Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Thanks and bye for now

[Richard Cox]

From: 
Richard Cox <conardcox@×××××.com>
  To: 
Roy Wright <roy@××××××.org>
  Date: 
Today 01:08:51
> > Gentoo is difficult to install.

A highly subjective statement to be sure.  Many thousands have successfully 
installed it...depends on your definition of 'difficult' I suppose.

>>Also, if it's left un-updated for
>> longer periods of time, it tends to break on the next update.
  So does any dynamic system that is allowed to stagnate.  May I propose a 
solution?  Don't leave it un-updated for 'a long period of time'.  It's not 
that hard, really...if you are super paranoid, just emerge --sync once a week 
and then emerge -up --deep world...I know, that's rocket science, but it can 
give you an up-to-date system with little trouble...assuming you have 
internet access, of course.

  Again, I suppose that depends on what you mean by 'a long period of time'.  
Let Debian or any other distro remain un-updated for a year or more tell me 
about how easy it is to update without breaking.  Actually, that wasn't 
fair...because you are basically going to do a re-install (or version 
upgrade, as many distros call it these days) when that happens.

On Sunday 28 December 2008 00:50:32 you wrote:
> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> > Gentoo is difficult to install.  Also, if it's left un-updated for
> > longer periods of time, it tends to break on the next update.  I guess
> > that's the downside of being versionless.  Debian on the other hand, due
> > to it being versioned, doesn't have that problem.
>
> When I ran an internal gentoo server at my last job, I would try to
> schedule an update about once a month.  That was a lesson learned after
> the box just worked great for 7 months, then we wanted to add a new
> application that needed newer libraries, that turned into a 2 day
> marathon to update the server (it was old, slow hardware).
>
> I will predict that you will most miss portage after having to deal with
> the brain dead apt package manager.
>
> Good Luck

On Sunday 28 December 2008 00:50:32 Roy Wright wrote:
> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> > Gentoo is difficult to install.  Also, if it's left un-updated for
> > longer periods of time, it tends to break on the next update.  I guess
> > that's the downside of being versionless.  Debian on the other hand, due
> > to it being versioned, doesn't have that problem.
>
> When I ran an internal gentoo server at my last job, I would try to
> schedule an update about once a month.  That was a lesson learned after
> the box just worked great for 7 months, then we wanted to add a new
> application that needed newer libraries, that turned into a 2 day
> marathon to update the server (it was old, slow hardware).
>
> I will predict that you will most miss portage after having to deal with
> the brain dead apt package manager.
>
> Good Luck