New fodder for the Distro debate

[A. Khattri]

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004, Matthew Carpenter wrote:

> I
> torqued those USE parameters over to  "HyperDrive" (including everything
> and the kitchen sink: Java, KDE, IMAP, and many others) placing me out
> of the realm of "well-tested".

I personally wouldn't put those in make.conf since that will enable
GLOBALLY for ALL packages. Its a good way of doubling your build times
(for example, the Java flag will build Java support into gcc and so
increase your bootstrap time). Probably pulls in a huge number of
dependencies too...

> Any distribution you spend that much
> time compiling and building is like a game of Command & Conquer.  The
> longer you spend building the worse you feel when you lose :(

It is a power user distro (despite newbies having a go - maybe this is
means the install docs are really good?), those of us comfortable with
building kernels and tools have very few problems.


Re: Ubuntu:

One of the Ubuntu developers (Benjamin Mako Hill) recently gave a
presentation at a recent NYLUG (New York Linux User Group) meeting where
he also handed a bunch of CDs for x86, AMD and PPC. I got my hands on
some CDs and had an unused B&W G3 Mac lying around so I decided to give it
a whirl (Grrrr - the Gentoo LiveCD didn't have SCSI support and this
machine has SCSI disks!).

The CD booted when inserted during power up. The installation program that
runs is character-based. I picked the easy install and default options so
I could see what a typical end-user install would be like. It asked a few
questions and then chugged away for about 30 mins partitioning, making
file-systems and then installing binaries (by default its makes one big
ext2fs file-system and a swap partition). Then it ejects the CD, asks you
to remove it and hit a key to reboot. On first boot, it does a system
update, downloading a bunch of stuff and installing more binaries. This
took another 20 mins or so but when it was finished you're ready to go. As
others have stated there is no root user. I logged into a console then did
"startx" to get into X. The login screen and the desktop (GNOME) were
pleasant (I dont use X normally) and contained all the usual bells and
whistles. Ive decided Im gonna play with it for awhile and see how it goes
in day-to-day use...


-- 
Aj.