[PLUG] My recent experimentation with various OS's

Mark McKinstry mmckinst at umich.edu
Wed Nov 12 08:15:03 UTC 2003


> Gentoo: Wow! I thought Debian's install was unfriendly, but Gentoo blew
> it away in complexity. If you haven't tried Gentoo, the theory seems to
> be that you compile pretty much everything. The advantage is higher
> performance. The disadvantage is installation complexity. There are
> three methods of installing, the quick, medium, and long methods (sorry
> I forgot the technical terms for these). I chose the quick method,
> which took me THREE DAYS to install, working on it here and there in
> half-hour blocks. It's like download, enter a few commands, start
> compiling, go have lunch while it's cooking. Enter a few more commands,
> start compiling, go read a book. Anyway, I ended up with the same
> problem I had with Debian: X wouldn't run, but everything else seemed
> to work. I did enjoy the install experience, I learned a few
> "under-the-hood" things, so I might try this again when my skills are
> better.

I thought Gentoo had one of the best installs ever, very well documneted
and explains everything.

Gentoo is a source based distro and not recommended for newbies. On their
about page they explain what their distro is and how it works.  It may
take a long time to compile but you can customize the hell out of your
system.




Mark




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