28 Jun
2004
28 Jun
'04
4:04 p.m.
excuse me?
i _fully_ disagree with your opinion.
Are you sure? A distro is only a fraction of all the things you have to
choose. You have to start sometime. You can always change the distro
later. Really. You are a good example for this (you have used all sorts
of distros). You can even dual boot different distros and share the swap
partition, the /home partition (uid and gid must be the same) and the
/usr/local partition (for the self compiled programs). a distro is
_VERY_ important.
not every distro is the same, not every distro feels the same or has the
same "features".
As long as you are not *working*, this might make a big difference. As
soon as the system is set up, people sometimes want also to do some
*productive* things with their system. And then they may have chosen the
best distro but still do not known if they should take mplayer or xine
to watch movies for example. i've been
using over the years, all sorts of distros, and the one and
only i really feel comfortable with right now, is gentoo.
why? because it's source based, because it has IMO, the best package
manager and system of them all, because _"I"_ have the freedom to do
whatever i want,
Sometimes, if you are a C programmer, you will not take the Gentoo
package, but download the source right away from the project's homepage
and modify things *yourself* for your needs. The Gentoo database will
not know that this software is installed on your system (unless you
package it yourself and take the pain to define the dependencies). The
next time you install a Gentoo package that needs the software, it will
install the package a second time without your patch. That's the reason why I prefer distros without
dependency checking. You
have seen a nice text editor optimized for LaTeX files? But you don't
need LaTeX, you want to use the editor anyway for other things? What if
the package maintainer of the LaTeX editor has decided for you that
there is a dependency, 'emerge editorxyz' will also install LaTeX,
unless you break dependencies explicitly.
NO!!!!!!!
ever heard of the "USE" variable ?
as i said b4, your assumptions may be right for suse, rh, mandr, deb,
whatever, but NOT!!!! for gentoo.
Anyway, Gentoo does even not use the original software
from the
project's homepage, but specially patched versions.
NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
gentoo does mirror the software on many many servers. if the source-package is
not found there, it downloads it from the author's page.
but it may as well only download it from the author's page.
what is the problem with that?
i still don't see any.
and that gentoo patches _EVERY_ software is just plain wrong.
they do apply patches to some software, to fix bugs, or whatever.
but those patches are generally patches from the mailinglist of that project
or so.
That is not how *I* define freedom! Freedom means to
be independent from
the distro, and (all Gentoo users should listen now) from the network
connection!
let me tell you this....before you judge about something and make assumptions
about something you have obviously no clue about, TAKE THE TIME TO READ DOCS
AND GET A CLUE ABOUT IT!
I want to be able to recover from a disc crash at
*any* time by
reinstalling the distro from CD, reinstalling all patches and
applications from my archive and by restoring my data from my latest
backup. What if the Gentoo people have given up the distro yesterday?
You will not able to reinstall your system. You do not have paid for it,
there is no guarantee that the Gentoo service will last forever.
yes you will be able.
what if slackware will be discontinued?
did you pay for it?
who cares if you paid for something, when they give it up?
your arguments are pretty bad.
gentoo people have grp's or bins, and yes we do have recue and live cds as
well.
read above...i don't wanna re-write everything...
If Patrick Volkering gives up Slackware tomorrow, I
will have plenty of
time to migrate, because I have saved a copy of everything I downloaded
and installed. I own my hardware and have everything under my control.
so do i.
and i bet i have more control over my distro than you have over yours
What about servers? If you have servers, it is
important to keep them
all on the same patch level. If you install new patches, it is very wise
to test them on a test platform for a few weeks (new packages *can*
introduce problems). After the test, you have to install the tested
packages, even if there are newer ones on the distros servers. 'emerge
world' just doesn't cut it on servers! And our servers aren't even
connected to the internet!
better inform yourself about what you write....
But that is even the opposite of what you did.
Didn't you find your
favorite distro by *using* Linux instead of thinking before using??? Why
do you recommend to the people a different learning curve than for
yourself?
by think i include try.
maybe not try for years, but try.
sorry that i wasn't more explicit about that.
I never said otherwise. I only said that it may not be
as important as
we all think.
that's your opinion.
not mine.
--
regards,
Georges Toth