Re: default stage3 (was : [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo still on the right path?)

[Philip Webb]

051121 Holly Bostick wrote:
> Daniel da Veiga schreef:
>> Gentoo is not easy, its not simple
>> and its not designed or the best distro to start in the Linux world.
> What's so hard about it, as opposed to any other Linux distro,
> once you get past the install issue?

In a word, 'maintenance'.  No, that's not hard for you & me,
but your typical Linux novice is going to have to learn a lot
to keep his/her box as upto-date as s/he would using a binary distro.
For the latter, you just download the new Kubuntu/etc ISO every few months,
whereas with Gentoo either you choose which pkgs to update & when,
-- eg do I get KDE 3.4.3 while it's ~x86 or wait till it's 'stable'
or wait a bit longer till 3.5.0 is ~x86 or ... ? (that's my approach) --
or you blindly do 'emerge world' & hope for the best (I never 'emerge world').
Also, you have to configure & install new kernel versions
or can you trust it to Genkernel (which I have never used)?

I couldn't think of using anything but Gentoo on my workaday box,
but for my back-up machine it's likely to be Mandrake 2006 ,
as the CPU is too slow for painless Portage & I update it only once/year.

Newcomers to Linux should be advised to try something better than Linspire,
but should not be introduced to Gentoo until they're used to UNIX methods
& are prepared to invest a bit of their on-going time in sysadmin.

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