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Why are all these people taling about running Debian or gentoo in a production environment?

Surely the best bet is to actually go and pay for any OS you use in a production environment, then if it goes tits up you can always pass the buck if you cant fix it?

My company use Red Hat Enterprise Server but I will probably try and encourage this new Oracle offering as it is cheaper once I have evaluated it. I have never had to use their support services yet, but I like knowing they are there if needed and I can easily justify the cost of that support to my manager if asked (My time is more valuable than they charge).

I would quite happily have gentoo in our server room, I would just not like to be the end of chain support person. Maybe some Linux admins out there like having no backup, but I dont.

Regarding some of your points about flagging packages as stable under gentoo and some as unstable, this already exists. The ~ in ~x86 denotes unstable as well as stable. Here is a link to the relevant section of the gentoo manual:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86 .xml?part=3&chap=3

But this is the biggest problem some people have with gentoo, it asks you to read the manual. Most users hate reading manuals.

on the contrary, this article makes NO good points. First of all, he is using old hardware and then he complains about the time it takes to compile packages. Duh. Slow computer + large packages like Apache and MySQL = a lot of time spent compiling. The writer talks about the inital install taking a long time. Yes, my first time installing Gentoo using the CLI took a long time, too, because I was spending more time reading the documentation than performing the steps. The documentation is stupendous, btw. Now that I have gone through a few installs, I can pretty much do it all on my own, but I still refer to the Quick Install Guide for reference. He then complains about the Stage 3 install losing the "compile everything" mentality. Wrong again, because the nature of Gentoo is that as you change USE flags and packages get updated, then the base system will naturally update itself. So, the Stage 3 install simply removes a lot of initial compiling to get you in to a base system quicker. The author then complains about Gentoo wanting you to upgrade everything all of the time and not being stable. Wrong again. You perform an initial `emerge -vauDN world` to update the base system to your new, custom USE flags. Once you install packages and you only want to keep specfic packages up to date, you only need to update that package using `emerge -vau package` (v is verbose, a is ask, both are good so you know exactly what is going on, but not essential). And, as a lot of other people have pointed out, if you do not use the unstable keywords, you will be on a very stable system. Also, no config files will be overwritten unless you tell them to be. The `etc-update` program shows you what needs to be updated, and allows you to merge, overwrite, or ignore the updates. He then says "Gentoo wants you to change a lot of stuff. It wants to be bleeding edge." This is also false. Gentoo wants you to do whatever you want to on your own system. It wants to be as current as you want it to be. Gentoo is all about control and knowing your system.

Obviously, the author has used Gentoo once and now believes he is an expert on the subject. If he had used it more than once, he would see that all of his arguments hold no weight. Every distribution has their own way of doing things, and when you change from one to the other, it takes time to learn the new procedures.

and for the record, I tried to install Debian Woody on my pentium 133 laptop. It took an entire 7 days to download and update the base system. And that was a full 7 days of straight work. Thus, I decided to pick a distribution that was more appropriate for the system and settled on DSL. Also, I switched to Gentoo from Slackware on my server because I always found my self reading the Gentoo documentation for help in setting things up on Slackware, and I like the FreeBSD-esque package manager (Portage is based on Ports). Personally, I would always choose a BSD in a production environment. "BSD on the server; Linux on the desktop," as the old addage goes.

This has been a fairly common response, and I agree in principle - I'd love never having to run that command. But like others have pointed out, this proves to be hard in the long run.

I don't disagree with the opinion that had I known much more about Gentoo, perhaps I would have been able to eliminate more things from the system and thus update fewer packages. But do keep in mind that the intended audience of the article is people who are considering to use Gentoo for a server - not people who are already professional Gentoo users.

These new users will only be able to rely on what the manual tells them. Here's what the manual has to say about it:

If this doesn't mean what it says, I apologize, but do consider that every other new Gentoo administrator may be liable to think the same thing I did.

