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

[William Sutton]

It's sort of inaccurate to say "if you don't want $FOO, don't use $FOO."  
For example, if I want to have gaim or grip, I have to install bonobo, no 
matter how much I dislike bonobo.

Gentoo does provide all sorts of USE flags to customize how your system is 
built (and the docs mention the caveat that extensive custom USE flags can 
make a system brittle).  It does allow you to start with a very basic 
installation.  It does teach you quite a bit about how a Linux system goes 
together.

I don't think it is a production system.  Gentoo is notorious for 
releasing changes without doing thorough testing (google for the apache 
1.series to apache 2.series breakages), for example.

On the whole it has a place, and installing a few Gentoo systems is a good 
learning experience...I just wouldn't run one in production.

-- 
William Sutton


On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, Randall Barlow wrote:

> 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!
> 
>