[plug] Debian .vs. Gentoo

[Trevor Phillips]

On Wednesday 29 October 2003 16:51, Weirdo wrote:
> 
> p.s. This is a chance for Debian users to convince me to stay and Gentoo
> users to try and persuade me to convert WITHOUT flaming ;)

I'm a Debian user. I haven't had the time (or patience) to try Gentoo, so this 
will obviously be rather biased. ^_^

You can survive with Debian Stable reasonably well, if you don't mind most 
things being old and stable. For those where you MUST have the latest, you 
can usually grab third-party packages, also available through apt-get if you 
add the right source line in /etc/apt/sources.list. Go to:
   http://www.apt-get.org/ 
...and search for what bleeding edge app you want.

Alternatively, you don't have to stick with Stable. My main workstation I now 
run Testing, which is considerably more up to date than Stable. For those 
apps which haven't hit Testing, I selectively install from Unstable, or again 
consult www.apt-get.org. Or build from source. ^_^

On the whole "optimised for 686" front, I haven't had a huge amount of 
experience. I've read that for most things it makes little difference. You 
COULD always compile Debian packages yourself. Again, you can do this with 
the apt tools. I use a wrapper called "feta" which wraps around apt-get, 
apt-cache, dpkg, etc... To custom-build a package you just go:
   feta build <packagename>
... and it takes care of build dependencies too.

Debian is fairly rigid, and even the biggest fans of Debian can get frustrated 
at how strong the dependencies can be at times, but you can work within the 
structure for most things. ^_^

-- 
. Trevor Phillips             -           http://jurai.murdoch.edu.au/ . 
: Web Technical Administrator     -          T.Phillips at murdoch.edu.au : 
| IT Services                        -              Murdoch University | 
 >--------------------------------------------------------------------<
| On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of     /
| course. But mostly evil, on the whole.                             /
 \      -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)                          /

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