This has been a fairly common response, and I agree in principle - I'd love never having to run that command. But like others have pointed out, this proves to be hard in the long run.

I don't disagree with the opinion that had I known much more about Gentoo, perhaps I would have been able to eliminate more things from the system and thus update fewer packages. But do keep in mind that the intended audience of the article is people who are considering to use Gentoo for a server - not people who are already professional Gentoo users.

These new users will only be able to rely on what the manual tells them. Here's what the manual has to say about it:

If this doesn't mean what it says, I apologize, but do consider that every other new Gentoo administrator may be liable to think the same thing I did.

Totally agree and wrote some of my own experiences up on the Gentoo forum.

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-504541.html

kashani

Gentoo in the server room?

I think Gentoo CAN work in the server room. glsa and other tools make it a better candidate than it was a few years ago.

Some of the other popular distros capable of running X-less (e.g. Debian) and the *BSDs have been and are in wider production deployment. Of course, if one is tied to a storage, database, or backup vendor, one may be tied to Red Hat or SUSE.

hrmm you might want to try a little RTFM now and then?
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/mysql-upgrading.xml

The promise of Gentoo for me is being able to continually upgrade and never get outside of that window of support.
I agree. Every now and then a program's latest version doesn't agree with a config script somewhere, but that's what etc-update is for. If something borks, you can always ask the gentoo forums, which is an invaluable source of information for all things gentoo. That and the gentoo-wiki.

Also, no one is 'requiring' anyone to upgrade. I administer hundreds of gentoo servers and you don't always need to keep up to date to be secure. Part of the nice thing about gentoo is that you're only installing the packages you need, so if you know of a vulnerability in a script you use, you don't have to upgrade your whole portage tree just to plug a hole.

Gentoo allows you to be on the cutting edge, just like all the other distributions. The primary difference is it makes it very easy for those who don't know what they are doing to be there. Most folks running SuSE, RH, or one of the other 'package' based distributions won't build their own RPM, etc. There is nothing stopping one of the 'normal' distributions from upgrading the kernel with each release. I certainly don't update everything on my Gentoo box because it is there, on my server.

I run Gentoo on a server. The server is stripped down beyond what a typical 'router' distro looks like - one of the reasons I went with Gentoo is I could really trim the system down for the job at hand. My server only gets updates for security, and once in a while a bug fix that impacts the applications running on the server. Not often. When I need to compile something big, the last place I'd do it on is the server itself - it has another task. I take one of my workstations with far more GCC horsepower and let distccd do the work for the poor little pizza box. Beyond the initial build, I doubt those boxes have ever compiled anything.

Since it is a source-based distro, I also am not trapped by RPM's or other packages no longer getting provided for my system. One of the applications I had was using RH9 (with paid support) only to have them drop maintenance on it and have the vender drag their feet moving to another platform (clue stick, they had issues with the 2.6 kernel, so would not 'support' any platform but RH 8 and later 9. The enterprise editions? Forget about it... You want to live in the suck, you try keeping one of those boxes alive and secure years after it EOL.

You should use the nspluginwrapper: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-532587.html

Works perfectly here on my x86_64 Gentoo installation.

I'll refer you to Bug #155528, in which AbiWord 2.4.6 is released, and this bug report is filed on Nov 17th of 2006. Someone bumped the ebuild for the plugins (copied the ebuild file from 2.4.5), and it built and ran just fine, which is what I like about Gentoo -- ridiculously transparent, anyone who can do a little shell scripting can fix issues with packages.

So, you'd think this would be a simple, simple upgrade.... Nope. On Jan 1st of 2007, they bumped AbiWord to 2.4.6, but left the plugins were at 2.4.5, meaning you had a circular dependency loop -- tell Portage to update (-uDN world), and it would upgrade AbiWord to 2.4.6, because that's the latest version. Do it again, and it downgrades to 2.4.5, because that's where the plugins are.

