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> why is it that so many prefer Gnome over KDE ?

There are always some who don't share opinion or taste of the majority. For example have a look at the Gentoo Linux usage statistics. Adding all KDE installations compared to Gnome installations more seem to prefer KDE than Gnome. That's the tendency this statistic has in common with most web polls (which I in general wouldn't overestimate as being representative).

# export USE="-X"
# emerge whatever

Download this tool and follow the directions. Make sure you don't skip the fdisk step, and then your undo history will be cleared.

KDE has gained quite some speed with the last version changes. The gap is not as large as you remember.

http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/pkgs/app-sci/octave.xml

Once you have the portage tree downloaded, then portage doesn't explicitly send information about what software you have installed, other than the information that can be obtained from watching what updated tarballs are downloaded. (Basically, it's possible to get a really good guess of what a Gentoo box has installed if you can get the server logs from the main mirror.)

Basically, I think that MS made a technical decision that it was better to have the client say "I have this" than for the server to dump a complete list of "Current versions are this" to the client. They also want tag individuals update clients so that when User ID {12345678-9ABC-DEF0-1234-123456789ABC} attempts and fails to install an update 120 times in a row, they only count that as one client that cannot install an update. They can then determine that raw failed attempts may be 10235, but only 528 users couldn't install the patch but were very persistant in failing. And then they can concentrate on the patch that 10,245,349 individual people couldn't install.

I don't believe there was an malice intended (yet), and that people are simply overreacting. If MS was explicitly denying security patches to people with Mozilla installed, I might be more worried. For the time being, this doesn't seem like MS trying to screw their users. Although MS has proven that they are quite willing to do so in the future, with measures that don't seem overly threatening originally.

Well, Gentoo 1.4 rc2 is smaller than 1.4 rc1. Then again, Gentoo downloads what you want as you request it so this may be a moot point.

Ummm... Someone should tell these guys:

http://www.linuxppc.org

and these guys ...

http://www.yellowdoglinux.com

and these guys ...

http://fink.sourceforge.net

and these guys ...

http://www.debian.org

and these guys ...

http://www.gentoo.org

and these guys ...

http://www.linux-mandrake.com

Each of them either produces a PowerPC-based Linux distribution that runs on iBooks (as well as iMacs, Powerbooks and other PowerPC systems), or in the case of fink, ports common Linux apps to the OS X platform.

Coincidentally, Gentoo Linux already has an ebuild for OpenSSL 0.9.6i.

My laptop was protected against this attack before I knew it existed. :-)

Hurray for Gentoo Linux!

Ok, I see your point, but I also see a few that you have missed.

Gentoo - It allows you to control almost _exactly_ whats on your computer, it can be compiled explicitly for your processor type increasing performance and Package update due to security risks and updates are easy to install and appear very soon after the new release or patch. I know as I jumped from Mandrake to Gentoo with very few problems. It uses a packaging system a little like Debians crossed with Ports from BSD.

Debian - Targeted at servers, where stability and security are far more important than whether 3D acceleration is supported. A lot of the packages marked as unstable are probably those packages that are installed as part of distributions such as Redhat, but Debian's maintainers do not feel they have been sufficiently field tested yet.

FreeBSD - Never used it so I can't comment.

One of the reasons why I switched to Linux was because settings were made in text files. Given good guides (by which I mean those like the gentoo installation guide]) It isn't too difficult given patience (a skill I wanted to learn when moving to Linux) and the wish to _learn_. I find the major distributions a little wired - they are getting to the state where the default config files are completely ignored (RH7.3 wireless for example) making it near impossble to configure without the graphical front-ends given generic HOWTO's, which I feel is a great shame.

Qli sells new laptops with Linux preinstalled. Their prices range from one thousand to over two, for a fully loaded machine. They don't sell any that are tiny, like the Vaio, but there are other companies that do sell refurbished laptops and small form factor laptops with no Windows tax. I chose Qli because I was looking for a particular feature set, and because one of their installation options is Gentoo, which is my current favorite distribution.

