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

[Owen Berry]

Two points on this. Firstly, there are binary packages available, and
apparently there are even Package CD images available for download which
contain pre-built packages for initial installation. Secondly, after a
few days of patiently compiling, you will get good use out of your
minimal hardware and your system will rock! :-) I've run Gentoo on
really sucky hardware that was made for Win98 only (not good enough for
any other Windows), and had good use out of it as a desktop with a real
OS on it.

Owen

On Fri, 2006-01-13 at 22:16 -0500, Matt Pusateri wrote:
> The downside to Gentoo is that it is mostly a complile from source
> distro, so your old clunker laptop may take longer than you would like
> to compile :)
> 
> Matt P.
> 
> On Wed, January 11, 2006 10:36 pm, Randall Barlow wrote:
> > Cristobal Palmer wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>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?
> >>
> > I don't know that I would say that the customization of Gentoo is
> > really
> > easy necessarily, but *you* make the system the way *you* want it to
> > be.  Gentoo is not for the casual user, or the new Linux convert for
> > sure.  But the installation process is great for someone who wants to
> > learn more about Linux, or even computers for that matter.
> >
> >> Does a gentoo install
> >>start out significantly smaller?
> >>
> > YES!!!  Well, I don't know how it stacks up against DSL, but it's
> > pretty
> > freakin' small on a base install because that's exactly what you get
> > with Gentoo - a base install.  You compile your kernel, install the
> > basic Linux tools, yada yada, reboot, and bam you're at a blinking
> > prompt.  It's small, but you can still choose to add more (X windows,
> > yada yada).  Of course, most any distribution will allow you to do a
> > stripped down install, but most of them don't compile from source.  As
> > Jason pointed out, the USE flags are great for trimming down the
> > packages, and this is something you won't get with any binary based
> > distribution.  What you will NOT trim down is install time because
> > compiling all those packages can take a loooong time (binaries are
> > much
> > faster to install for sure).
> >
> >> Do those of you who use it know that
> >>you would be compiling just about everything to begin with?
> >>
> > Well, yeah, compiling these is what gives you all the flexibility.  If
> > you don't use kde, don't compile support for kde in your apps
> > (likewise
> > if you don't use gnome).  For example, the machine I'm typing this on
> > is
> > rather old and has no DVD drive, so I put "-dvd" in my use flags and
> > all
> > programs that would otherwise support DVDs don't now.  If I later get
> > a
> > DVD drive, all I have to do is remove the minus in that USE flag and
> > emerge --update --newuse --deep world (well, and wait possibly a long
> > time :)) and bam, DVD support.  The same goes for compiling your own
> > kernel.  Of course you can do this in any distribution, but the point
> > is
> > that Gentoo is made with customization in mind!
> >
> >> Give me
> >>some arguments that'll inspire me to give gentoo a shot on _my_ old
> >>clunker laptop.
> >>
> >>
> > How about trying it as a challenge to learn new stuff?  Seriously, I
> > learned a lot just in the install process.  I do actually use it on my
> > $WORK machine as well (a Sun workstation), and it's been good for that
> > as well.  I suppose I'd say that Gentoo is a good "hobbyist" Linux
> > distribution though.  Sometimes you just need your machine to work
> > with
> > no hassles, and you may not get that very easily with Gentoo.  But if
> > you're interested in learning a lot, and you have an old clunker and
> > some free time, give it a whirl!
> >
> > --
> > Randy Barlow
> > Research Assistant
> > Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
> > North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
> > rpbarlow at ncsu.edu
> >