So, one person informs them of this by adding to the report. Someone else says "abiword-plugins needs to be bumped. Thanks." I finally came in Jan 14th, and asked "Is anyone out there?" The next day, it was bumped.

Yes, it took them from Nov 17th to Jan 14th -- almost a month to do a fucking version bump. Rename two files, run one command to generate digests, commit to CVS. And they wonder why people are leaving for Debian and Ubuntu...

One wonders how they would handle a real bug. Actually, I have another one:

A bug in the jabberd init script. Opened 8/14. Found a strange hack to fix it, submitted that the same day, asking someone to tell me why my hack worked, and what the "right way" of doing it would be. 8/16, someone joined the discussion to say my hack worked, but agreed it's a hack... 9/4 something was marked dupe... 9/5 was the first patch that looked like it did the Right Thing. Few more "me too"s, few more dupes... 10/8, another update broke both my hack and the "Right Thing". 10/11, someone finally gave us a completely new init script.

Now, the final script was really the right thing to do, but one has to wonder... It's an init script. How can it be so hard to fix an init script that it takes them almost two months?!

Final exhibit, saved for last because I made a bit of an ass of myself on this one: Enigmail disappears from amd64. Now, I admit, a bug report may not be the right place to bitch about how insanely long this is taking... But still: Filed on 8/07/06, and I have a comment on 9/19 complaining about the lack of Enigmail 0.94.1, which seems to have been released on 8/12. Over a month and no upgrade in sight -- but the existing "stable" build is completely broken. On 9/29, I finally posted my success following someone else's crazy hack that somehow worked, but still no actual fix. Finally fixed on 10/19.

So, over a month with no upgrade (and a broken older version), but the new version was just as broken. Finally fixed two months after the original report. I think I can honestly say that I've only had Apple be slower at dealing with known, verified bug reports.

And I just checked... apparently, my enigmail didn't get automatically rebuilt with my last Thunderbird upgrade. Fortunately, remerging it fixed the problem... I was about to reopen that report.

If others are worse than Gentoo, it makes me think that maybe the idea of a central authority for a Linux distro is no longer workable. Sure, things like Flash will go in right away (and faster on Gentoo, because Portage is easy to work with both technically and legally for that sort of thing), but the less popular things -- like, say, Enigmail and AbiWord -- always seem to be a few months behind. Yes, months, plural -- even Microsoft is starting to look better, with their "Patch Tuesday".

I'll refer you to Bug #155528, in which AbiWord 2.4.6 is released, and this bug report is filed on Nov 17th of 2006. Someone bumped the ebuild for the plugins (copied the ebuild file from 2.4.5), and it built and ran just fine, which is what I like about Gentoo -- ridiculously transparent, anyone who can do a little shell scripting can fix issues with packages.

So, you'd think this would be a simple, simple upgrade.... Nope. On Jan 1st of 2007, they bumped AbiWord to 2.4.6, but left the plugins were at 2.4.5, meaning you had a circular dependency loop -- tell Portage to update (-uDN world), and it would upgrade AbiWord to 2.4.6, because that's the latest version. Do it again, and it downgrades to 2.4.5, because that's where the plugins are.

So, one person informs them of this by adding to the report. Someone else says "abiword-plugins needs to be bumped. Thanks." I finally came in Jan 14th, and asked "Is anyone out there?" The next day, it was bumped.

Yes, it took them from Nov 17th to Jan 14th -- almost a month to do a fucking version bump. Rename two files, run one command to generate digests, commit to CVS. And they wonder why people are leaving for Debian and Ubuntu...

One wonders how they would handle a real bug. Actually, I have another one:

A bug in the jabberd init script. Opened 8/14. Found a strange hack to fix it, submitted that the same day, asking someone to tell me why my hack worked, and what the "right way" of doing it would be. 8/16, someone joined the discussion to say my hack worked, but agreed it's a hack... 9/4 something was marked dupe... 9/5 was the first patch that looked like it did the Right Thing. Few more "me too"s, few more dupes... 10/8, another update broke both my hack and the "Right Thing". 10/11, someone finally gave us a completely new init script.

