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. -- ========================,,============================================ SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Centre for Urban & Community Studies TRANSIT `-O----------O---' University of Toronto -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
