It's been a while since I posted. I switched over from Gentoo to Debian and am pretty happy with the move. However, there are a *few* things that I miss about Gentoo and wish could be incorporated into Debian.

First of all, let me start by saying that I run Debian Sid as my desktop. Here are a few things I don't like about Debian...they're small, but they can add up:

1. Lack of commercial/non open source/proprietary software: I'm all for freedom but I believe commercial and free software can coexist. Isn't this why software like MPlayer isn't available through apt? MPlayer is a major app...it's one of the best multimedia players for Linux and I can't install it because of philosophical reasons? Come on, I just want it to work.

2. Lack of good official documentation: Even people who loathe Gentoo (and I'm certainly NOT one of them) would admit that Gentoo's docs are top-notch. Debian's docs are sparse and outdated. A lot of them aren't even Debian specific. Yes, you can google it but it's just not the same. Debian doesn't even have official forums. Gentoo's forums are alive and very helpful. Of course, there are 3rd party forums like this one but it doesn't have the same united community feel to it that an official forum does.
Another thing against Debian when it comes to documentation is that Debian isn't a single OS...it's like a 3-in-1 OS. Debian Unstable is quite a different OS than Debian Stable and any documentation for Debian has to take that into consideration. With Gentoo, you're guaranteed everybody's pretty much running the same thing.

3. Apt-oddities: Apt is really weird when it comes to some things. For example, the first time I installed Debian, I installed Gnome through apt. Of course, it conviniently forgot to install XFree for me and I had to manually install myself. I still don't understand the difference between recommended packages, suggested packages etc and I know apt and it's different frontends (synaptic, aptitude) handle these differently adding to the confusion.

Like I said, I'm a new Debian user. I would really like to hear from other users on these matters.

I think that is because of legal reasons as well as philosphical. Anyhow, you can install it using apt if you add the following to sources.list:As for Gentoo's documentation, I agree it is top-notch and Debian needs better. However, much of Gentoo's docs apply to linux in general. I refer to Gentoo docs frequently when configuring Debian.

apt doesn't always work perfectly, but it is a lot faster/easier to install binaries rather than compiling from source.

http://www.debian.org/social_contract.en-gb.html the basis for the entire project, if you wish the commercial aspect then there are more than a few distro based on Debian that you can purchase that have those things included by default. For your /etc/apt/sources.list.

Debian stable is the one supported the others are for testing and developement purposes and are such fast moving targets it would be impossible to document all the changes. As to the forum debian has mailing lists for everything under the sun with quite a bit of knowledge in them. They are available at http://lists.debian.org and the official docs at http://www.debian.org/doc/ddp

Yeah it will let you install the xserver without fonts as well (did it to me) sometimes apt is not the sharpest tool in the chest but it gets the job done most times. Recommended is for packages that are not strictly necessary but are typically used with the program, suggested are for packages which will work nicely with the program but are not at all necessary.

A good place to search for packages not in the official repositories is http://www.apt-get.org

Wow! Apt-get.org is so cool! It's got a lot of packages I need. However, these are 3rd party sites. How reliable are these sites? I know *most* packages I need are already in apt, but some like mplayer are not. This is where these sites are useful but I can't see how they can be very reliable (in fact some of the sites on apt-get.org don't work).

Funny. I have ran Debian for a long time. I decided to give Gentoo a try one day. I liked it but always missed Debian. I ran Gentoo on my P4 3.0 Ghz box and it was fairly speedy. I didn't feel it was any faster than when I had Debian. Well, not long ago I built a AMD 64 box and wanted to run Linux in 64 bit mode. Or some sort of PC based Nix. So, I decided to try FreeBSD first. It was pretty good...although I did have some mild problems with atapi cam under 5.2.1. So I then decided to give Gentoo another try since they have a 64 bit Distro out. I ran it for a while. I wasn't really impressed though. So I did some searching and found that a netbased install was available for Debian in full 64 bit mode. I decided to give that a whirl and I must say, I do notice a very nice boost compared to Gentoo. About 15-20%. The only draw back is I have not found a lot in the way of sources for apt for AMD64. But I don't think I'll be going back into Gentoo land anytime soon. I also removed it from my P4 and installed Slack 10. Slack 10 is nice too...but a tad bit slower than Gentoo was on the same system.