Now, the final script was really the right thing to do, but one has to wonder... It's an init script. How can it be so hard to fix an init script that it takes them almost two months?!

Final exhibit, saved for last because I made a bit of an ass of myself on this one: Enigmail disappears from amd64. Now, I admit, a bug report may not be the right place to bitch about how insanely long this is taking... But still: Filed on 8/07/06, and I have a comment on 9/19 complaining about the lack of Enigmail 0.94.1, which seems to have been released on 8/12. Over a month and no upgrade in sight -- but the existing "stable" build is completely broken. On 9/29, I finally posted my success following someone else's crazy hack that somehow worked, but still no actual fix. Finally fixed on 10/19.

So, over a month with no upgrade (and a broken older version), but the new version was just as broken. Finally fixed two months after the original report. I think I can honestly say that I've only had Apple be slower at dealing with known, verified bug reports.

And I just checked... apparently, my enigmail didn't get automatically rebuilt with my last Thunderbird upgrade. Fortunately, remerging it fixed the problem... I was about to reopen that report.

If others are worse than Gentoo, it makes me think that maybe the idea of a central authority for a Linux distro is no longer workable. Sure, things like Flash will go in right away (and faster on Gentoo, because Portage is easy to work with both technically and legally for that sort of thing), but the less popular things -- like, say, Enigmail and AbiWord -- always seem to be a few months behind. Yes, months, plural -- even Microsoft is starting to look better, with their "Patch Tuesday".

I'll refer you to Bug #155528, in which AbiWord 2.4.6 is released, and this bug report is filed on Nov 17th of 2006. Someone bumped the ebuild for the plugins (copied the ebuild file from 2.4.5), and it built and ran just fine, which is what I like about Gentoo -- ridiculously transparent, anyone who can do a little shell scripting can fix issues with packages.

So, you'd think this would be a simple, simple upgrade.... Nope. On Jan 1st of 2007, they bumped AbiWord to 2.4.6, but left the plugins were at 2.4.5, meaning you had a circular dependency loop -- tell Portage to update (-uDN world), and it would upgrade AbiWord to 2.4.6, because that's the latest version. Do it again, and it downgrades to 2.4.5, because that's where the plugins are.

So, one person informs them of this by adding to the report. Someone else says "abiword-plugins needs to be bumped. Thanks." I finally came in Jan 14th, and asked "Is anyone out there?" The next day, it was bumped.

Yes, it took them from Nov 17th to Jan 14th -- almost a month to do a fucking version bump. Rename two files, run one command to generate digests, commit to CVS. And they wonder why people are leaving for Debian and Ubuntu...

One wonders how they would handle a real bug. Actually, I have another one:

A bug in the jabberd init script. Opened 8/14. Found a strange hack to fix it, submitted that the same day, asking someone to tell me why my hack worked, and what the "right way" of doing it would be. 8/16, someone joined the discussion to say my hack worked, but agreed it's a hack... 9/4 something was marked dupe... 9/5 was the first patch that looked like it did the Right Thing. Few more "me too"s, few more dupes... 10/8, another update broke both my hack and the "Right Thing". 10/11, someone finally gave us a completely new init script.

Now, the final script was really the right thing to do, but one has to wonder... It's an init script. How can it be so hard to fix an init script that it takes them almost two months?!

Final exhibit, saved for last because I made a bit of an ass of myself on this one: Enigmail disappears from amd64. Now, I admit, a bug report may not be the right place to bitch about how insanely long this is taking... But still: Filed on 8/07/06, and I have a comment on 9/19 complaining about the lack of Enigmail 0.94.1, which seems to have been released on 8/12. Over a month and no upgrade in sight -- but the existing "stable" build is completely broken. On 9/29, I finally posted my success following someone else's crazy hack that somehow worked, but still no actual fix. Finally fixed on 10/19.

