OSDev.org

Coddy wrote:I was discoraged to use Gento by many people...

Gentoo is definately not for idiots, grandmas, and people who know how a computer works after changing the desktop wallpaper, and the people who tried anyway are of course readily willing to convince you its crap because of the obvious reasons...
Interesting how one's star count is an indication of whether you are using Ubuntu, or gentoo/arch/dsl.
</rant>

Bottom line, there's no linux distro suited for everybody, pick the one that fits.

Oh and for a laugh: http://bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz.php

I think Gentoo is the best distro around for anyone who needs fine control over his system. If you want a somewhat exotic setup, specific requirements, or simply the feeling of utmost control over your system, Gentoo is the ticket. It also makes you learn about Unix systems, and provides one of the most savvy communities I've encountered.

That being said, I've converted my main system to Linux Mint recently, an Ubuntu compatible spin-off that provides all the plug-ins, codecs etc. that Ubuntu itself shies away from because they are (*shudder*) "not free enough". The reason was simple: It's more instructive and fun to get it all running under Gentoo, but I no longer have the time to do so. I needed out-of-the-box functionality, and Linux Mint was the ticket.

At the office, we've got a quad-core running a XEN host and several virtual machines on a RAID setup, including a /home shared via NFS across all VM's... and here, Gentoo is still the #1 choice because you can make it jump through loops at your command. If you know what you're doing as there are no "wizards" or "assistants" to do it for you, except (as I said) its excellent community and web resources.

We've even written our build scripts as Gentoo Portage-compatible .ebuilds, including a script to run them on non-Gentoo Linuxes or AIX boxes.

Combuster wrote: Interesting how one's star count is an indication of whether you are using Ubuntu, or gentoo/arch/dsl.

Could you be any more flammable?

I use Ubuntu. My main servers use Ubuntu (Server ed.) and my work servers use CentOS (which I manage). I much prefer Ubuntu desktop to the red-hat-based distributions. I've never personally used Gentoo though, but I"ve heard good things about it's speed (due to the extreme customizations at install time?).

Common urban legend. Yes, Gentoo is fast, but that's more because you only install what's really necessary, not due to insane optimizations. The real beauty of Gentoo is its package manager, Portage. Once you got the idea, it's next to trivial to write an .ebuild for whatever software there is, and have Portage handle all the uglies (./configure options, dependencies, bookkeeping).

I agree, but there are some programs that definitely benefit from architecture specific optimizations (i.e. -march=native). Graphics can definitely take advantage of newer SSE instructions, and I've found small programs (like prime number generators, (de)compressors, anything with lots of small loops) can go up to twice as fast when optimized. Of course, the usual bottleneck is disk/network speed, so you can't get around that. But no binary distribution does those architecture specific optimizations, because it would break backwards compatibility.

It's also nice to be able to use bleeding edge software under package management, even if you have to fight with Portage sometimes to install it.

Portage really is what makes Gentoo great. I've always planned to use Portage or a clone of it as the package manager for my OS; chroot based installation is always great because it's foolproof to install and uninstall.

Combuster wrote:
Oh and for a laugh: http://bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz.php

Lol, says I'm Red Hat Linux. I've never actually used it, so I don't know whether to be happy or insulted, or just meh.

Combuster wrote:Bottom line, there's no linux distro suited for everybody, pick the one that fits.

Oh and for a laugh: http://bbspot.com/News/2003/01/os_quiz.php

.......

OK, I do love it ^_^

NickG wrote:You know what, we all make mistakes, and i just forgot one of them because i was thinking about something else, and yes, i an not a narcis When it comes to my OS, i prefer other ones, because mine Sucks

I'm more perplexed that you refer to your distribution of linux as an OS, rather than a "distribution" or "distro." I guess it's arguable that you could refer to it as an OS, but I would think that you'd be more careful to specifically take credit for rolling a distribution.

Combuster wrote:Interesting how one's star count is an indication of whether you are using Ubuntu, or gentoo/arch/dsl.

Hm? I have two stars, but I've been using gentoo for almost a decade now... well before I even had one star

My quiz result says Amiga OS. Interesting... I'll have to try it out one day.

As for the real world, I use Debian on all my servers. Vista on my laptop.

tell us how it goes, i think sounds interesting too

Man...

My favorite is Gentoo. ASAP dual-boot! (Meebe)

Just run off of a FDD for now if you wana test it at full...

@JackScott && GhostXoPCorp: Seems interesting... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS

Solar wrote:That being said, I've converted my main system to Linux Mint recently, an Ubuntu compatible spin-off that provides all the plug-ins, codecs etc. that Ubuntu itself shies away from because they are (*shudder*) "not free enough".

It's not that they're 'not free enough' - that's something the Debian devs would do, not Canonical. The problem is that it's illegal in the USA to distribute the codecs to play MPEG2, MP3, MPEG4, H.264 and so on because they would require a license for every install - which is impossible in a free OS unless Canonical foots the bill. Then there's libdvdcss, which breaks the DMCA because it circumvents the CSS encryption on DVDs...

It's annoying that the US makes it harder for the rest of us, but at least it's relatively simple to install them on a stock Ubuntu install.

There are easy ways around it, but Ubuntu decided not to walk them. Bottom line, Ubuntu requires additional steps to achieve full functionality, Mint doesn't.

I 100% disagree.

Non-free flash support, 2 clicks away from the non-free flash package.
The closed-source NVidia driver, restricted hardware manager allows me to install it with the click of a button.
Then there's the mp3/MPEG/DVD stuff that's all available from the "Ubuntu restricted extras" package in apt-get/synaptic.

I'm not sure what's hard about this?