[ale] Minimal but easily customizable linux distribution.

[Benjamin Scherrey]

	I'm trying to setup a linux box that I can use as a video editing station. It needs to grab 
firewire video and run the various other programs that provide video/audio editing and DVD 
production. Lots of these programs have dependencies on apps that simply don't come with most 
distributions and some even seem to require kernel mods (for firewire support). Getting all this going 
under major distributions like RedHat or Mandrake is getting to be a huge PITA. Frankly - I don't 
need or want 80% of the packages that most distributions come with and am very comfortable with 
downloading .tar.gz source files and building from scratch. Indeed - this is often the only way to get 
things to work at all when I want a feature that isn't compiled into a binary package. Its even more 
frustrating when the distributions change locations and paths for files from what their defaults are in 
source distributions so when I finally build/install from source - the result can be a lot of collisions 
from the previous installation which didn't get cleaned completely when uninstalling the package. 
Maybe I'm too bleeding edge but I don't really think so. 

	Soooo... I'd like a nice, up to date distribution that installs easily, doesn't do a lot of funky 
custom stuff, and lets me build/install new apps as I need them without worrying about colliding with 
a bunch of old dependencies. Gentoo might fit the bill except its install is still something far more 
complex than it need be even at the easiest level. I'd appreciate any recommendations or 
experiences people can pass along. Maybe I'm just missing some otherwise obvious solution?

	thanx & later,

		Ben Scherrey