[ale] Gentoo vs. RedHat

[Barlow, Jim D]

Mike,

I have two Gentoo boxes and it works great.  Updates are out very
quickly.  I haven't timed them to release vs. Red Hat.  

On my server, I have a second Pentium III 550, no degradation of
performance during compiles here.  It helps to have reasonable memory in
the system for this to be the case...

I had no difficulty using my desktop box while compiling the latest
Mozilla and full KDE 3.2, including playing music during the process.
This on a Pentium III 733.  

I'm delighted with the Gentoo philosophy and operation.  In the past
I've used SLS, Slackware, Mandrake and SuSE.  (With Red Hat attempts
thrown in there years ago.) There isn't anything that I'm missing with
the Gentoo, as I don't like the GUI config tools from the later disti
anyway...  

I do let my kids use SuSE for all the ease of setup and training wheels
such a distribution provides.  It's no use teaching them command line
stuff when they are just trying to do homework, browsing, and IM.  

It sure is nice to never have to "start over" with a new box release to
keep current.  I like the Debian or Gentoo philosophy that way, and it
doesn't seem to work quite as cleanly with something like Mandrake if
you don't re-install every couple of releases.

- Jim 

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Mike
Millson
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 10:01 AM
To: ALE
Subject: [ale] Gentoo vs. RedHat

I'm considering giving Gentoo a try for a box that will act as a router
and run dhcp, squid, and portsentry. But I'm wondering, how fast are bug
fixes available compared to when RedHat fixes are available via up2date.
Also, it sounds like whenever Gentoo installs an update, it has to
compile in the background. Is the Gentoo update process so resource
intensive that it could bog down a production box until the update is
finished? Or is it no worse than downloading files using up2date?
Anything I should be wary of using Gentoo on a production system router?

Mike

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