SM, Lunar and Sorcerer all grab the source code packages off of the package developers site with the option to download off of mirrors of the developers site as well, rather than their own servers.
Re:Intelligent discussion of the source distros
on
Lunar Linux 1.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
one quick comparison of the various source based distros can be found at http://www.distrowatch.com/source.php which compares the various packages that each distro includes.
Now, personally I use Source Mage, so I am biased towards it. I have found though that often looking at the scripts on Gentoo that they seem many times larger than ours, and sometimes when looking at them, I often wonder what the person who wrote that script was thinking. Now granted, some of the more complicated packages do have more complicated scripts. But a lot of them only contain the very basic info of where to download from, version number, name, and a couple other fields, which come to about 10 - 15 lines total. Which I found easier to figure out my first time how to write the script. I think my first one took me only 30 minutes. After that it was much easier. An quick script now, can take about 3 - 5 minutes to create.
I just find the scripts behind the packages easier to follow in SM than in Gentoo. I also like the way that when you do an update in SM that it checks afterwards it checks to make sure all the packages still work. For example, if you do an update of libpng, which is a dependency of several apps, SM and Lunar as well will check to make sure that those apps still work, and if not will recompile them to use the updated library. Gentoo will only do that if it is a setting in the 'ebuild' file. for both SM and Lunar, it's built into the main scripting, and doesn't have to be part of the 'module' or 'spell' which are the equivalents to the ebuild.
Gentoo from my understanding is not as cutting edge as a whole as SM. For example, the main release of grub is version 0.90, but they have also managed to get the splashimage patch of grub to work. Ours is version 0.92, and the patches we could not get to work with that version, and yes we were using the patches designed for grub 0.92. So this can be seen as both good and bad. Good in the fact they have managed to get a feature to work we have not, bad in the fact they are a couple versions behind. So in that it's up to the end user which they prefer.
One big advantage to Gentoo, has to do with it's maturity. The fact that it has been around so much longer than the others.
A disadvantage I heard about from a guy who claimed to use Gentoo and was wondering about a reason to change to lunar was that gentoo doesn't have an installer, and that you have to do a lot of chrooting to do the initial install. SM, Lunar, and Sorcerer all have installers which are fairly easy to use.
I hope this helps. I tried to be rational about it, and I hope I got all my information on Gentoo correct.
Use whichever one you like. I prefer Source Mage, but that is me.
As for the development team on Lunar, congradulations.
Slashdot Mirror
another difference,
SM, Lunar and Sorcerer all grab the source code packages off of the package developers site with the option to download off of mirrors of the developers site as well, rather than their own servers.
one quick comparison of the various source based distros can be found at http://www.distrowatch.com/source.php
which compares the various packages that each distro includes.
Now, personally I use Source Mage, so I am biased towards it. I have found though that often looking at the scripts on Gentoo that they seem many times larger than ours, and sometimes when looking at them, I often wonder what the person who wrote that script was thinking. Now granted, some of the more complicated packages do have more complicated scripts. But a lot of them only contain the very basic info of where to download from, version number, name, and a couple other fields, which come to about 10 - 15 lines total. Which I found easier to figure out my first time how to write the script. I think my first one took me only 30 minutes. After that it was much easier. An quick script now, can take about 3 - 5 minutes to create.
I just find the scripts behind the packages easier to follow in SM than in Gentoo. I also like the way that when you do an update in SM that it checks afterwards it checks to make sure all the packages still work. For example, if you do an update of libpng, which is a dependency of several apps, SM and Lunar as well will check to make sure that those apps still work, and if not will recompile them to use the updated library. Gentoo will only do that if it is a setting in the 'ebuild' file. for both SM and Lunar, it's built into the main scripting, and doesn't have to be part of the 'module' or 'spell' which are the equivalents to the ebuild.
Gentoo from my understanding is not as cutting edge as a whole as SM. For example, the main release of grub is version 0.90, but they have also managed to get the splashimage patch of grub to work. Ours is version 0.92, and the patches we could not get to work with that version, and yes we were using the patches designed for grub 0.92. So this can be seen as both good and bad. Good in the fact they have managed to get a feature to work we have not, bad in the fact they are a couple versions behind. So in that it's up to the end user which they prefer.
One big advantage to Gentoo, has to do with it's maturity. The fact that it has been around so much longer than the others.
A disadvantage I heard about from a guy who claimed to use Gentoo and was wondering about a reason to change to lunar was that gentoo doesn't have an installer, and that you have to do a lot of chrooting to do the initial install. SM, Lunar, and Sorcerer all have installers which are fairly easy to use.
I hope this helps. I tried to be rational about it, and I hope I got all my information on Gentoo correct.
Use whichever one you like. I prefer Source Mage, but that is me.
As for the development team on Lunar, congradulations.