Gentoo advantage? (was: [TriLUG] What distro do you use AT WORK on your SERVERS.)

[Randall Barlow]

Cristobal Palmer wrote:

>
>I know that there are people on the list who are actively using gentoo
>in production environments, so can one of you give a more complete
>argument for why the customization is easier?
>
I don't know that I would say that the customization of Gentoo is really 
easy necessarily, but *you* make the system the way *you* want it to 
be.  Gentoo is not for the casual user, or the new Linux convert for 
sure.  But the installation process is great for someone who wants to 
learn more about Linux, or even computers for that matter.

> Does a gentoo install
>start out significantly smaller?
>
YES!!!  Well, I don't know how it stacks up against DSL, but it's pretty 
freakin' small on a base install because that's exactly what you get 
with Gentoo - a base install.  You compile your kernel, install the 
basic Linux tools, yada yada, reboot, and bam you're at a blinking 
prompt.  It's small, but you can still choose to add more (X windows, 
yada yada).  Of course, most any distribution will allow you to do a 
stripped down install, but most of them don't compile from source.  As 
Jason pointed out, the USE flags are great for trimming down the 
packages, and this is something you won't get with any binary based 
distribution.  What you will NOT trim down is install time because 
compiling all those packages can take a loooong time (binaries are much 
faster to install for sure).

> Do those of you who use it know that
>you would be compiling just about everything to begin with?
>
Well, yeah, compiling these is what gives you all the flexibility.  If 
you don't use kde, don't compile support for kde in your apps (likewise 
if you don't use gnome).  For example, the machine I'm typing this on is 
rather old and has no DVD drive, so I put "-dvd" in my use flags and all 
programs that would otherwise support DVDs don't now.  If I later get a 
DVD drive, all I have to do is remove the minus in that USE flag and 
emerge --update --newuse --deep world (well, and wait possibly a long 
time :)) and bam, DVD support.  The same goes for compiling your own 
kernel.  Of course you can do this in any distribution, but the point is 
that Gentoo is made with customization in mind!

> Give me
>some arguments that'll inspire me to give gentoo a shot on _my_ old
>clunker laptop.
>  
>
How about trying it as a challenge to learn new stuff?  Seriously, I 
learned a lot just in the install process.  I do actually use it on my 
$WORK machine as well (a Sun workstation), and it's been good for that 
as well.  I suppose I'd say that Gentoo is a good "hobbyist" Linux 
distribution though.  Sometimes you just need your machine to work with 
no hassles, and you may not get that very easily with Gentoo.  But if 
you're interested in learning a lot, and you have an old clunker and 
some free time, give it a whirl!

-- 
Randy Barlow
Research Assistant
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
rpbarlow at ncsu.edu