I am a Red Hat 9 user who likes most parts of it, but I want to try out some other things. I think that my RedHat has problems way too often for a Linux system, and it's pretty slow in X too. I have heard many things about Slackware that make me want to see why it has so many devoted followers, and I read the reviews of Gentoo and that sounds like something I'd like too.

I am a Windows Refugee that has been using Linux now for about 2 months.

Also, how would I go about reinstalling my Linux? Would I uninstall RedHat and stick another one on? Would I back up my home directory files and wipe my Linux partition? I've never switched Distros before.

Also, could I save some of the screen savers? RedHat 9 has a few screen savers that I really like.

I have learned a lot in 2 months, and if I have any difficulty installing, I can always boot to (shudder) Windows ME and ask for help here.

What are the differences between Slack and Gentoo? I mainly am looking for speed, simplicity, compatibility (hdware and sftware), and customizability. NOT the complexity of RedHat.

PS: if this topic looks familiar, I created one before asking wether SuSE or Slack, but then I started learning about Gentoo, and SuSE is probably bloatware anyway. I used some of the same sentences, so sue me.

EDIT: I meant to make this a poll, just vote with a post, and tell a little bit why. PS: I like to tinker with stuff. And I like Lynx.

OS
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i have never really used Gentoo the only thing i know about it is that it has this Portage thing for easy updates and configuration (i think thats what it is for). I wonder how this portage would perform as your system grows further from a stock install howerver. but if your new then i guess this might be a good choice, if so give a reply about what you think of it.
--> http://www.gentoo.org

Slackware ;) .... Slackware on the other hand is not the most user friendly linux distro, but imho it is the most fun (building and expanding). Slackware unlike most other distros tries not to turn into bloat ware, so you are not going to get a bunch of jackass software that requires 4 disc to install the os, imho slackware is the true linux and one of the best to learn on the more you use it the more you'll love it.
--> http://www.slackware.com


Reinstall
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What does your partition table look like ?
Do you want to back up your home directory?

crackm0nk3y

I'm a Gentoo user. To me there's no better distro. The Portage is really a great tool like crackmonkey says. It's like a big application tree. To install a program, you simply type # emerge <package-name>. If it exists, it will be installed. YOu don't even have to worry about dependencies. If there's a new version available, it will be downloaded from the internet. However, if the package doesn't exist, you'll have to install or even compile the program yourself.

The installation can really be a pain in the ass. Everything has to be done by hand. It's a nice experience ^^

And if you really need help, there's a huge commity to help you

I am a Gentoo user also. I switched from Slackware when I wanted to try something else, and I don't think I'm going to switch from this one. If you want an always up to date operating system, then Gentoo is a really good choice. The install takes quite a long time though, but in the end, it is completely worth it. Slackware is also a great operating system, and it can teach you a lot. Slackware is pretty rock solid also. So it all depends on what you want. If you want an operating system that is always up to date, then Gentoo is perfect. If you want an operating system that is rock solid, then Slackware is great. It's all on what you want, and how long you want to wait for your results.

I'll want to back up some of my home directory, and here is my df -hT table:
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 ext3 11G 8.6G 1012M 90% /
none tmpfs 62M 0 62M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda1 vfat 43G 40G 2.5G 95% /c
/dev/hda5 vfat 2.8G 1.2G 1.7G 41% /mnt/hda5

See why I don't want bloatware :-)

If you care, my system specs are:
Pentium III 933 MHz
128 MB RAM
GeForce 4 MX440 64 MB
40x12x48 CD-RW
48x CD-ROM

If you have restricted disc size the problem you might get with Gentoo's portage is the amount of data stored in the /usr/portage tree. Even so, it's not that much given the size of HDDs these days, it depends whether you are dual-booting, ever considered getting a second HDD they are dead cheap these days and I reckon 20Gb could cope with ANY linux, Gentoo included.

