Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 18, 2005 06:51 PM
Although even the Gentoo website states that their most valuable asset is their community, I would argue that their community wouldn't be what it is without the Gentoo philosophy.
Their philosophy is about putting the user in control of the system through innovative solutions of which Portage is the supreme example.
Gentoo walks the fine line between the dumb one-click automation of some systems on one hand and the less usable but ultimately powerful method of hacking every configuration file yourself. On which end of the spectrum you are depends largely on personal taste (I know of a windows user who installs every application by hand, almost one file at the time) but Gentoo seems to cover quite a large portion of the spectrum, just *because* it is a meta-distro.
Other attempts at meta-distros weren't nearly as successful. The difficulty here is that with the extra flexibility come the danger of configuration hell. Gentoo's Portage and init-scripts are well designed to overcome just that problem.
The function of both Portage and the init-scripts is just one thing: taming the configuration monster. They are only neccessary because of the sheer size and complexity of today's software base. In this respect Gentoo is the most innovative distro around. This is why even if you don't run Gentoo today you should definitely keep an eye on it in the future.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 18, 2005 06:51 PMTheir philosophy is about putting the user in control of the system through innovative solutions of which Portage is the supreme example.
Gentoo walks the fine line between the dumb one-click automation of some systems on one hand and the less usable but ultimately powerful method of hacking every configuration file yourself. On which end of the spectrum you are depends largely on personal taste (I know of a windows user who installs every application by hand, almost one file at the time) but Gentoo seems to cover quite a large portion of the spectrum, just *because* it is a meta-distro.
Other attempts at meta-distros weren't nearly as successful. The difficulty here is that with the extra flexibility come the danger of configuration hell. Gentoo's Portage and init-scripts are well designed to overcome just that problem.
The function of both Portage and the init-scripts is just one thing: taming the configuration monster. They are only neccessary because of the sheer size and complexity of today's software base. In this respect Gentoo is the most innovative distro around. This is why even if you don't run Gentoo today you should definitely keep an eye on it in the future.
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