ben robison
when only more words will do
Subscribe to RSSA Formal Apology to the Gods of Ubuntu
So I had a momentary lapse into insanity over this last President’s day weekend and tried out a few other distributions of Linux. I began with Gentoo. I believe that compiling software from source is the worst possible software distribution model, but I figure it’s always wise to know the enemy (and I saw a friend running it with some really sweet 3d animations).
Gentoo
I figured I’d give it a try. I will say this for Gentoo. There is some excellent documentation available and my knowledge of Linux and operating systems in general was greatly enriched, but it’s not for me. I booted off their mini install CD, downloaded the stage3 tarball, unpacked it along with portage. I partitioned disks with fdisk, I formatted partitions and put the ext2, ext3, and reiser filesystems on them. I compiled kernels from source, and recompiled them when my ethernet drivers weren’t detected properly. I manually configured IP addresses, I compiled X11 and got the graphical environment working.
I had two problems. Problem 1: Despite excellent documentation, I still didn’t really know what to do when errors happened. The documentation (while very good) gives you many options, but I still ran into errors that just weren’t accounted for. Problem 2: Everything takes so long to compile. X took hours.
Having done this, I can see why Gentoo could be (and probably is) much quicker than the other mainstream distros because every piece of software on the system is compiled for the exact hardware it’s running on. If you hate software bloat, then Gentoo is the system for you, but after a weekend of experimentation, Gentoo is not for me.
Others
I also gave Mandriva a run. I downloaded the Mini iso of the 2007 distribution which promptly errored out in the install (it couldn’t find it’s own built in video drivers for my old nVidia GeForce4). I went back to Ubuntu. Sure it’s got a general kernel that still supports the i386 architecture, which means it doesn’t get top notch performance from my i686 processor, but it works. It installed with no problems, updated itself, and let me configure it to work remarkably like my MacBook Pro.
So when it all came down in the end. I still haven’t found a distribution that works for me as well as Ubuntu. I don’t have the time to spend to do upkeep on a Gentoo system, and all those other mainstream distros are just so full of stuff (I’m not going to burn 4 cds just to test it out). Ubuntu pulls through for me once again.
I’m sorry Ubuntu. It won’t happen again.
You should give Arch linux a look too. Personally, I like Ubuntu for servers since it’s available on nearly every architecture, but Arch is really solid, well supported, and fast since all the binaries are pre-complied for i686.
Every distro has ups and downs though. You certainly can’t go wrong with Ubuntu.. since it’s so well known you’ll almost never run into a situation where you can’t resolve a problem.
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Sounds like you had an experience much like this a href=”http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/12/213246″>guy!
Gentoo is a wild ride and isn’t for everyone. It hands you the reigns and says good luck, and God bless.
Props for trying and for “breaking the distro-blinders”!