That's an interesting story...
Debian needs to really look at what Gentoo is doing right. First of all let me comment on performance. Gentoo's speed is way exaggerated. I ran Gentoo and compiled everything with the best optimization flags and I got a pretty minor speed bump...certainly not worth the 12 hours of compiling KDE or 6-7 hours of compiling Gnome. The anecdotal speed improvements every Gentoo user speaks of is mostly hype IMO even though you compile by source.
But if you ask most people why they use Gentoo, they'll tell you that they love the portage system and basically you don't have to babysit installations. Just type in "emerge foo" and portage does the rest. Speed improvements are considered an extra positive side-effect.
I've used both Gentoo and Debian seriously and I can say portage is better IMO than apt (look at my first post for examples). Apt is close, but portage seems a little smarter. I think with a few improvements to portage we can really win over some Gentoo users (and there are many) who hate waiting for packages to be compiled. I know I did. If we can show them Apt is a binary equilvalent of portage, and Debian runs as fast as Gentoo does it can be a good sell.

Just a few thoughts. I really love Debian and I'm sure Gentoo has made some dents into its user base (or at least it seems so) and Debian should rise to the occassion.

Actually, what I have noticed as a popular trend, although I wouldn't participate myself, is Gentoo bashing. I'm not sure exactly why. But I see it more and more on various forums. I will however, admit that when it comes to dependancies, Gentoo does seem to handle the issue better than apt. What is ironic though, is the whole entire portage system as I understand it, is actually based on the FreeBSD ports system. But, I think FreeBSD ports system is very similar to apt. I have ran into the same problems with FreeBSD ports that I do apt. So I will give you that. But when it comes to speed, the folks who maintain the Debian packages really do a nice job in regards to passing the correct optimizations. I very much enjoyed the speed increase when I installed Debian Pure64 on my AMD64 compared to Gentoo. And really, the install is just a bit too much. But people can however, go with the stage 3 install, which means you really don't have to compile much yourself. And that might not be bad. I liked Gentoo. But I think its appeal is in fact losing momentum. It came on real strong and real hot. Now people are tired of hearing about it I think.

I think if there has been any kind of decreasing numbers in terms of the Debian user base...well...I would be pretty skeptical of that. I would however agree that if you look at it from a growth perspective, I don't think there as many people coming to Debian as in the past. But Debian is a different distro. They don't really care if they are the most popular. They are more interested in ethics and stability. And it is hard to find fault with that. But as GNU/Linux grows in popularity, a vast percentage of the new user base knows nothing about all of the concepts behind Debian. It's more word of mouth for those people as to what they will try. Redhat/Fedora has a strong loyal user base. I'm suprised it has maintained it's level of popularity myself. That and Mandrake. I'm suprised it has too. But some people sware by them. I wouldn't touch Drake with a 10 foot pole myself. I myself have noticed that Slackware seems to be quite popular on this forum. I see Slack gaining ground again. And anymore, with slapt-get and swaret, it's so simple compared to how it was a few years back. Although I was quite fond of it then too. If I had to pick the best, my personal favorite (emphasis on personal favorite not best...best in my opinion for me):

1. Debian
2. FreeBSD
3. Slackware
4. Gentoo

I was hoping to have five but I don't

Another interesting post...it was more like an essay. I agree that Gentoo is losing some steam (or maybe just settling down). This fact was actually discussed on Distrowatch. Please see http://www.distrowatch.com/weekly.ph...0823#feedback. Of course, anything novel stops becoming novel after a while. The biggest problem with Gentoo is it's too easy to install packages. KDE 3.3 came out. As soon as it is incorporated into portage, a million Gentoo users will download and compile it for hours. It would be tolerable if you had to do it just once but that's not the case.

Yeah, I can't believe people use Redhat and/or Mandrake...but those are excellent beginner distros. I mean the installation is easier than Windows. I personally started with RH 5.2 and went back to Windows in a day. Mandrake 7.0 was my first true attempt at Linux and I kept it while I learned the ropes. Then I moved to Gentoo. Apparently I wasn't alone. Check out http://greenfly.org/mes.html which discusses the mass migration of Mandrake users to Gentoo and http://www.funroll-loops.org/ which is a humorous look at Gentoo user's.
FreeBSD seems pretty interesting. I ran it once using VMWare. It has the ports system (Gentoo's inspiration) and it can install binary packages like Debian but I don't know how good the dependency handling is.
Whatever you say about Debian, it is an awesome project. To maintian that many packages for that many platforms in a sane manner is an incredible feat (how do they afford it?). Not to mention, a million distributions are based off Debian (actually about a third of all distros) but of course real geeks run the original!

i ahve with RH5.2 also start Linux years ago and stay with it until this year early....

i switch to Debian since RH was becoming to commercial and M$oft phylosophy oriented...

had my share of problems with debian but works fine for me on a 7 workwatation network...

running contiuously without problems...

Gentoo bashing is not a new trend.Fact is that gentoo had problems of all sorts lately that are connected to the fact that there are more ebuilds available and the testing before something gets into stable doesn't seem to be the best.Remember gnome (2.4 me thinks it was),openssh,the 2004.2 minimal live CD that doesn't boot for some people and some other minor bumps in the road?
I still use it but if stability is your thing I'd rather go debian right now.