[CALUG] Linux on a laptop

[Dustin J. Mitchell]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 9:37 PM, Rob Payne <inagada.davita at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Seriously, there is something to be said for not continuously fsck'ing
>  with your installation trying to supposedly sqeeze something more out of
>  that 700 MHz machine.  Yes, I learned something from that 24 hour period
>  compiling my stage one install on the old laptop.  After a while though,
>  I discovered that stability and security are so much more cool than
>  'cutting edge.'

That's probably true for you, and for a lot of folks, but is not
universally true.

I was *forever* frustrated by binary distros that didn't have the
latest version of something I needed -- Python, PHP, Apache, Autoconf,
gcc, whatever.  It was to the point where I never even *bothered* to
look for an RPM when I wanted new software -- I had a system worked
out to build the software under /opt and then symlink it into the
system.  It was effective, but I might as well have built the distro
from the ground up.

I also had problems where the binary distros had built software with
the wrong flags for my purposes.  Best example was RH's Postfix, which
didn't have the database table functionality built in.  Makes it hard
to set up email controls for a big set of small customers
(non-profits, just to link this to a conversation at the last
meeting).  That was actually even worse, because it was a hosted
machine, and the dorks at ThePlanet kept "fixing" up2date after I had
intentionally disabled it, with the result that it would install RH's
Postfix *over* mine, thereby disabling email for all of our customers
until I could recompile and reinstall Postfix.  But I digress.

For some people, there *is* a value to both being on the cutting edge
and being able to control, at a high level of detail, *how* software
gets built.  For those people, Gentoo is a great alternative.  If you
want a box that Just Works for most straightforward purposes, then
Gentoo's not for you (and I hear Ubuntu is great).

Dustin

-- 
Storage Software Engineer
http://www.zmanda.com