On 31 May 2011 14:38, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote: > Apparently, though unproven, at 14:30 on Tuesday 31 May 2011, Alex Schuster > did opine thusly: > >> Alan McKinnon writes: >> > Apparently, though unproven, at 01:28 on Friday 27 May 2011, Kevin >> > >> > O'Gorman did opine thusly: >> > > It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine. I feel >> > > a little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away. >> > >> > >> > >> > I know how you feel :-) >> > >> > >> > >> > I've tried to get away from Gentoo several times, and failed. The amount >> > of work we all put into keeping things working is best described as "bat >> > shit crazy", but we do it anyway. Maybe it's like a drug thing, we all >> > need a daily fix or we need to prove we can still do it. >> >> I tried various distros (SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, Libranet, RedHat), but >> when I started using Gentoo, I was hooked. No fancy shmancy GUIs that >> hide what's really going on beneath, and that often enough have their own >> bugs so that it's easier to not use them. Rolling updates, no fear that >> upgrades mess up everything. Good documentation, that explains what has do >> be done and why, instead of just telling me what to do and where to click. > > That's what keep me on Gentoo for my own machines (bar one) and I have never > needed to re-install it anywhere. > > But at work, things are different. Gentoo is banned from the -prod machines > (the risk of some n00b admin running "emerge uND world" and walking away is > too great, plus even just (deep) upgrading a single package is often more than > a reasonable amount of work for someone who doesn't know portage. > > It's encouraged on -dev, mostly because I can change versions of almost > anything with no hassle at all. A developer wants python-3.2 on a box that > already has 2.4 and 2.7? No problem! > > I do run Ubuntu on the netbook, but I treat that like it was an Android device > or a big web browser i.e. I don't try and get fancy and mostly stick with what > the installer and apt want to do.
These days I install OpenSUSE, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu on *other* people's machines. I found out really early in the process of becoming familiar with Linux that Gentoo is the only self-healing OS for me. ;-) I had to reinstall Fedora twice, OpenSUSE 3 times and Ubuntu twice, because they kept corrupting themselves. Perhaps things have improved since (well I know that Ubuntu has improved significantly over the years) but nothing gives me the flexibility and breadth of choice that Gentoo does. On the other hand if one's needs are simple or conveniently met by the vanilla Ubuntu or other binary distro, then perhaps that's all they need to bother with. Updates are done in a matter of seconds and complete version upgrades completed in a matter of minutes. I was actually quite impressed last time that Ubuntu upgraded itself without breaking into a sweat. Given past experience I was expecting it to corrupt itself and not boot again without a bare bones reinstall - but was proven wrong! -- Regards, Mick