So, over a month with no upgrade (and a broken older version), but the new version was just as broken. Finally fixed two months after the original report. I think I can honestly say that I've only had Apple be slower at dealing with known, verified bug reports.

And I just checked... apparently, my enigmail didn't get automatically rebuilt with my last Thunderbird upgrade. Fortunately, remerging it fixed the problem... I was about to reopen that report.

If others are worse than Gentoo, it makes me think that maybe the idea of a central authority for a Linux distro is no longer workable. Sure, things like Flash will go in right away (and faster on Gentoo, because Portage is easy to work with both technically and legally for that sort of thing), but the less popular things -- like, say, Enigmail and AbiWord -- always seem to be a few months behind. Yes, months, plural -- even Microsoft is starting to look better, with their "Patch Tuesday".

This is why God invented LD_LIBRARY_PATH and dlopen()... and added the -R flag to ld for use by the runtime linker...

And that's how you end up in library path hell. I have enough trouble managing the stupidity of /usr/lib and /usr/lib64 on SLES for EMT64.

And, yes, for all practical matters, upgrading GCC means rebuilding everything.

there are only two real PS3 Os's at the moment Gentoo, and YDL, fedora is a basic hack and not supported by anyone. YDL has had some issues because they have a pay model and till recently the only way to get it was to get a pirated copy or pay for it. Now the only issue with YDL is that it is not kept as up to date as some people would like. I don't know how active there community is, hopefully it will be something that I can find access to with out havening to pay money.
Gentoo is in active development, there are a few people who are finding out how to make things work. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-3725047.html And in that thread there are a few things that would have taken care of the major problem people see about doing development on the ps3. With both a Binary Repository being set up since there are only a few things that can be diffrent between PS3's there is not as much need to compile for your system, and some direction on how to set up the distributed compile so you can use the power of the computers you have on the local network.
Right now the major holdup is that there is only frame buffer support for video, and who knows if someone will hack out a OpenGL driver that uses the SPU's, or if Nvida and Sony will put a Driver into the hypervisor. anything is possible since this is only month 3 of the ps3 being out and month 2 of linux on the ps3.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86 .xml?full=1

^^^ This is what I remember going through, I don't know how you pulled it off easily :S

* why doesn't he install it on his own? no better way to do it and the interwebs are full of documentation

Ironically, the site that is linked in the summary doesn't help "Jake" out at all. The walkthrough to install Gentoo on a PS3 is actually LINKED to at the bottom of the page. The article on the site is exactly like the summary. He is taking hackneyed Gentoo arguments, which really have nothing to do with development of installing Gentoo on your PS3, and posting them in his blog as if he had to sell people on the install. Gentoo on a PS3 was already done by the Gentoo folks and is quoted as the main source of the "wiki" linked at the bottom. The wiki, though, does give you good install insight such as "(Press Enter)" Much of Gentoo.org's wiki has been copied word-for-word by these other guys

This website has the looks of a barebones advertisement page: "IntelliTXT," full sidebar ads, a "blog" network, links to add it to 7 blog/news aggregators, all topped off with a HORRIBLY done CSS job. In the author's own defense, he did a pretty good job of getting his advertisement out. At the heart of it, it seems like a pretty generic linux hobbyist story: guy finds something with electricity running through it and installs linux on it. Jake isn't even registered to the site, but still asks people to "keep watching" for updates to the install/addon process. They also didn't provide any pictures :(

I'd question the need for Gentoo on PS3 in this situation, their lack of evidence of an install, and the actual existence of "Jake".

1. Theoretically, faster than any other distro.

Yes, theoretically. Practically, you don't see or feel the difference. Citing this as #1 reason to use gentoo is stupid.

In certain cases there actually is some truth to that, but unfortunately some Gentoo users horribly exaggerate it. There's a good summary on the Gentoo Forums.

