[Techtalk] Debian versus GenToo

[Beth Skwarecki]

> I am trying to assess whether I should switch over from Debian/Testing
> to GenToo, by asking you folk who would likely have experience of both.
> What are the pros and cons?

It depends what kind of system you want to run; for a server that needs to
be rock-solid stable, Debian stable (currently code-named "woody") wins
hands down. If you want something you can play with and constantly update,
Debian unstable ("sid") or Gentoo would both work well, and which you choose
is up to you.

/me represses debian zealotry ...

> Obviously one pro is that GenToo is likely to run faster, and one con is
> that it's harder to install.

That first point is somewhat controversial. From what I've heard, gentoo is
no faster than other distros for ordinary use. (this may not always be the
case; certain tasks, like heavy-duty video editing, might benefit from the
optimizations). My personal opinion is that as far as software benefits the
speed of a computer, choosing the right applications - for example, fluxbox
rather than a full-blown kde desktop - will make more of a difference than
your distro.

I prefer debian in part because its packages are more organized and its
policies more consistent. Packages are carefully divided into free and
non-free, for those who consider this important (I do). The debian community
is very serious about its social contract, and enforces the policies in it,
freedom of software and documentation licenses being part of this. Another
debian policy is to be very careful about never overwriting your config
files. 

(I will let gentoo users expound upon the advantages of gentoo's package
manager and policies or lack thereof :)

> - What's the relative bandwidth consumption of keeping up to date with
>   GenToo as opposed to Debian (I'm on dialup, so this is important)

Depends what flavor of debian you choose; the stable version can be told to
check for security updates and apply them automatically, and since security
updates are rarely needed on stable, this uses very little bandwidth.

Unstable might be more similar to gentoo. I'll let others answer that.

> - How stable is GenToo?  Is it like running on Debian/unstable all the
>   time, as one is downloading the latest source versions of stuff?
> - Is there a GenToo equivalent of apt-proxy if I decide to change my
>   laptop to GenToo also?

Dunno.

-beth

-- 
Beth Skwarecki
http://www.loxosceles.org/
print map {$x=$!=$_; $x=~s/[b-gik-oq-z]//ig; $x} (66,56,62,113)