Which distro next?

tomk

I'm pretty comfortable with Debian now - running sid, with all my gear taken care of (Bluetooth, WiFi, etc), and I have a spare partition to use for something else. I'm thinking either Gentoo or a flavour of BSD, and any comments (biased or otherwise) would be welcome.

On the subject of BSD, I'll do my research, but is there a quick explanation of the difference between Free, Open and Net?

<edit>
Disregard that last question - I just found this:

* NetBSD focuses on portability to different platforms, and on improving the stability and performance of the system in a portable manner. NetBSD runs on a wide variety of platforms, ranging from modern PC and workstation platforms to the almost unheard of pc532 architecture.

* FreeBSD focuses on the Intel Architecture PC and server platforms, and on providing the best performance and stability possible. The DEC/Compaq Alpha is also supported.

* OpenBSD focuses on security at all levels of the system, from the kernel to all of the major subsystems. In the beginning, OpenBSD branched from NetBSD and so is portable to a number of platforms.

</edit>

hostyle

Give gentoo a try and let us know any gotchas / problems you find. I downloaded the liveCD a few days ago, but havent had time to give that or a full install a try.

maxheadroom

Another vote for Gentoo. The install takes a while (it isn't complicated, just time consuming), but once its installed its fantastic

oscarBravo

Gentoo also - I'm a big Debian fan, but I'm falling deeply in lurv with Gentoo for desktop systems.

mneylon

Try FreeBSD.
Gentoo is demented.

maxheadroom

Originally posted by blacknight
Gentoo is demented.

Well, yes, but that's part of the fun

mneylon

Originally posted by maxheadroom
Well, yes, but that's part of the fun

Seems like an odd concept of fun.....

theciscokid

every flavour will end up modularized like gentoo!

mneylon

Originally posted by theciscokid
every flavour will end up modularized like gentoo!

"like gentoo" = bad

What do you mean by modularised? Explain

tomk

Looks like it'll have to be Gentoo - none of the BSDs support my WiFi card.

So I reckon I'll be getting "demented" in the next few days.....!

A quick question before I get stuck in - does Gentoo portage handle dependencies as well as Debian apt?

maxheadroom

Originally posted by blacknight
Seems like an odd concept of fun.....

Where's your sense of adventure?

Seriously though, what don't you like about Gentoo. You have to get used to its way of doing things, but once you do its very easy to use.

maxheadroom

Originally posted by tomk
A quick question before I get stuck in - does Gentoo portage handle dependencies as well as Debian apt?

I've never used apt, so I'm not the best person to answer this, but generally, installing something is as easy as typing "emerge foo" and waiting for it to finish. It calculates all the dependencies automatically, and grabs the necessary ones. Dependencies are influenced by your USE flags though.

The only time you might run into trouble is if the ebuild is broken (like, eg, depending on X11/Xfree86 instead of Virtual/X11 - but most of those have been fixed now).

mneylon

Originally posted by maxheadroom

Seriously though, what don't you like about Gentoo. You have to get used to its way of doing things, but once you do its very easy to use.

Having to compile everything is simply demented.

I can't see any reason why I would use gentoo when I can use sane distros

leeroybrown

So basically it's dependancy checking is close to or on par with apt.

Seriously though, what don't you like about Gentoo

Having had to repeatedly boot modified Gentoo LiveCD's all weekend in order to do a Debian install on an Xserve G5, I dislike as it's robbed me of a lot of my time.

oscarBravo

Originally posted by blacknight
Having to compile everything is simply demented.

First, you don't have to compile everything - many of the larger packages (like OpenOffice.org and Mozilla) are provided as prebuilt binaries, if you want them. Secondly, there's no question in my mind that my desktop machine is shedloads quicker with everything compiled to my own specific optimisations.

I'd probably still go with Debian on a server, tho.

tomk

Originally posted by leeroybrown
Having had to repeatedly boot modified Gentoo LiveCD's all weekend in order to do a Debian install

Here's a question - why didn't you use Debian CDs?!

leeroybrown

It was difficult enough to get a PPC64 live CD for Gentoo let alone one for Debian. It wouldn't even boot on the Xserve due to a G5 SMP bug in 2.6.6 but luckily it would boot (just about) on a single processor G5 desktop I had access to. We had to use that to compile a 2.6.7 kernel that would work on the G5.

Once you have a LiveCD you know boots, you don't go off and build another completely different one.

