[Techtalk] Gentoo Linux

[Dave North]

Matt:
> Anyone tried the above?

Gentoo? Sure

> Impressions, bad points, good points appreciated.

I didn't run it for more than a couple of weeks, and there are others
around here who are fairly into it, I think, so I'll keep it light.
	It was great fun to set up. You're more or less building your
distro from near-scratch (and can back up and finish the process by
replacing the small set of programs you start with).
	At least for me, this was instructive and entertaining.
	I found it very easy to get started, but had a real wonk of a time
getting X going. Finally did.
	Emerge is very similar to apt-get on Debian, and wonderful.
	In fact, I think of it as an au courant Debian (whose stable
distribution is always 'behind the times' the day it's released) that
works from source rather than binaries.
	This has its plusses and minuses. Where the resultant binaries are
somewhat tailored to the target machine and built locally from source the
way any ideal Linux should be, the entire process is a _lot_ slower, as
are updates.
	I saw no significant performance or compatibility improvement over
running stock binaries on a localized kernel, so Who Knows on that score.
	It was, however, great fun. If you have the time and are curious,
I highly recommend it as an experiment. And you may be one of those who
finds it to your taste -- worse things could happen!

d