I got an 1800MHz, 512MB (2GB max), 15.1" LCD, 20Gb, DVD/CDRW laptop for a shade over $1800. It has onboard ethernet, three USB (one of which is USB 2.0), onboard firewire, and a single CardBus slot. It was, practically, the perfect configuration I was looking for; the price was reasonable, and (as I said) they offered Gentoo as an install option.

My experience with Qli has been good. I agreed that they would install Gentoo 1.4, which is technically still beta, and this was Qli's first 1.4 laptop, so I had to do some work after the machine arrived to get it fully configured. I would expect that if you chose Gentoo 1.2, Mandrake, or Redhat, it would arrive fully configured. Qli provides a large number of installation options, and money you pay for the distribution of your choice (which varies) goes to the distribution.

The best thing about Qli, IME, was the customer service. The staff are extremely knowledgable and helpful, and are good about responding to support requests. They have a good understanding of kernel configurations, from which kernel modules are required to support which features to various configuration options.

I'm also very happy with the hardware. Although it isn't yet supported by Linux, I was pleasantly surprised that the laptop came with an unadvertised MMC/SD slot.

There are a couple of hangups with my particular hardware, but none of it is Qli's fault. The laptop is entirely ACPI, and ACPI support in Linux is immature. Consequently, I can't suspend the laptop (!) -- yet. OpenGL is proved to be a bear to get working, but this is due to my choice of distributions; apparently, Redhat on this laptop has full accellerated GL support out of the box. There is an onboard WinModem, but we know about those.

In summary, I can recommend Qli. You need to evaluate your own requirements, and then send them an email before you buy. They'll give you status reports on various configurations and recommend a system for you.

[Disclaimer] I do not work for Qli, and I don't receive any compensation for recommending them. My only relationship with Qli is that I've recently purchased a laptop from them.

Short of passing around source tarballs and having them compiled on demand, I don't think an ideal package system exists for all platforms.

But the result will remain the same (bad for BSD): Linux supports more hardware and does it better.

If you need OS for big SMP machine, shall you choose BSD? No, many even BSD people will advise you to stick to Linux for that. If you need a cluster then you'll get same advise.

And I am not going deep into desktop area where BSD's hardware support is just outdated (Firewire, USB, sound, video are just examples).

Sure BSD can work stable on one CPU running nfsd, httpd and sendmail. But that was the achivement 10 years ago - not today.

As for RH installer support of AIC-789x, again, it's not a problem on other distros and even you can do it on RH: just install the system, boot the liveCD with any Linux distro, mount your root, chroot, rebuild and reinstall your kernel.

The hardware support of Linux and the hardware support of RH installer are two different things.

Of course, this assumes that the machine has enough memory for this. I wonder how small you could get that? I'm thinking you might be able to write to a CD-RW using as little as 16MB, depending on how the boot process works (ie, figures out the modules needed and loads them before unmounting the CD-RW).

There's also a bootable Compact Flash reader. Compact Flash cards are rewritable, standard, and far more expensive than CD-Rs ($80 for a 128MB card...), but the 8MB ones are fairly cheap and might be useful. There are bootable CF IDE drives available. It costs $60, but allows booting off CF cards, which are fairly standard. You can get USB and PCMCIA cards that can read them as well, and several of the newer PDAs also have adapters that allow them to be used.

Mind you, I think that the 88mm CD-Rs are the perfect "bootable" replacement for floppies. The Gentoo LiveCD makes for perfect "rescue" CDs for almost all Linux distros, and the stage-1 Live CD fits on an 88mm CD-R.

One of the things I've noticed about the default GNOME 2.x setup on my system (courtesy of Gentoo) is that it's very minimalist. Usually only one app per function and clean, simple menus with descriptive options. (In fairness, I do wish that a few more apps were included by default. Like an integrated mail handler and graphics editor.)

