occasionally build things from source or optomize their packages found Gentoo and decided that rebuilding their entire OS could be fun, easy, and that their OS didn't need to become Legacy in 12 months.

Personally, I think that Gentoo is probably the purest Linux distribution, and that if you want the stability of a tried and true distribution that Ubuntu is the best Debian I've seen.

More developers have shifted away from Redhat, and they in turn have been influencing many other people's choice of distribution, and ultimately they are losing mindshare.

I think Redhat has finally realized that they *need* those developers and they're now doing a strange dance to try to pump up Fedora enough to excite the development community, but not enough to dissuade corpoprate customers for paying them for access to patches for RHEL.

"Hey everyone (except corporate customers), look Fedora's great!"

"Hey everyone (except developers), Fedora's unstable and unsupported, use RHEL!"

Where also they link to another forum post containing some very interesting performance differences, found here.

Those are some very interesting results, particularly since they appear to indicate, overall, that 64-bit code on a 64-bit OS is faster than 32-bit code on a 32-bit OS. The exceptions, where the 32-bit code was faster, were all programs that are specifically optimized for x86 performance, including hand-tuned assembler. It's reasonable to assume that when those are hand optimized for AMD64, they'll be faster as well. Actually, all of them seem like applications that will really benefit from the 64-bit registers, so they'll probably be *much* faster.

I actually expected the 64-bit code to be slightly slower, because it tends to be a little larger. Larger code is less likely to fit in the various levels of cache which requires more frequent fetches from slower memory. It appears that the larger number of available registers the compiler can use more than offsets the performance cost of larger code size (and probably helps to reduce the expansion as well). Those additional registers obviously provide zero benefit to assembler code that doesn't know they're there and therefore doesn't use them.

Gentoo has some nice benchmarks on this. You can find it in the AMD 64 FAQ found here . Where also they link to another forum post containing some very interesting performance differences, found here.