The thing about Gentoo is once you have it installed and your various portage USE and processor flags set, it builds and optimises everything from source for you and rather than producing binary code that will use machine level instructions that will run on all modern processors, you will have binary code optimised for your processor, taking full advantage of extra processor-specific instructions. All you have to do. once set up, is open a terminal as root and type "emerge programname" to download the source and build the program and all its dependencies. You can browse the full list of packages at http://packages.gentoo.org

DAVE

Tried both... Both need quite some time to understand especially after you've been conditioned by brain-dead distros like Red Hat/Mandrake. You'll soon discover that drakeconf and linuxconf are not actual Linux command [gasp!] :O

I stuck with Slack because although I do have time for Linux... I don't have that much time for Gentoo.

However, either way, you can't go wrong with this two. Both are "learning" type distros and you'll begin to understand a lot about Linux using either one.

Well I've used both at various stages, and currently use neither. In the end I prefer Arch to Slackware, and Source Mage and Lunar to Gentoo... But anyway, here is my attempt to summarise the differences:

- type of distro: S: binary, G: source based - everything is downloaded as source and compiled on your machine.
- installation: S: installer, no pretty GUI but simple enough. G: no installer as such, you build your system through a sort of bootstrap process that is a major pain.
- packaging: S: simple tar packages, no dependency checking as such. G: portage, reasonably sophisticated handling of dependencies, but see below.
- stability: S: excellent, it's extremely rare any package included with the distro should fail. G: well, it's only as good as the emerge scripts. I found some of them to be shockingly bad, in particular Gnome 2.2 as it came around the time of 1.4 final release was a disgrace. It seems fairly common for compiles to fail... It's more cutting edge perhaps, but there is a price to pay.
- performance: S: excellent, one of the fastest binary distros around. G: even better, but only slightly. Although you spend hours and hours compiling everything on your box, the end result will be faster than Slackware but will not blow it away by any means.
- standards: S: as standard as they come. G: does some things its own way, eg: runlevels, managing services...
- available software: S: reasonable selection. G: everything under the sun you could possibly think of, but how well packaged and tested is it? My impression - not very well at all.

Finally, Slackware will run perfectly well on a modest system. Gentoo needs more grunt, since it needs to do so much compiling. Getting KDE up and running will take at least half a day on even the fastest machine...

What linux software isnt available to Slackware ??? <- don't understand

Does Gentoo require extra work for packages to be ported to Portage ?
If so wouldnt this slow development of packages for the OS.

I cannot say whether the packages for Gentoo all work correctly or not, I can say the ones I have tried to date all have, except where I did a forced install of the latest K3B which wasn't disastrous it just put up an incorrect error message about readcd not being available to non-root users (it was) and did not supply icons. Mind you, it will probably be ready by the time I get a DVD writer, and the recommended build is all you need for CDs.

I have installed a couple of other things, I already had OpenOffice downloaded so I just ran the standard install and it works fine. I also added KBirthday and KickArts (both KDE kicker applets) which are not in portage by the standard "./configure && make && make install" and they are fine.

I installed libdvdcss the same way as I did not think it would be in portage, and when another program wanted it as a dependency, it just loaded it, compiled it and overwrote the earlier one, no harm done!

Once I got Gentoo installed, which was admittedly quite hard, it's been fine to keep it up and going. HOWEVER, I have used my Partition Image discs to make a backup, and I would recommend anyone using any variation of any operating system to do the same.

DAVE

Well everything I wanted was there. But I know Gentoo has 5,000+ emerge scripts in portage, while the number of Slack packages is smaller than that. Hence something has to be unavailable

Sorry, perhaps I didn't express myself very well. Gentoo doesn't require packaging in the sense of making a RPM or TGZ binaries. But it requires writing the emerge script instead, and I would say done and tested properly, this should take just about as long. So yes, Gentoo does have a lot of very fresh, up to date software, but that is simply due to large community hell-bent on bringing the newest stuff in, not to any magic advantage of portage over other systems.

Gentoo has those two advantages: size of its community, and the tendency to bring cutting-edge stuff ASAP. These are also its two disadvantages: they mean less testing, less stability, and varying quality of coding, because let's face it, with so many coders, they cannot be all equal. Other distros like Source Mage get around at least some of these issues by having two branches: stable and development. I can track stable branch and be pretty sure things will work, or use development for the newer stuff. Gentoo didn't have that at the time I was trying it, though it well might by now.

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