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

[Jason Faulkner]

> 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.
>

If that's what was implied, it wasn't intended.

What USE flags do is set *optional* components. Obviously setitng
USE="-X" won't stop X-Windows from being installed if you emerge kde,
but it will keep X from being installed for alsamixer (it has an
optional X interface).

> 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.

If someone moves from apache1 to apache2 without serious testing, they
don't need to be administering *anything*, imo.

Gentoo has a penchant for passing on the package's bugs, where some
binary distros will fix them. That's the main issue there. The
stability of the package depends on the stability of the sources. As
long as someone uses reasonable cflags, a gentoo ebuild is as good or
better than a custom source compile.


> 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.

I have for nearly 18 months without so much as a hiccup.

--
Jason Faulkner
------------------------
OldOs.org Owner/Admin //
OpenDocument Fellowship Sysadmin