It occurred to me recently, when I tried KDE 3.1, that the way it seems so overdone has always turned me off from KDE. The KDE panel along the bottom is usually crowded with icons. The KDE menus are overflowing with application after application. Perhaps some of this is unneeded crap included by the packager, but I'm willing to be there are fewer menu items and redundant apps in a stock compile of a GNOME desktop than a KDE desktop.

Yes, I know I can clean up KDE until it's minimalist, but I shouldn't have to. I like starting with a clean sandbox and building my castle, thanks. I'd rather not have to tear someone else's castle down first.

Anyway, it has occurred to me that this cleanliness could be awfully appealing to a commercial company looking for a basic environment upon which to build a branded, heavily customized one. Instead of feeling like you have to rip the guts out to find a clean starting place or having to go app-by-app and menu-by-menu and replace or refine what's already there, you can start with a skeleton and build up from there.

Not that anyone's looking to do that, necessarily, but with Sun looking to use GNOME as their standard desktop, I'd like to know how easy it was to start from the baseline and build up.

I know, it's already done by Gentoo, Debian, some others. But not by Sun.

Perhaps, it's time for Sun to rise and shine :)

You can install Gentoo from the source code, but if you need just a shot to introduce Gentoo - try GRP, reference platform. The only difference is: no bootstraping (it means that someone has already compiled everything for you).

Switch to Gentoo.

Then emerge -u world

The link requires (free)registration. It has a guide for Debian installation too. For Gentoo users, you may also look at gentoo's guide on User-Mode Linux.

# emerge kde

Gentoo is really nice.

I stay (at home) with Gentoo - it doesn't seem to go a proprietary way anytime soon. Redhat might be a good option for enterprise servers, but not for home or SOHO users.

See.. some people hate having to compile thirty or so odd packages. Other people hate having to compile six or so packages in which they can't chose to compile some. Either way, you can't have both.

Of course, i routinely rebuild kde, mozilla, and OO several times on my box(es) each week (not each one several times), and stay fairly up-to-date on xfree-cvs too. This is brought to you by the magic of ccache, distcc, and emerge.

I've said it before, some of the Linux aficionados suffer from severe Versionitis.

Free software developers and users are much farther up the Exponential Technology Curve than proprietary vendors and their customers are.

A two year change in GNU/Linux is roughly equivelent to a 10 year change in Windows, for example, so expecting a two year old distribution with outdated libraries and an outdated kernel to be able to run the most current software, that relies on cutting edge kernel features and support, and newer, less buggy libraries is akin to expecting the current crop of MS software to run on the operating system they were selling ten years ago (Windows 3.11 I believe, though I may be off by a year or two).

Why can't he use 7.2 if it works for him?

Because 7.2 doesn't support the software he wants to run. The versions of the libraries are too old and either lack support completely, or are too rudimentary in their support, to do what he wants, hell, even the very kernel is quite possibly too old to do what he wants.

If you want to keep up with such changes in a reasonably painless manner, run Source Mage or Gentoo and do your updates incrementally once a week or so ... or accept that you'll need to upgrade your system every six months or so (in a signficant way), or decide you are going to stick with something tried, true, but staid, and stop complaining when the current state of the art has moved beyond your personal technological horizon. How you leapfrog your technology and your updates is up to you, but insisting on running a hopelessly outdated version of a binary distribution because you don't want to upgrade, and then vilifying the developers because your outdated system won't run the shiny new programs you want to play with defys logic and rationality, not to mention even a semblance of social grace.

Jamie's complaints would mostly go away if he did two things:

• Installed Gentoo
• Used --nogui

Of course, if he did that the rest of us would have to go without the wonderful entertainment that issues forth when Jamie is hot and bothered. Frankly, I don't want my jwz any other way.

Congratulations.

So write up an FAQ. Tell us:

1) What WMs work with what video programs.
2) What libraries are required.
3) What version of gcc you used *G*
4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues.
5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".

