This is the question came into my mind recently. I am using slackware 9.1 at home on both my desktop and laptop. I'd like to say it's really an in impressive linux distribution and definately beat mandrake and redhat which I was using before. Whereas at the Uni all the computers in the lab are running on gentoo, my initial feeling of it was it's pretty much like slackware, but seems more stable. Could anyone who has using gentoo before tell me what are the pros and cons of teh two linux distributions.
(Sorry for my English as it's not my first language.)

Hey,

I used to be a Gentoo user. Unfortunately, I am now a college student and don't have time to manage such an advanced and complex distro. I am by no means unable to, but time does not permit.

If you have the time to install/configure/tweak Gentoo to exactly how you like it, then by all means grab it. Emerge is a great tool

For the rest of us, however, there is Slackware that can give us relatively the same power but in a more user-friendly package with still enough tools to make us pros happy.

The cons of gentoo is the installation. It's pretty tricky. To be honest I haven't got it rite yet. The pros is probably all of the packages in gentoo machine is optimeze for that machine. All of the packages are compile using some config and environment variables ( USE variable one of them) to optimize all compilation made on gentoo machines...

Slack usually has binaries to use for packages. You'd have to try really hard to compile everything from source. Gentoo is all source. every update or upgrade is done from the source level. As far as noticable differences, I don't know if everyday use would produce many. I'm trying to get Gentoo installed right now. I'll be a source of info soon, with luck.

no distro is "better" than another...

it all comes down to what you want... what you need... what you LIKE... etc...

=)



gentoo is a source-based distro... this is excellent for some people, but for most people it's not something necessary... however, if you're interested in gentoo and the whole source-based thing, you should definitely try it out... you have nothing to lose... by the way, the gentoo website has some good documentation and stuff...

there's also other source-based distros out there, for example:

http://www.sourcemage.org/

archlinux seems to have the best of both worlds, ie source and binaries.

personally i am trying out gentoo too. quite intrigued by the portage thingy but i usually cannot finish the installation before the next user of the house wanted to use winXp in the same computer. The recent 2004.0 cds are a bit buggy to me, kind like a rush job if you ask me, maybe it's just me and my luck or a bad cd that i burned, anyway, good luck. For you, try all the distroes you can lay you hands on, then decide what is the best for you . So far I have tried MDK, FC, Knoppix and dabbling Gentoo and Debian now. Among all these, Slackware seems to like me and my machine more, and i seems to be able to install and configure it better than the rest too. I will see which one i will keep.

It's quite a strange feeling of able to choose and pick from so many distro flavours. For a fickle minded person like me, it's a torture

I couldn't install it even if I read many times the instarction,it is like puzzle,it would be nice to try it,but I love slackware

I couldn't install Gentoo even if I read many times the instarction,it is like puzzle,it would be nice to try it,but I love Slackware

I am with you on that.When I installed version 0.9 the doc's where better and it went downhill from there.

I run both .......

Gentoo on the desktop - dual Xeon cpu "beasty" computer and Slackware on the small P4 1.7 gateway machine ........... best of both worlds I say

Running them side by side, both with KDE 3.2 and all the gear, ... both look the same, perform the same (apart from the speed of the beast computer) - Gentoo is very nice but a high speed internet connection is a must if you want to maintain it and some grunt under the hood for compiling saves a heap of time too.

I was toying with the idea of putting Gentoo on the server box - but cant quite drag myself away from Slackware - I love it.

Oh no... not again.

However, again my $0.02.

Slackware, Gentoo, whatever... it's still Linux. Both have packaging systems, and basically, that's the only difference.

Stability is subjective... A system is only as stable as the admin who manages it. The key word here is competency. There goes one misconception.

Another misconception is the optimization bit. This is not a Gentoo-only feature. Look for info regarding GCC Optimization, and it can be applied to any distro.

However, if you're like me, ie. someone who is not willing to sacrifice a few hours of compiling large apps, just too shave a few miliseconds of runtime from the compiled binary, you'd be using precompiled packages mostly.

But in the end, this should not be a question in the first place... Try both (last I checked Gentoo is still free), and choose one that you like the most... Heck, use both if you like them both. In the end, you are the best judge of your own tastes.

Whatever you choose, be happy with your choice and good luck