[ale] Gentoo: the good, the bad, the ugly

[Byron A Jeff]

Well after nearly 9 years as a Slackware user I'm finally starting to see
the inevitable bit rot. My test Slack 8.1 install was a disaster. X didn't
work, applications crashing, and the like. And finally the lack of true package
management has worn me down. Tracking application dependencies by hand was
becoming an increasingly difficult chore.

So after hearing a lot of good things, I decided to give Gentoo a spin. I
actually have a working system going with XFree86 4.2 and IceWM. 

I just wanted to give some initial thoughts after my first install:

The Good
--------
* Portage, Portage and Portage, plain and simple. Packaging the dependency
  management, download, compile, and install all together. Wonderful.

The Bad
-------
* Well there can be too much of a good thing. I'm a firm believer of the
  layered abstraction model where every layer of abstraction is provided and
  you pick the one of your comfort level. Well the Gentoo install pretty much
  poured acid on that model and melted everything back to the base layer.
  While none of the installation process is particularly difficult, it would
  be so much simpler if there was a simple script that guided the install
  and issued the commands for you. Not necessarily at the highly abstracted
  level of a RedHat install, but something akin to Slackware's install scripts
  which helps you along without hiding what's going on underneath.

* Along those same lines I think that there needs to be an further extension
  to the staging process where a base workstation can be dropped in. Or where
  groups of packages could be choosen for compilation. There doesn't seem to
  be an easy way to browse and select packages available in the Portage system.
  Though as I pointed out in the Good section, once you pick a package, it's
  ready to go after the emerge command. The same is needed for the rc-update
  process: a list of what's active and a list of what's available.

The Ugly
--------
* No KDE man! emerge craps out on arts. Now mind you that I have -arts in my
  USE variable in /etc/make.conf. Mind you that I did an emerge rsync to get
  the latest tree. Mind you that I really can do completely without sound at
  the present time (as I don't have a sound card installed). But it's 
  preventing the compilation of the rest of the KDE package.

BAJ 

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