[NTLUG:Discuss] gentoo question

[JR Newsletters]

Bug Hunter wrote:

>  Gentoo uses "emerge" which is exactly like debian's "apt-get", and 
>Redhat's "rpm," but totally different. :)  
>
Actually I think emerge does better IMO.

>I finally found the online package database at http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/pkgs/index.xml.
>
You can also do 'emerge -s name' which will list the available packages 
making looking up the packages on the web-site unneccessary.  Doing 
'emerge -p package' will show what packages will be installed and 
removed before you actually 'emerge'.  "man emerge" is very helpful.  Be 
certain to do 'emerge sync' periodically so that emerge can grab the 
latest packages (This is an important step).

>The advantage is the speed 
>after creation.
>
Yes, my system speed and performance has been noticeably faster and 
better with Gentoo.

 I figure that if you're going to put something on like Debian, it isn't 
that much harder to get Gentoo with much more updated software.

And, the issue that got me to put on Gentoo. is that once Gentoo is 
installed, there is no worrying about having to upgrade Gentoo to the 
next release....Using emerge sync the distro is kept up to date (if that 
is desired).  I do note that even if you started with the Gentoo-1.4rc3 
livecd, it will still install everything so that when you are finished, 
you have the same version of the software that a person that started 
with Gentoo-1.4rc4 livecd plus even newer packages.  (Can't tell you how 
many times on Red Hat where I ended up upgrading as far as I could and 
couldn't upgrade anymore until I upgraded to Red Hat's next distro. 
version).

I'm sold on Gentoo.