2. Modular distro, so you have full control over the installation.

Oh yeah, because the other distros dictate which software you have to install

He worded this badly, but to a certain extent it is true. Binary distributions need to keep certain packages at particular versions. If you try to upgrade glibc make sure you keep the old version otherwise there's no way on earth your system will stay running. With Gentoo, once you've rebuilt everything that depends on glibc, you can remove the old edition and move on with life. As a result, you can upgrade incrementally and still stay current.

This is also slightly true in another way because portage is extremely cool! :P Ok, enough fanboyism, portage is definitely not perfect, but it allows you to exercise a lot of control with fairly little effort (as long has you know what your doing, which admittedly does require some RTFM).

3. It teaches you more about Linux.

Yes, because watching compiler output scrolling by for 8 hours gives me super linux skillz!

I think he is right about this, but I think it's actually a bad thing. A distribution should exists to let their users get work done, not to teach them about arcane Unix tools. Following the Gentoo manuals involve a fair amount of work on the command line and so even the mildly curious will learn a thing or two by experimenting. Fortunately, the Gentoo people are working on this and I'm expecting more user-friendly installs and tools.

4. You can update it whenever you want, don't have to wait for the latest version of the distro like Fedora Core 5/6, Yellow Dog Linux 5

Ah, you mean it's like with the other distros who let you download the latest and greatest. Debian testing is usually pretty bleeding edge, and Debian is considered to be one of the slowest distros to upgrade....

I agree. That's a horrible, horrible reason. First of all, you have to wait for things to get in portage (or an overlay if you using one), and if you're slightly sane you'll wait till it gets marked stable instead of unmasking it. That generally takes a while.

Nice troll. +5 Informative too.
But as usual, you miss the most important point. USE flags.
Why compile Samba with ldap support if you're never going to use LDAP in your network. In fact, isn't it nice to specify to the whole install that nothing should be built with LDAP support? I think so. Less code compiled in = small binaries, less code, less chance of a crash/security update.
I couldn't care less about the speed of Gentoo. I don't change my CFLAGs at all. But I like being able to tailor my machine to the purpose of the system.

Link to ubuntu or gentoo or something.

Decisions decisions

YDL is now open to the public. You could get your hands on it early if you paid money, but basically 2 weeks after they shipped the software they put it up on public mirrors. You can still pay them if you want the support. There is a PS3 thread in the alternate architectures of gentoo and there has been some decent work done there. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-443551.html
The PS3 has potential it is a matter of putting it to use.
It might be possible to write a opengl layer that uses the spu's of the ps3 I don't know, but then I would be lucky to code my way out of a wet paper bag. It also might be possible that if everyone who uses linux on the ps3 writes to Sony and Nvidia (They made the video chips if I remember right)we might get a response. Right now that is still up in the air, it may be a time issue to get the driver written, or a issue where people are dragging there feet till the pc's video is better than what the ps3 would be if it was unlocked.
But right now I would be happy to get a working copy of VLC or an other media player working, then I will be one step closer to a media center computer.

In terms of Linux, where you have many options to chose, it is good and bad. Good because you have many distros and each one with some specific features and it is bad for the same reasons :)
I've been using Slackware for many years and i really love it, it is simple and in my opinion, easy to use.
But you always can try Ubuntu that looks real good and Debian because of its package manager that may make things easier for newbies.
You must keep in mind that any linux you chose, does not matter, you'll always have many similar tools for math and programming.

Before you decide take a look at the following links:

Slackware
Debian
Ubuntu
Gentoo

It is very important that you learn something about those linux distros out there and make
your own decision, pointing out what does really matter and what doesn't
Don't you have some virtualization tool for testing? You can install a couple of distros and
then make your decision based on experience.
good luck!

For your publishing activities, you might like to install both Scribus and LyX in addition to the TeX and LaTeX you mention.

