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Gentoo Linux 2004.2: What You See Is What You Get

Posted by timothy on from the presto-change-oh dept.

editingwhiz writes "Jem Matzan has a cogent analysis of the new Gentoo Linux 2004.2 on Linux.com: "Gentoo Linux is the BSD of GNU/Linux distributions; it's elegant and customizable and you know exactly what you're getting when you install it. No mystery programs, no packages that you have to deinstall because you'll never use, no clutter, and everything is customized to your needs. If you do it right, Gentoo is also faster than your average GNU/Linux distro because everything can be compiled with higher compiler optimizations." (Linux.com is part of the OSTG network.)" Jem also has some criticism of the current version of Gentoo's AMD64 version.

2 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Gentoo. by rincebrain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I run three Gentoo boxes, and I must say, Gentoo is, by far, the most convenient Linux I've installed...when you already know what you're doing. =)

    If you don't know what you're doing, and something is slightly off-kilter...you're better off in Debian or some other distro with an easier installer which won't give you a scary cryptic error message.

    Also, Portage is the single best software management I've ever encountered, bar none...though occasionally, user error means you wait awhile for packages to become stable.

    When you run stable, though, you very rarely have a problem with a "required" upgrade due to a bug...relatively rarely, of course. =)

    In addition, Gentoo is second to none in documentation and error repair...the mailing list sends out documentation of a bug, along with complete list of affected versions of a package, and fixes.

    Finally, 2004.2 fixes a few nasty bugs in the installer LiveCD, so, in my experience, it's far more stable and reliable for certain hardware configurations.

    Note: I've only done x86 installs myself, so YMMV. =)

    --
    It's only an insult if it's not true.
  2. I'd like to see that quantified by martinde · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can someone show me benchmarks that real programs are really faster on the same hardware than some other distro? I've seen benchmarks that say the opposite, but I've never seen any that support this common claim.

    I do realize that optimizing for the "correct" CPU should provide improved performance, but I wonder how much improvement you really see with gcc in this case.