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Date:      Mon, 15 May 2006 14:50:42 -0700
From:      Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Linux distro with ports/package type system?
Message-ID:  <4468F7B2.6030002@u.washington.edu>
In-Reply-To: <f7f43c920605151312m2ecdecci373c1a948f145a28@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <ef10de9a0605150215h55131ac8id8c04db51b720558@mail.gmail.com>	 <DCF87AC5-A440-41B8-8101-520AA8033586@sklinks.com>	 <4468B53E.1080303@u.washington.edu> <f7f43c920605151312m2ecdecci373c1a948f145a28@mail.gmail.com>

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Bakki Kudva wrote:
> I have  built both Gentoo and FreeBSD on an old laptop (Pentium II
> 400MHz with 384MB of RAM). The down side of both Gentoo and Ports,
> especially if you want to build a desktop env like Gnome plan on a
> week or more of build time. My latest experience with the ports was 2
> weeks for the total build. It built 330 packages, skipped 200 and 77
> failed. I had originally installed 6.0 binaries and after the build
> gdm is broken, wireless networking is broken. Haven't had time to
> troubleshoot yet.
>
> -bakki
>
> On 5/15/06, Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>> That would be in fact Gentoo Linux.
>> It's the only Linux distro I know that has a collection of files which
>> describe the packages to install, sources, etc like FreeBSD's ports
>> makefiles (they call them ebuilds), and compiles programs based on a
>> local distfiles repository, like FreeBSD. The thing that's different
>> about Gentoo than most OSes though is that it is a Linux distro where
>> EVERYTHING (unless you specify a location to find binary packages)
>> compiles and installs from scratch. So I'm not sure if you want to go
>> that route, and I'm not saying it's a perfect system by any means, but
>> in the event that Windows breaks (or I get tired of Windows (;..) I
>> always have something to go back to, Unix wise, that has a lot of
>> software functionality and is pretty stable. The best piece of advice
>> regarding Gentoo that I can give is don't go for the hype, but rather
>> for the options (software options that is), because you have the ability
>> to greater customize your OS-for better or for worse-depending on what
>> compile options you choose and the software you install.
>> -Garrett

I'd plan to not be using your laptop for a while. The total install 
would probably take your laptop a total of 4-5 days to complete the full 
compile, although many of the packages in fact available in the stage3 
setup (it was not recommended as the installation configuration in the 
past but it is now), so to get the laptop up and running would be more 
trivial than before, but compiling gnome would take a decent chunk of 
time to do... finding a reliable package server with the same USE flags 
as you want would be very helpful if you wanted to pursue gentoo.
-Garrett



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