While the suggestion to buy a Mac is marked 'Funny', and was, I'm sure, intended to be such, it's actually not such a silly suggestion because Macs do run Linux very well, and if you find you don't like Linux, which while being superbly user friendly, it does tend to be somewhat pickey about the friendships it makes. If you and Linux just do not get on, you still have a very good piece of hardware and software in your possession. Macs will also run the software I have mentioned using the X-11 server from either Apple or Fink. That's in addition to all the proprietary software offered by Apple and their ISVs.

I've caught a whiff or two lately that Gentoo is declining in
popularity amongst users and developers. Is it all in my head? I
personally still love Gentoo.

I'm a gentoo user (at home), and as much as I love the fiddling I do with it, it's a major pain to have to install the entirity of MySQL just to get MySQL client support

• An operating system that runs on an extremely wide variety of hardware
• A stable and mature TCP/IP stack, transparently integrated into the system via Berkeley sockets
• Thousands of programmers who submit patches and/or modify the system to do exactly what they want it to do
• Full POSIX compatibility
• Real separation of mechanism from policy-- tools can be used in a variety of ways, often in ways not foreseen by the original author
• A system that doesn't require specialized tools to customize-- every system comes with a text editor and development tools
• A real, working permissions model-- for some uses, THIS is a dealbreaker, as the GP mentions
• Multiprocessing is easy
• Pipes and powerful shell scripting capabilities
• And so on...

The 9xxx betas are out: I'm running 9742 on my Gentoo system right now. I don't know about the state of CoolBits though. Get the x86 Linux or the amd64 Linux 9742 drivers direct from nvidia, or get Gentoo and have the choice of being always up-to-date :).

you can take their TNT2 card and still get it to work with their -current- drivers (even on Linux!)

I'm sure that this will seem a bit obvious due to my close ties with the distribution, but Gentoo should be a good match for you. Gentoo has support for embedded systems, as well as one of the widest set of supported hardware platforms in the Linux world. It is source-based, which makes creating your modifications and customizations much easier. It has tools like catalyst, which allow you to easily build a customized distribution of your own, based on Gentoo. Gentoo is also free, which can be a big plus.

Essentially, your best solution is a distribution geared specifically for your devices. I think that Gentoo works as a good platform for basing your distribution from, as it is simple to learn and understand, as the entire system is very open and transparent.

I prefer "The Song Remains the Same". I throw a Gentoo LiveCD into the same case.

I work in a Windows shop and I use the Gentoo install-x86-minimal-2006.1 CD regularly to pull files from old crashed Win2k hard drives. It's nice, for me.

I don't think anybody said it was really easy. But you listen to the Gentoo fan boys talk about how emerge makes everything so easy. I tried it, couldn't even get it installed. Then I found out your supposed to do a Live CD to do the install, not the universal "Install" CD, and that the Quick install Guide isn't really all that quick. Maybe it would be a nice distro if I ever got it to work right.

I think I'll just stick with Gentoo. It's the most baller OS ever!

You might want to give Gentoo a try. They have some very good documentation. http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86 .xml It is a better way to immerse yourself into Linux than just a Fedora install.

If it bothers you so much, why not try an alternative?

Fedora Core
Ubuntu
Debian
SUSE
Mandriva
Slackware
Gentoo

or any of these?

Or Mac, or BSD, or even Solaris? There's no shortage of options

Gentoo Linux already runs on the Intel Macs...

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-514346-highli ght-intel+mac.html

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Apple_MacBook

Gentoo has had Cell support for a while now: http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20060807-newslet ter.xml

"It's my favorite feature within Windows Vista, it's called ASLR (Address Space [Layout] Randomization) .. a smart guy here came up with a solution, so we put it in Windows Vista.", Jim Allchin.

A smart guy at MS never did come up with the solution it's been around on other systems at least five years before Vista and it isn't totally secure. Software can never provide total security. Such protections belong in hardware, in the memory management unit.

"in my opinion, it is the most secure system that's available", Jim Allchin.

I think he means the most secure version of Windows.

"We have .. found .. buffer overflow, and those have been removed in Windows XP", Jim Allchin Feb 2002

When's the last time you heard of a bug in Linux forcing a reinstall?