You don't need to know all of that if you install Gentoo. While Gentoo isn't the only answer, nor is it for everyone, it is in my experience, for those wishing to do serious video work with the current state of the art software (read: most recent bug fixes and features) without comprimising other capabilities (e.g. open office, mozilla support, etc. etc) the easiest approach.

Others will doubtlessly offer or make available online FAQs and recipes for their favorite distributions, but I doubt any of them compare to the simplicity of a single, two word command typed at the command line.

The installation of Gentoo seems daunting to those who like to choose from menus and click 'yes', and it is a very fair criticism that the installation (mostly manual, but with excellent online, step-by-step documentation, and very easy to script up yourself as I have done where I work) lacks the aesthetics and ease of Mandrake, Suse, and Red Hat, but once that is done maintaining currency with the current state of the art is extraordinarilly simple.

Gentoo makes compiling and installing software trivial. In short, the answer to all of your questions above boils down to:

1) Install Gentoo
2) type, at the command line:

emerge mplayer

emerge, a portage command, will resolve all of the library and runtime dependencies for you, compile and install them all (and the specific versions you need, if any), and then download the current mplayer sources, compile and install them for you. Once the compile is done, you're ready to start watching movies.

It really doesn't get any simpler than that (attempts at making things like this simpler with other distros has resulted in very unreliable upgrade procedures, and, quite frankly, don't work well. This approach of getting the sources from the horses mouth, so to speak, compiling them as they were intended against the currently installed library base, optimized for the local hardware, is really ideal. Simplifying this procedure to a single two-word command was ingenious.)

I've done this on probably 50 machines, of varying architectures and hardware capabilities, ranging from hand-held, touch screen tablets to laptops, desktops, and servers, with everything from pentium mmx chips to dual athlon 2400+ MP systems (warning: the slower ships will take days to compile everything!) and it has always worked painlessly and flawlessly.

Congratulations.

So write up an FAQ. Tell us:

1) What WMs work with what video programs.
2) What libraries are required.
3) What version of gcc you used *G*
4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues.
5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".

You don't need to know all of that if you install Gentoo. While Gentoo isn't the only answer, nor is it for everyone, it is in my experience, for those wishing to do serious video work with the current state of the art software (read: most recent bug fixes and features) without comprimising other capabilities (e.g. open office, mozilla support, etc. etc) the easiest approach.

Others will doubtlessly offer or make available online FAQs and recipes for their favorite distributions, but I doubt any of them compare to the simplicity of a single, two word command typed at the command line.

The installation of Gentoo seems daunting to those who like to choose from menus and click 'yes', and it is a very fair criticism that the installation (mostly manual, but with excellent online, step-by-step documentation, and very easy to script up yourself as I have done where I work) lacks the aesthetics and ease of Mandrake, Suse, and Red Hat, but once that is done maintaining currency with the current state of the art is extraordinarilly simple.

Gentoo makes compiling and installing software trivial. In short, the answer to all of your questions above boils down to:

1) Install Gentoo
2) type, at the command line:

emerge mplayer

emerge, a portage command, will resolve all of the library and runtime dependencies for you, compile and install them all (and the specific versions you need, if any), and then download the current mplayer sources, compile and install them for you. Once the compile is done, you're ready to start watching movies.

It really doesn't get any simpler than that (attempts at making things like this simpler with other distros has resulted in very unreliable upgrade procedures, and, quite frankly, don't work well. This approach of getting the sources from the horses mouth, so to speak, compiling them as they were intended against the currently installed library base, optimized for the local hardware, is really ideal. Simplifying this procedure to a single two-word command was ingenious.)

I've done this on probably 50 machines, of varying architectures and hardware capabilities, ranging from hand-held, touch screen tablets to laptops, desktops, and servers, with everything from pentium mmx chips to dual athlon 2400+ MP systems (warning: the slower ships will take days to compile everything!) and it has always worked painlessly and flawlessly.

So I say embrace the criticism. Take a deep breath. It can only make Linux stronger and better in the long run.

