Not a bad article...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| DrDubious Oct 05, 2005 3:25 PM EDT |
I'm in a similar situation - I keep thinking I'll switch over to Gentoo, but so far I stick to Slackware. The difference for me is not that I found Gentoo all that hard (I HAVE used it, some time ago, on a server - it didn't seem quite as hard as the article makes it sount) - I just haven't managed to find a weekend when I don't need to use my computer (but during which time I have broadband available to download all the source packages.) The urge to switch is a little less since I started making my own slackware packages from source, compiled with the optimizations I need/want. The only reason remaining for wanting to switch, for me, is that there are some features that just plain don't exist readily on Slackware (MTA's other than Sendmail - e.g. Postfix, OpenLDAP, Heimdal/MIT Kerberos, PAM...) as packages that seem to be common on other distributions (Some, like OpenLDAP, aren't too hard to 'custom package' using either the Slackware 'makepkg' or the extremely handy "checkinstall" script. Others, like PAM, are intrusive and complex enough that it's a bit of a pain to try to install them and still combine pre-made slackware packages with custom-compiled ones. I still occasionally get bitten trying to build an optimized slackware package for another of my computers when I find the package got built with e.g. Kerberos links, which I don't have custom-installed on all of my computers... All that said, I think the article's author has a valid point overall, but I don't think Gentoo is normally really as difficult to work with as the author implies (and I STILL intend to try switching to it...when I finally get time to do so...) |
| crm Oct 05, 2005 3:57 PM EDT |
At the end of the day, you are best with the distrobution you 'got skills' on... as a hard core gentoo user, im sure i would have plenty of problems trying to get my system to run on slack,
i have no intention of trying to run slack
because my system works fine as it is his comment on non-transferrable gentoo skills worries me... perhaps i should try and get my little test box running some other distrobutions to train myself in the way of the package based distrobution. |
| shuste73 Oct 05, 2005 8:37 PM EDT |
My point wasn't that Gentoo is hard. Rather that it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, and that I found myself learning Gentoo rather than learning Linux. It could just as well have been Debian as Slackware that I longed for. I still intend to try Gentoo again, on a different system. I was also told today that USE flags are just another way to pass ./configure options. Given this, Portage isn't so non-standard as I thought. But if this is true, the Gentoo docs let me down yet again. If it's not true, then Gentoo still looks bad to me. I prefer to stick with standards. Oh, and I had Postfix running on my Slack 10.1 system in about 20 minutes. But I'd have to agree that Slackware has its issues. I never did say that Slack was perfect. But it is what it sets out to be, which is more than I can conclude about Gentoo. Therein lies my biggest disappointment. |
| DrDubious Oct 06, 2005 9:31 AM EDT |
I should also clarify, myself, that most of the "extra" stuff that I had to go out of my way to one degree or another (OpenLDAP, Postfix, PAM [which I gave up on], etc.) are usually for pretty limited reasons for me. Postfix is the only one that I'd say I'm likely to use regularly on multiple machines on Slackware. I need to tweak the build script I found to work with the newer releases though. MOST people won't need most of them (and at least one of the packages I ended up needing to install by hand - Cyrus SASL - is now part of the official distribution). In my case, my main problem is that ever week or so I come up with yet another new thing I want to try to do with my computer, so I frequently run into cases where I need additional components. ("Hey, I wonder if I can link in with this "Microsoft ActiveDirectory(tm)" network. Oh, looks like I need LDAP and Kerberos for that. Oh, and now I need to recompile Samba because the Slackware samba doesn't use those. Oops, and now I need to give the ldap and kerberos packages to my other servers because now my new slackware package that I made needs those..."). For this very uncommon (I imagine) kind of usage scenario that I have, Gentoo seems like the best option for me to keep the same 'optimized compilation' practice that I have while having a much broader range of available pre-defined packages. I just haven't had time to be offline for a weekend in a place where I can be plugged into broadband to do the whole install-from-stage1 routine. I can confirm (from my years-old memory at this point) that the USE flags are for setting ./configure -type options. At least, that's where I remember setting the "-march=pentium-mmx -mmmx -Os" flags. I do also remember that it took me some digging to figure that out, so I don't think it's just you on the documentation. |
| Koriel Oct 06, 2005 10:28 AM EDT |
Im not sure Gentoo is as bad as he makes out, as i have a couple of mates who run it.
I think its probably more down to unfamiliarity and frustration born out of it than the distro itself. But i do fully understand the constant returning to Slackware, I do it myself, i just love slack its clean and simple, it has package management in swaret, slapt-get or just go and compile your stuff i still do on occasion and i for one love the BSD scripts its one of the main reasons i use slack. Ive now managed to restrict myself to 2 distros Slack and PCLinuxOS both excellent. |
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