[Yum] Survey of Use

[jcosta at lendleaserei.com]

Short of building your own Linux-From-Scratch distro, a standard Gentoo
install is slightly above bare metal.  Even a kickstart installation with
everything commented out does not give you that level of control. You can
then build upwards from your base system. Another plus is the vibrant user
community that surrounds Gentoo (see http://forums.gentoo.org). You can
learn alot there, even if Gentoo isn't your primary distro.

The downside is that even on a fast machine, it takes considerable time to
build anything; time you cannot be using the box. And since each install is
customized to the CPU, portability is virtually nonexistant.  I don't see
running Gentoo in a real production environment, but some users report that
it screams as a Linux desktop.

The funny thing is, I hated Red Hat because of its "RPM dependency hell."
Then I discovered Yum, and I'm seeing RH in a whole new light now.  Keep up
the good work.

PS:  Does anyone know of a site that posts customized kickstart scripts?
I'd like to learn what others are doing with ks.cfg...




|---------+-------------------------------->
|         |           seth vidal           |
|         |           <skvidal at phy.duke.edu|
|         |           >                    |
|         |           Sent by:             |
|         |           yum-bounces at lists.dul|
|         |           ug.duke.edu          |
|         |                                |
|         |                                |
|         |           10/23/2003 10:52 PM  |
|         |           Please respond to    |
|         |           "Yellowdog Updater,  |
|         |           Modified"            |
|---------+-------------------------------->
  >------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  |                                                                                                                              |
  |       To:       "Yellowdog Updater, Modified" <yum at lists.dulug.duke.edu>                                                     |
  |       cc:                                                                                                                    |
  |       Subject:  Re: [Yum] Survey of Use                                                                                      |
  >------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|




On Thu, 2003-10-23 at 18:31, Theresa Chen wrote:
> (getting ready to take cover)
> I've been a hardcore Gentoo user for the last few months.  A number of my
> friends run Debian.  So I am essentially spoiled by the apt and emerge
> installs that does everything for you.  However, I work in Systems for
the
> CS dept and we've used Redhat for a long time.  I just got fed up with
the
> package installs and the stupid RHN surveys and the updating of 300
> some linux machines individually that eventually embarked on an online
> search for the golden "rpm emerge". :)  As a user?  I'm just a regular
> student lucky enough to have found this relic for an otherwise difficult
> distro...

A couple of things confuse me about gentoo. I've never understood what
benefit they claim to be getting from building everything. I've read the
'compiled for your architecture' claims and that's just crap from all
the technical responses and information I've read on it. Additionally,
if you are building everything then none of your systems will really
ever match. So if one gets cracked you'll not be able to use an md5sum
to see if a binary has been switched out on you. That seems kinda
sketchy to me.

The final thing is that I've heard of nothing from gentoo or debian (FAI
doesn't cut it thus far) like kickstart. This is one of the major things
that has kept me from looking at other distros. I _REQUIRE_ kickstart to
do my job, it's amazing how much time I'd waste if I had to touch a
machine, at all, to do an install.

So not much to take cover from - I've just not found that gentoo
actually offers anything over red hat's distribution of linux.

-sv


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