It would if the criticism were in the least constructive, and in the least relevant to the current state of the art.

It is neither, and speaking as one who both CREATES and WATCHES video on his computer using exclusively free software running under GNU/Linux, I can unequivocably say that whatever respect I had for this individual is gone and unlikely ever to return.

He insists on using an outdated distribution, gets upset when new software hasn't been backported to it, gets upset at the idea he might actually have to (gasp!) compile it himself, gets upset when people quite correctly point out that he needs to use a distrubition newer than the one he has clearly decided to stay married to, etc. etc.

It is like complaining that MS Office 2000 won't run under Windows 3.11 ... and he deserves all of the derision he is getting, here on slashdot and elsewhere.

Hint to the uninformed: run the current Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, or what have you, or, if you really want good performance and the ability to painlessly run the current state of the art software, try Gentoo, an excellent source-based distro that automates the process of compiling (and recompiling) so much so that it is not only as easy as installing an RPM, it yields a much better, more optimized, and generally more compatible and useful result.

But do not expect to be running current, state of the art software on two-year old, obsolete binary distrubitions, and do not expect any sympathy, or respect for your rants, if you insist on doing so. Judging the current state of the art based on a dated distro's inability to cope with current code is neither accurate, nor fair, nor deserving of the sort of attention this particularly uninsightful rant posing as a review has gotten.

JWZ should have known better and has, instead, willfully and deliberately, chosen not to. Blaming others and looking gift horses in the mouth for his own stubborn incompetence is extraordinarilly disingenuous and contemptable ... which describes my newly formed opinion of the man, at least when he is speaking on this subject, to a T: contempt.

So, anyone have any thoughts on how companies like Dell can ship Linux computers, keeping in mind that in general only their more advanced users want Linux; and those people don't want any extra cruft on their systems?

The fonts problems on linux really blow away many people from using linux, but with a little configuring you can get them to look just as nice as in windows. Currently there are many enhancements happening in the linux font rendering.
But as everything nowadays, the developers are having patent issues. The deal is that in order to have nice looking fonts (at least with the current fonts that are available) you have to use the BCI (Byte Code Interpreter), wich is patented, so many distros do not distribute freetype compiled with the BCI turned on (some distros don't care about it and turn the BCI on anyway, I assume this is what happens with redhat). And even when BCI is turned on, some distros really do a lousy job when configuring the fonts.
I have mozilla running with fonts exactly like they look in windows (i did compare the fonts using vmware and they really are exactly the same) but I did have to configure many things. If you are willing to do this too check the Gentoo Forums. Unlike what happens on other Linux distros comunities, the gentoo users don't give up until they've got it like they want (and don't mind sharing their work), so you'll probably won't have a hard time getting help in the gentoo community.

