A while ago I wanted to know which source-based distro I'd use best. I got a lot of hints, but nobody could give me a clear answer. I the tried both of them on 2 identical systems and installed both using the manuals and their comunity.
The Gentoo community is huge, but the first answer I'd receive to any question was "RTFM", Well, i had, you can't expect everybody to have a 5 year experience with source based distros! In the end I allways got an answer though (I installed a stage3 system, for those of you who want to know)
The community for Sourcemage is smaller, but was more helpfull. I found them more like a stimulating guide then a far-away tutor. In the end both communities work very well.
The install went quite easy for both, though I have to give it to Sorcery and grimoire (the source-handling program and database in Sourcemage): it is a fantastic system. It has an edge over Portage. If you read http://www.sourcemage.org/Gentoo you'll know why; it is all true.
When both systems were installed (gentoo provided some more support for extra applications like Openoffice, thanks to the community) I did some basic "benchmarks", meaning I measured:
* startup time
* Ooffice startup time
* opened a large database (Ooffice not started)
* ripped a cd to mp3
The differences were minimal to not mentionable.
In the end, I'm going to stick with Sourcemage.I simply love it.

Ceeya
Linuxbriel

I felt the same way about 2 years a go and decided to stick with SMGL. I did try Gentoo and didn't have any bad experiences, I just liked souremage better.

I always like the underdogs!!!

casting spells, gazing, summons...sounds like halloween!

Yep, felt the same way: gentoo is a fantastic distro, but to me Sourcemage has what is takes.

and sthe spells and casts give it a nice fantasy side. Now all we need is a few ghosts and a few orks and we're ready to go

I've spent pretty much my whole Linux career as a Gentoo user, and if I wasn't using it I was trying to (newbie trials). Looking over the page cited by linuxbriel I have a few questions since I've found some Sourcemage users, and the Sourcemage distro itself looks interesting enough.

The first thing on the list is that Socrcery is written in Bash instead of Python. Ok, I'll grant that python is not the best choice here for the task, but Bash?? Especially 33,000+ lines of it. I've always been told that any program that takes more than 100 lines of bash should just be written in C++ (or your favoite language here). Why Bash?

It says that it lets me configure spells on a per-spell basis with prompts. Sounds nice but what if I'm doing a large cast? Do I have to sit there for 2 hours while it compiles to wait for the prompt? (This if all of course is assuming that compiling takes just as long on Sourcemage as it does on Gentoo.)

Finally I'm confused about this compiling business. Portage compiles my programs for me. It thus requires a C++ comiler. If I'm not mistaken that page said sorcery dosen't require GCC for "base system". What are the odds I'll only need a base system? So with that in mind what is the real advantage of not needing GCC?

And finally, it appears to me all of the real differences between Gentoo and Sourcemage as laid out in that page are really in its package manager. Portage vs. Sorcery more so than Gentoo vs. Sourcemage. With that in mind may I recomend Paludis. Like Portage only better, faster, and in C++.

Not flaming, only asking.

I've been a smgl user now for almost a year and I have to say there's no better distro out there for my needs. Every so often I've tried other source base distros and I can easily say that smgl is way above the rest.

You can't always believe everything you're told about bash. Sorcery works very well in bash. In gentoo thier ebiulds are written in bash and so is about 25% of portage. I don't see why they didn't just write the rest of it in bash as well. From what I have seen source based distros depend on gcc and other dev tools. It's not all that important which language it's in. What is important are the features that are included. SMGL has pretty much every tool one would need to administrate your machines packages.

I'd have to say the longest I've sat through questions is about a half hour. This is with my split-kde spells. Sorcery remembers the answers to your questions. Because of this some people just hold down the enter key when they update, myself included.

Sorcery will automatically pull g++ when it's needed. Granted most users would need g++ for things like X but if the machine is a dedicated server and no packages need g++ then it makes perfect sense not to include it. Especially when they want a really tight install.

In the gentoo forums there have been a few discussions on rewriting portage in C. This idea has been pretty much ignored by the gentoo devs. Paludis is also not ready for the average user. While I agree gentoo would benifit being written in C I don't think that sorcery would.

Linux distros are pretty much based on thier package managers. The exeptions are the distros that are based on another distro which is based on another distro which is based on another distro.

Pinguin of wonder, my advice would be to try SMGL. If you have doubts about it try it first on a spare partition to see if you like it. That way you don't have to reinstall your main distro if you don't like it.

When you say that the diffrence between gentoo and sourcemage is mostly about the package manager, you are quite right. Both of them don't really modify the source (they might tweak it so it works better or looks nicer, but large modifications are rare). Instead they just give it some extra information to compile optimally with the compiling tool.

33000 lines in Bash is a lot, I know, but think of it as an easy-modifiable, fast program which doesn't have to be compiled ( C has to be compiled, so this is contradictory: it can not compile itself. Running bash is something every basic linux distro can do)

And yes, the compilation process takes just about as long. There is no way around that. Short installations and compiling don't go together :-(

Hmm, I might have to pull out gParted I guess. Thanksgiving break starts this weekend, this will make a nice project.

Sorcery, the package manager for Source Mage, also assumes that the user does not know every ./configure switch, possible dependency, or flags a package can use and so implements an API for our developers to use to provide understandable questions for the user (e.g. "sdl optionally depends on libpng for PNG graphics support. Do you want to build with libpng support? [n]", default is 'n' if you don't have libpng already installed, and 'y' if you do). These questions are remembered for all subsequent installs of a package so you don't have to remember what you chose. We also have all defaults set to a 'safe' setting (usually what the upstream maintainer has chosen) so you may accept the defaults.

If you are into playing with Linux kernels, you will love our Linux kernel package, which allows you to choose from various patch sets (none (vanilla), -mm, -ac, -ck, etc.), custom kernel versions, as well as keeping your linux package up-to-date with a certain branch (e.g. latest -mm releases) for you if you so select.

You may also notice that we hardly ever apply patches to the source tarballs. The only times we do so are for security fixes that aren't out in a new stable release or to fix a bug. We like our source unadulterated.

The only thing Sourcemage needs is a PR manager: they are just as good as or even better then gentoo and they don't even hit the top 100. Gentoo is at 10 or 11

What top 100 list are you refering too?

look at www.distrowatch.com on the right-hand-side. at the bottom you can choose 'more statistics'.