Re: [Sheflug] A New Linux Box

[Richard Ibbotson <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 27 October 2008 12:19:32 Sean Whitton wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 11:34, Seb James <seb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 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.

Sadly although I do like Gentoo I have to explain that on one trip to 
Fosdem about three to five years ago I found the Debian project was 
putting together it's finished and polished international community 
complete with certain types of policies which hold the whole Debian 
project together along with help from the Ubuntu developers.

In contrast with this the Gentoo dev room which I went to at the same 
Fosdem was so disorganised that it was hard to find someone to talk to 
who knew anything.  Shame really because once you get past the long 
drawn out long distance walk to understanding Gentoo it can be very 
good.  Debian used to be the same but things have changed since Ubuntu 
came along.

-- 
Richard

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