[PLUG] Discussion topic - Choosing to run Gentoo vs Debian or Red Hat

[drew wymore]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 9:03 PM, Mike Connors <mconnors1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I recently had a tech interview w. an organization that runs Gentoo on
> all its
> servers. Part of the interview was to login into a test box, build a
> LAMP server,
> install some software and upgrade some stuff.
>
> This was my first time ever doing anything w. Gentoo and I was quite
> surprised by
> how different it was than say Debian or RH. Not to mention the lack of good
> documentation or what I call "build guides" that you can follow and will
> help
> you build out a server. Granted, they're never perfect but can usually
> get you
> 85% or more of the way home.
>
> So, my questions for discussion are:
>
> 1. Gentoo's claim to fame is that by compiling each package for the
> specific architecture that performance gains are realized.
> Has anyone found this to be empirically true?
>
>
Dude /bin/ls is hella fast on the gentoo systems I've used it on </sarcasm>



> 2. If I were making the decisions on which Linux distro to run, I would
> choose
> one which I think would more people would tend to have experience with
> and that
> has a greater mindshare such as Debian or RH.
>
>
RHEL, Ubuntu and SuSE are the only commercially supported distros that I'm
aware of. I guess it's a matter of the support the org is looking for and
what your specific needs and experience is.


> 3. Does anyone have significant experience working on or supporting Gentoo?
> If so, what has your experience been?
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