Gentoo advantage? (was: [TriLUG] What distro do you use AT WORK on your SERVERS.)

Jason Faulkner jasonlf at gmail.com
Wed Jan 11 17:07:14 EST 2006


> > Gentoo gives much more control as to what is actually on, and running
> > on, the box, and some of our configurations are fairly custom, and it
> > fits well with that.
>
> No flames, please. Honest questions follow.
>
> Having never worked with gentoo, I don't understand where this extra
> control comes from. As a debian and ubuntu user, I know that I can
> download the source and compile something myself if I like. I found
> http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml to be lacking, as I could see
> easy apt-get parallels for each of the "one command" actions listed.
>
> I know that there are people on the list who are actively using gentoo
> in production environments, so can one of you give a more complete
> argument for why the customization is easier? Does a gentoo install
> start out significantly smaller? Do those of you who use it know that
> you would be compiling just about everything to begin with? Give me
> some arguments that'll inspire me to give gentoo a shot on _my_ old
> clunker laptop.
>

Gentoo uses a system called "use flags" to set all the compiler
options. Basically a dumb frontend to all the various ./config
options. Here is my USE for oldos:

USE="-* pam bzlib mysql mysqli php tcpd -berkdb -gdbm -gpm -nls -perl
-python -slang readline ssl crypt ncurses
offensive -apache -apache2 fastcgi"

A breakdown:

-* = don't use any global default use flags (i.e., start with -everything)

bzlib, mysql, mysqli, php, tcpd, readline, ssl, crypt, ncurses,
fastcgi -- enables support for listed things

offensive -- adds "offensive" things to the programs (i.e. in fortune,
R rated fortunes)

-foo -- removes "foo" support when package defaults to compiling it
(i.e. since I use lighttpd, I remove all apache module building with
-apache -apache2)

So basically, I install a new package, and it follows those
guidelines. It's nifty, and makes me RTFM less often :)

--
Jason Faulkner
------------------------
OldOs.org Owner/Admin //
OpenDocument Fellowship Sysadmin


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