Linux a la Gentoo?

Linux a la Gentoo?

Posted Mar 12, 2004 12:07 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647)
In reply to: Linux a la Carte by ordonnateur
Parent article: Linux a la Carte

Actually, as I'm currently reading up on Gentoo myself in preparation for
installing it alongside Mandrake and possibly eventually switching*, the
same question occurred to me here.

The difference, it would seem, is between a source based distribution that
also happenss to have binary packages available (Gentoo), and a binary
package distribution that also happens to have source available
(traditional distributions such as Mandrake, Red Hat/Fedora, Debian,
etc.).

Also, writing as one who hasn't actually done the Gentoo install as yet
and is still researching, I'm not yet sure Gentoo has a good component
oriented layout where all the customization steps (use keywords and the
various cflags) can be easily and fully chosen in advance, without having
to (re-) emerge -e world after getting everything set up just so. (I've
not yet covered that in the install portion of the handbook, yet, or
actually done the install.) The practical implication here is that I'm
still undecided as to whether I'll be doing a stage-1 install, hoping to
get everything tweaked to my satisfaction the first time around, or
whether I'll be better off with a stage-3 plus potential package CD
installation, then when everything is tweaked to my satisfaction for a
perfect rebuild, only THEN doing going back and doing a full recompilation
install, using emerge -e world.

Duncan

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* The original motivation for the possible switch was lack of current KDE
in Mandrake for AMD64, even in cooker, DESPITE Mandrake's supposedly
bleeding edge distribution reputation.. maybe on i586 but certainly not on
AMD64.. KDE just released 3.2.1, while Mdk for AMD64 is stuck on 3.1.4.

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