Thank you for clarifying the relationship between TCPA and Palladium. That makes a bit more sense now. Now another question: can the TPA be used at all without the root authority crap? In other words, could a Linux driver be written just to shift all of the encryption over to that chip, thus speeding up SSH and such? I don't know all that much about kernel hacking, so I'm just pondering here. It seems that the TCPA faq seems to say that would work, but I don't know. Still, I'm not sure I understand why everyone is so aghast at Microsoft doing the same thing they've always been doing: namely leveraging their market share to try to get rid of competitors. As it is, I dual boot Win98 and Gentoo Linux, using Windows as little as possible, and Wine/WineX when I can. I dislike Windows very much, but I use it (as I suspect most people do) for a few applications that I really like (Cool Edit Pro, Photoshop, Revalver, Flash, Warcraft III). In the future, if indeed somehow Microsoft manages to retrofit all copies of Windows98 to use Palladium (doubtful), and I can no longer use it without MS controlling my machine, then I won't. I'll just make do without it, and write my own apps. I think rather than campaigning against TCPA/Palladium, perhaps we should start a campaign to help users remember that old Windows versions (98SE-2K-XP) don't have Palladium, and pretty much can't ever have it. Not only this, but they still run just fine, and all the software you might want will run on them. Sure, someone might laugh at me running Win98 on a 3GHz machine (dude, that's so five years ago...), but it works, right? And I think that's an equation that even Joe Average can understand, especially given the number of non-techies I know that refuse to upgrade (not worth the hassle, it still works well enough for me, etc.). So anyway, I'm digressing a bit here, but the gist of what I'm saying is that I think perhaps Microsoft underestimates the intelligence of the ordinary user. If users are informed of Palladium's true intentions (which is what we are trying to do), and also informed that there's really no particular need to upgrade at all (better yet, use Linux :), then I think users can figure out for themselves what to do. What I'm leaving out of this equation is future application developement. I wonder, then, if Photoshop 8.0 will require Palladium so nobody can download it on those 0-day WaReZ sites? Or whether Warcraft IV will require TCPA-enabled cd-drives so you can't just copy the cd and install it somewhere else? This is what bugs me. Of course, the fun thing is, even if all of this happened, it would only be about three weeks till some group of l33t hAX0Rs cracks the code and releases AMIBIOS-3.2-TCPA-PALLADIUM-FIXED-RAZOR1911.zip onto the internet...of course, by that time, even WinZIP will be TCPA-aware, and refuse to unzip the file...so you'll just unzip it in Linux to a bootable floppy, disable TCPA in the BIOS so you can boot from the "untrusted" floppy, and flash it to hell...unless...oh nevermind.

# rpm -e sendmail
# rpm -i exim-foo.bar.rpm

Better yet, go with a distro that doesn't foist Sendmail on you by default...you can then do something like this:

# emerge qmail

This thread on forums.gentoo.org discusses to death what compilation flags are good to use (mostly gcc 3.x+). Even though you're using a different source based distro, the concepts are all the same.

After all, if you can only watch future movies on "approved" OS's, guess which ones will be approved and which ones won't!

I'm betting that within a week of Microsoft pushing a DRM implementation out to the public, there will probably be an mplayer patch with a couple downloadable DLLs that will do the whole thing. :)

Seriously, though, I'm suprised to see Microsoft take this position, since they had the most to gain if this scheme takes off. After all, if you can only watch future movies on "approved" OS's, guess which ones will be approved and which ones won't!

Many may not have had the pleasure of using uPM yet. It is a new package manager that seems to be very well thought out and seems to be heavily bassed on dpkg and ebuild/emerge. It represents the best features of both. It aims to simplify the build process and allow for binary packages to be built from the customized build process.

I would look for uOS, the distribution based on the package manager to rise above either Debian or Gentoo (both of which I love, btw). It is still early in development, but it seems to work well for me.

Slackware has the answer to most of life's problems.

...you could also try Debian or Gentoo.

"Score: -1, Pro-Microsoft"

Just a comment, I'm curious to hear what you think.

In my browsing of Slashdot, I've noticed a handful of posts berating Microsoft with no backing. I've questioned other posts, but couldn't make a decision because I wasn't familiar with the issue. However, most of the comments that I've seen berating Microsoft, while redundant, are deserved.

On the other side of the fence, I've seen only a handful of arguments for Microsoft (and/or against OSS/FS) that have any decent foundation. There are a few that I had to admit were very sound arguments -- and the people who made them hold my respect. However, most of these arguments are based on myths, such as a lack of good documentation, lack of easy-to-use software, lack of easy installs, etc. I have people like "Twirlip of the Mists" on my foes list simply because they insist on making arguments that they seriously know next to nothing about. And it really pisses me off because Twirlip seems to have good logic.

I understand that a lot of folks here are zealots, I understand that some posts get modded down because they support MS and not because of bad content, but I want to hear your opinion of the whole thing. Be honest, please -- bias won't get anyone anywhere. =)

1. Build a Windows XP desktop for my father out of assorted spare parts and a Shuttle SV25. I'm getting tired of trying to figure out what is wrong with his old Win98 system, so this one is set up with Cygwin and VNC for remote administration.

