[wellylug] Redhat Stopping Redhat linux!?

[Tony Booth]

As I understand it, Gentoo basically grew out of this effort:

http://www.au.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/news.html

It is even more of a "bare metal" distro than Gentoo -- no portage
system, no packaging at all -- but also serves the function of making
you intimately familiar with how the Linux kernel combined with all that
other stuff to give you a working system.

I spent 3 days getting it to compile and boot on a P100 with 16MB RAM
(glibc took 12 hours). Fun!  Super quick once it was all working too.

Cheers
Tony.


-----Original Message-----
From: David Antliff [mailto:dave.antliff at paradise.net.nz] 
Sent: Wednesday, 5 November 2003 4:43 p.m.
To: wellylug at lists.naos.co.nz
Subject: Re: [wellylug] Redhat Stopping Redhat linux!?



Jethro Carr said:
>
> check this article out! 
> http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/11/03/1657205
>
> Time to get a new distro...

Can I recommend Gentoo? If you have broadband it's not too hard to get
running - you learn a lot and it's fun. There's also a great community
forum (forums.gentoo.org) that is usually polite and quick to assist.
It's a compile-from-source distribution but there's also binary packages
if you'd rather go that way. They can be a real time-saver since
compiling something like KDE can take days. However, I prefer to compile
almost everything using Gentoo's Portage package system. If you are
familiar with FreeBSD and the 'ports' system, then Gentoo's 'portage'
will make more sense to you.

Gentoo is for people with spare time that want to get the most out of
Linux - CPU-specific optimisation and compile-time customisation are
major features. It's also much easier to dive into the inner workings
with Gentoo than it is with RedHat in my opinion. It is 'unstable' in
the sense that the 'stable' set of released packages changes over time
(like Debian's Sid) so it's probably not suitable for a 24/7 production
server unless you impose your own package freeze.

Oh, be warned, it may take up a lot of your time. But it's fun! :)

There's a NZ package mirror at ftp://ftp.citylink.co.nz/gentoo

--
David.


-- 
Wellington Linux Users Group Mailing List: wellylug at lists.naos.co.nz To
Leave:  http://lists.naos.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/wellylug