[ILUG] Suggestions for best 64 bit Linux distro?

[Paul Jakma]

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, nadir at compsoc.nuigalway.ie wrote:

> The portage system is robust, as is the baselayout. Infact it 
> teaches the user more about linux than a debian install does.

This is probably an attracting feature. Gentoo users feel they're 
learning more because they're exposed to more of the details. That's 
not an argument for advocating it as a general purpose OS though.

That probably explains why the Gentoo forums are 'better' - they need 
to be more active simply because Gentoo sucks the user into tinkering 
with far too much evil stuff.

> 2. as far as Im aware apt can not easily handle different builds, like in
> portage if I want to install mplayer with framebuffer support, mmx , mmx2, ,
> sse, sse2,  but no opengl or X support. I can
>
> 3. USE="mmx,mmx2,ssse,sse2,-opengl,-X" emerge mplayer

Eek!

Why do I want to have specify which SIMD instruction sets an 
application should use? Eek Eek.

As for OpenGL, X, other libraries - well if just one application 
links to a shared library, then you might as well have others link 
to - it costs nothing.

There is a problem in some software in gratuitiously using libraries 
that create significant amounts of state - the "panel applet which 
uses 20MB of data" syndrome - but typically there's *nothing* you can 
do about that with a compile time option. The application *must* use 
the library, so either it would need to be modified not to do so or 
(better) the library should be fixed to be less hungry.

PS: Configure options are mostly evil imho.

> 4. Portage has lots of ebuilds ubuntu and debian miss, like I was 
> saying before, ut2004,doom3,celestia, etc

These typically are not redistributable. How does Gentoo get away 
with this?

> for every reason we mentioned in this discussion. I wont list them 
> all again

If you can't answer a question, ignore it. Ye olde trusty debating 
technique.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.