2. Build a new Gentoo Linux server to replace my aged RedHat Linux server.

3. Fix a friend's computer after it crashed in the middle of installing SP1 for WinXP. It wouldn't reboot, and Sony's lame "system recovery" disk is actually a "system initializion" disk (losing all the files). I used tomsrtbt to boot the laptop and cpio/rsh all files to Linux server mentioned above. Then, recovered the laptop with a real Windows XP CD-ROM. Didn't need the backup, after all.

4. Deliver computer (above) to my father and fix the telephone wiring in his house so that DSL works a bit better (I hope).

5. Re-cable a couple of hard drives and use the Promise Raid controller on the Asus A7V333 in my Win2K desktop.

6. Clean house, as I've been out of town for three weeks and a friend is visiting New Year's Eve.

I'm trying out Gentoo Linux. Oh yeah, and catching up on my drinking. I figure that after a few brews Linux is more challenging... :)

I'd be the happiest man if a decent distribution was put together with the FreeBSD world and the linux kernel. Why would you want the opposite? I guess I can see it, but not really. make world + linux kernel == wahooO!

Whoops. Forgot to attach this thread with information on the problems in the drivers.

When Gentoo gets a graphical front-end for the portage system, compilation will be a long-lost memory for most users. Gentoo standardizes the compilation/compiler option configuration process - for any program, just emerge (name of program to build). It has some bugs now, but fewer than you'd expect. I think this would be great for end-users - power users and sysadmins will want to muck with every individual compilation.

It also does dependency checking better than any packaging system I've seen so far - except maybe Debian.

The fact that it's source-based will probably keep it from mainstream use, but the spin-off distros could be incredibly promising.

Using RPM (retch) to install Windows (retch retch) would go something like this (blatantly ripped from a sig I saw):

rpm -i Windows
Package Windows already installed

rpm -e Windows
Package Windows is not installed

Gentoo's portage tree, on the other hand, goes something like this:

emerge [pkgname]

If I wanted to deal with crap like this, I'd just continue signing checks to Lord Bill hoping he won't remotely disable my precious Windows. As long as we have garbage like this, we're opening ourselves up to FUD that will neatly appeal to the PHBs M$ markets to.

Funny... I was just checking out UL (United Linux) earlier today. Seems to be moving up the ranks in popularity at distrowatch.

However, I'm kinda scared about UL. It seems to me like a few of the big players in the linux industry are determining what *should* and should not be. Just check out the UL white paper and count the number of occurrences of "de facto standard".

Personally, I like the distro war. The competition that results just keeps fueling innovation. And in the mean-time just use gentoo.

I recommend Debian to newbies if they want to learn Linux

I disagree - I think that the best distro to use if you want to really learn about each package on your Linux system is Gentoo. Installing Gentoo is an education in itself. No automated installer - not even a text mode one. Just have a glance through the steps in that installation guide and see what I mean.

Gentoo wasn't my first distro -- that was SuSE -- and perhaps the process may seem a little daunting to someone who's never used Linux before. However, I believe that a reasonably intelligent sysadmin who's had a fair bit of experience with command lines should be able to install Gentoo themselves, and will learn a huge amount in the process.

The rc(8)man page in FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT describes how the new init works. Docs are also available for Gentoo's init.

If you want to set it up, Gentoo has support for XFS.

For those using gentoo
instead of redhat, etc. you don't have to wait for
the portage tree to be updated and rsync to get 0.5
phoenix.

Just do this (as root):

cd /usr/portage/net-www/phoenix-bin
cp phoenix-bin-0.4.ebuild phoenix-bin-0.5.ebuild
emerge phoenix-bin-0.5.ebuild /usr/sbin/ebuild phoenix-bin-0.5.ebuild digest
emerge phoenix-bin-0.5.ebuild

the ebuild script has the right paths built in
and finds the proper download from the 0.5 in
its filename.