As for all the rebooting, that was a result of the usual issues you have the first time you install on more esoteric hardware.

fragile

tomk if you're feeling adventerous you could always build your own distro, which shouldn't be too difficult if you are already comfortable with Debian, see..

http://lfs.securewebservices.co.uk/lfs/news.html

&

http://lfs.securewebservices.co.uk/blfs/news.html

otherwise I would recommend Slackware 10.0

nadir

Originally posted by leeroybrown
So basically it's dependancy checking is close to or on par with apt.


Having had to repeatedly boot modified Gentoo LiveCD's all weekend in order to do a Debian install on an Xserve G5, I dislike as it's robbed me of a lot of my time.

Ahaha

so cyan was saying, serves ye right for not just installing gentoo on it.

gentoo is the best dristro around, imo. Blacknights quib about having to compile everything is the common problem people have with it, but it actually doesnt really take all that long, ok obviously its a hell of alot faster to install slack, but unless you need to have a server up and running imediately, then I dont see a problem with gentoo.

Blacknight :: anyways, all of your bsd will belong to us.
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/bsd/index.xml

there is also gentoo hurd and other interesting projects.

mneylon

Originally posted by nadir
Blacknights quib about having to compile everything is the common problem people have with it, but it actually doesnt really take all that long, ok obviously its a hell of alot faster to install slack, but unless you need to have a server up and running imediately, then I dont see a problem with gentoo.

Blacknight :: anyways, all of your bsd will belong to us.
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/bsd/index.xml

there is also gentoo hurd and other interesting projects.

These are the reasons why I wouldn't use it and no employee of ours would be allowed to waste company time with it either.

leeroybrown

You and your Gentoo ...

I've got nothing against Gentoo (infact I think it's a good distribution for anyone who wants an up to date highly customisable linux desktop / workstation), but it's anything but when people suggest it for things like Apache+Tomcat in a production environment I really begin to wonder.

tomk

Thanks for all the suggestions folks. I've decided to go another direction - two directions, to be more precise.

Ths spare partition on my main machine will get Arch Linux - no particular reason, except that I came across a few good comments about it. I'll post anything interesting that crops up with it.

Also, I'm about to acquire an old P133 Toshiba laptop, which will become an 11g WAP in its next life, courtesy of Pebble Linux. I tried Pebble a good while ago on an old Thinkpad, but the PCMCIA hardware was knackered, so no luck. It's been in the back of my mind ever since, so I'm looking forward to having another stab at it.

Typedef

Gentoo is great, makes good coffee and impresses the grils when you're trying to pick them up.

If however you haven't used a *BSD before, then go for FreeBSD and later OpenBSD.

Besides, you can't call yourself a FreeBSD user, unless you've sucessfully completed a "make buildworld".

/finds a window... pushes someone named sanity right out of it.

Typedef

Originally posted by leeroybrown
You and your Gentoo ...

I've got nothing against Gentoo (infact I think it's a good distribution for anyone who wants an up to date highly customisable linux desktop / workstation), but it's anything but when people suggest it for things like Apache+Tomcat in a production environment I really begin to wonder.

/Yes that was me on the ILUG.

There's a shot across the bows.

I said if the guy had 'time' and 'interest' it would be worth his while, in 'my' opinion.

Of course, using 'Fedora' on a server, which about six months ago was unpopular, has suddenly become 'ok', since all the Red Hat acolades decided it must be good 'anyway' despite having 'no official support'.

Something which usually goes amiss in 'production environments' where the technically-illiterate can still have a say over what, when, where and how production systems get deployed.

I wonder, what exactly it is you wonder? So long as there is a kernel, C runtime and jvm which is compatiable, what is the problem?
Not that I'm suggesting _you_ engage in such acts. But, quite a bit, you'll find people parroting, "Just use Red Hat", where these days, Fedora is 'totally' inappropiate for the sort of environment you're intimating at.
An environment where funnily enough, up until relatively recently, using FreeBSD was considered kosher, where using FreeBSD, in the main would imply compiling most/all of the system through ports.

Remove yourself from that high horse sir!
<bait>

leeroybrown

I was wondering how long it would take you to surface. I know you were just playing devils advocate for Gentoo rather than saying it was perfect for a production environment. I was just bored at work (am I ever not bored at work) and seeing that the other main (vocal) protagonist in the Gentoo-Apache-Tomcat discussion had already surfaced, I decided I'd wake you up too.

Typedef

Who is this person, and why does he not post on ILUG under his boards handle?

You'd think the handle "Wearer of pink trousers" would cause people to take him 'less' seriously.....



Then say using Fedora

*grin*