Hey Bright Boy, you must not pay attention to Linux news nor how many different distributions there are. Allow me to enlighten you a bit.

Mandrake 9.2 may kill LG CD-ROM drives | Fedora Core 6 release date pushed back | Kernel Newsflash (Do a quick search for this section of the page and the old production kernels) | ReiserFS and filesystem corruption issues -- how to fix them, etc (Has to do with an old known issue between Gentoo and ReiserFS | ext3 corruption issue in 2.6.18 found by RedHat

Also try running something like Rawhide, Gentoo unstable branch (Which I do), Debian unstable, or any plethora of other systems out there which include software that's not extensively tested. While it is true that it is rare to find incredible bugs that create a big headache for end-users in a Linux distribution release, it's not impossible and there have been many occurrences of these bugs in release Linux kernels themselves. Let's not kid ourselves, shit happens on both sides of the fence, and it's not only unfair but naive to hold Microsoft to some golden standard because they have a large bankroll. Throwing money at a problem is the worst way to solve it, especially when it comes to QA.

P.S. -- Even in the stable branches of distros breakage can happen and it can be difficult or impossible to recover vital data from the system. I'm running reiser4 on my ~amd64 Gentoo and I keep hoping I don't end up with filesystem corruption that would hit me quite often in the past when I was pretty much forced to use a vanilla kernel with reiser4 or the -mm patchset, which is about as unstable as they come. Plenty of other people get hit by random difficult to reproduce bugs for any filesystem, daily. ext3, jfs, xfs, reiserfs, you name it. I dunno about ext2 though, but since they're so closely related (ext2/3), I'd figure most things that ail one ail the other. Also, you were speaking directly on a bug forcing a reinstall of the system, which usually means a gross configuration error or some other form of data loss. The Mandrake link is the only one which diverts from this train of thought, but it most certainly was a big hitter if you can remember when the story hit, as I do.

Another P.S. -- You say they've had all this time to iron Vista out as if they started out with "This is what Vista is going to be, period. Get there and release it." Sorry buddy, that's not how development goes, especially when competitors are around introducing new ideas all the time, never mind your own R&D department.

I don't see why you wouldn't just emerge -ev system && emerge -ev world and let it go, as suggested by the GCC upgrade guide. The X.org upgrade would happen as part of the world rebuild and you can even continue to use the computer as it goes.

Nah, try gentoo. It'll be really secure then.

Here's a direct link that should set you up with one of those installer cd's (x86): http://bouncer.gentoo.org/?product=gentoo-2006.1-l ivecd&os=x86.

Happy Gentooing!

Here's a direct link that should set you up with one of those installer cd's (x86): http://bouncer.gentoo.org/?product=gentoo-2006.1-l ivecd&os=x86.

Happy Gentooing!

Here's a direct link that should set you up with one of those installer cd's (x86): http://bouncer.gentoo.org/?product=gentoo-2006.1-l ivecd&os=x86.

Happy Gentooing!

How come the installation instructions don't point to those CDs? If you're trying to attract new users, presenting them with the documentation given is not a good idea. I understand putting it in a section for advanced users, but when I looked, I couldn't find an easier way to install. Please explain to me where the graphical install ISOs are on the Get Gentoo page. I tried the universal CD, it booted up like a Live CD, and I couldn't figure out how to start the installation.

My only problem with Gentoo is getting it installed. You call that the quick install? Even Mandrake 7 (released in 2001) was easier to install than that.

here and here.

here and here.

equery files portage | grep emerge
/usr/bin/emerge
/usr/lib/portage/bin/emerge
/usr/lib/portage/bin/emerge-webrsync
/usr/lib/portage/pym/emergehelp.py
/usr/sbin/emerge-webrsync
/usr/share/man/man1/emerge.1.gz

Here you go. It sounds pretty painless, but as a Ubuntu user, I wouldn't know.

What the OP really needs is the Gentoo Optimisations Generator.