Re: [Sheflug] A New Linux Box

["Sean Whitton" <sean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 11:34, Seb James <seb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> If Tom wants to learn about the GNU/Linux build systems (Autotools and
> friends) and Gentoo's complex (and excellent) scripting system for
> automatically running those build tools, then he should install Gentoo
> Linux.
>
> If he wants to learn about Linux _system administration_, Gentoo would
> be a bad choice, as he'd spend lots of time working out why package X
> won't build, which would take time away from learning how to configure
> and run package X.
>
> For those who DO want to learn all the gory internal build/programming
> Linux details, I believe building a Linux From Scratch system is the way
> to go. In Gentoo, you spend loads of time learning the "Gentoo way",
> which muddies the water rather.

I would disagree with any recommendation of Gentoo for political
reasons: the Gentoo developer base is currently in a sorry state and
they are having problems keeping the project together. Several
prominent members of the team have had enough and have packed up and
left lately; these are perfectly sensible people I know (through
freenode) who have just decided they were sick of it. With this in
mind, I wouldn't choose Gentoo as the kind of people now developing it
are not those who I would implicitly trust.

My recommendation is Debian as it is rock solid, and has a fantastic
package manager so you can concentrate on admining the specific bits
of software once they've been installed.

-- 
Sean Whitton / <sean@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
OpenPGP KeyID: 0x25F4EAB7

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