Re: [gentoo-server] net-www/apache-1* masked.

[Robert Worreby]

I can only agree with Mark, I use Gentoo extensively at home, and love it.

But at work (Telco environment) I wouldn't recommend it, there we go with Red 
Hat Linux (surprise surprise ;-) ) when it comes to Linux, otherwise we're 
using HP-Unix and Sun Solaris extensively.

Personally I'd prefer for a server environment Debian which for a company got 
a stable and long release cyclus (even though it's nowhere as flexible as 
Gentoo....)

It's basically all boils down to production stability and knowing your 
environment from a to z.

--Robert

On Tuesday 15 May 2007 19:13, Mark Rudholm wrote:
> Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> > A. Khattri wrote:
> >> I have no problem with change as long as there is an easy way to keep
> >> what
> >> we have. After all, Gentoo is about having a choice and removing the
> >> apache flag from PHP without providing some other mechanism to keep it
> >> is simply removing choice.
> >
> > I see this type of argument used all the time. Some people just don't
> > seem to get the fact that all Gentoo devs are volunteers, and we will do
> > whatever makes it easier on *us*. If you don't like it, don't bitch
> > about choice. You have the *choice* to learn how to maintain the stuff
> > yourself and not complain. You don't pay for Gentoo, so you don't have
> > the right to tell any Gentoo dev what to do with their volunteer
> > time.</rant>
>
> If people are using this argument all the time, it might be
> worth considering why they are.
>
> Gentoo tends to remove packages or change them in a way that
> is not rearward-compatible more readily than other distributions.
> I understand that the labor is all volunteer, however, other,
> more stable/mature distributions are also all-volunteer, but yes,
> that's the way it is.  People spend their volunteer time as they
> see fit, I understand this completely.
>
> The result, however, is that Gentoo becomes an inappropriate
> choice for a production server deployment.  I haven't suggested
> Gentoo for production servers to anyone (especially my employers)
> since somewhere around 2003 for this reason.
>
> At work, my team of a few dozen people support tens of thousands
> of Linux servers.  We wrote our own tools for installation,
> distribution, and maintenance of OSes and package sets.  There was
> a time when I considered that we could use Gentoo.  Our own custom
> Portage repositories could be maintained, and the portage tools
> would cover a lot of the things we need to do very nicely.  It'd
> be great to build on the work of other Gentoo contributors, and
> we'd no doubt join the larger community of contributors.  But I
> simply can't recommend this.  The Gentoo developers and packagers
> in general seem more interested in the latest shiny thing rather
> than stability, reliability, and predictability.  Fine for a desktop,
> but antithetical to the needs of people running mission-critical
> server farms.  As you point out, it's entirely the prerogative of
> the developers and packagers to set their own priorities, and I
> agree of course, but do be aware of the results of the choices of
> Gentoo packagers and developers and how they collectively create
> the personality of the distro and how that personality effects the
> choices of other potential contributors and users of Gentoo Linux.
>
> -Mark (who uses Gentoo on his personal systems these days)
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