Re: [gentoo-user] upgrading from kernel 2.6.24-rc6 to latest kernel

[bn]

Philip Webb ha scritto:
> 090518 bn wrote:
>> Philip Webb ha scritto:
>>> Hopefully, the OP has got some useful hints out of all this ...
>> Yes. I'm kinda considering switching to Ubuntu.
>> I love Gentoo, it's almost 4 years I'm using it, but I need this laptop
>> to *work*, and I cannot afford to be consistently bitten by such unknowns.
>> My only concern is that Ubuntu won't be better in the long end
>> (even if I used it at work for years and I always felt comfortable with it),
>> because of the upgrade/reinstall cycles.
>
> Well, you can get bitten by such things with any distro
> -- perhaps Slackware has the best reputation for utter reliability -- ,
> but with Gentoo you do have the ability to fix anything yourself,
> even if it does need a bit of time to get advice & act on it;
> you can also make notes to ensure you don't get bitten a 2nd time.
> With binary distros, you are stuck with whatever their makers give you.

This is a common claim in this ML which I never completely understood.

I mean, whatever distro you're using, Linux is Linux. You're not locked
out. If my xorg.conf doesn't work (it happened with Ubuntu), I can edit
it on Ubuntu just like on Gentoo. I can compile source packages on
Ubuntu too, if needed.

Gentoo is nice because you don't have to upgrade all at once but
gradually, and because you can choose from the start, so I liked it.

But anyway you have packages in Gentoo or in Ubuntu: in Gentoo you are
stuck with what whatever the packagers give you the same. You probably
have more versions available and some more flexibility, but that's it.

So, I would really want to understand where the Gentoo flexibility beats
down a binary distro.

Don't get me wrong -I like Gentoo. Really. But the claim that a binary
distro is "unfixable" just because I had someone compiling it for me
instead of having emerge doing the job, looks odd to me.

m.