Of course, the best thing to do is lift up their tails and take a look.

Gentoo any day...
check out its rep at:
www.gentoo-portage.com

Gentoo: 9120 Packages

Debian-testing has 15239 :P


Cheers,
Tink

But that's not relevant, because it's not packages that matter with Gentoo, it's ebuilds.

Of which there are 19,145 - as anybody who sits and watches "emerge sync" will know. If they've stayed awake long enough, that is

Man... Talk about what you know... Ok?
Gentoo, though it can't be called "package repository", has the exact same features as mandrake (urpmi) or debian (apt-get). It is called portage. And in my opinion, is much easier AND more flexible(«- nobody can argue on that).
Apps are built on the spot when installed, rather than being precompiled. Their is, however, a package system, but since it's not the standard way, it's not very developed.
Installing any program is simple: "emerge programfoo"

Regards,

I have heard that Gentoo is SLOW that it can take hours to compile a program. This coming from Gentoo's own forum, people telling programs to compile, going to bed and the computer still be working on it the next day.

This is not for me, I have plenty of harddrive, I will accept someone elses precompliations.

Basically what I trying to figure out is if I should install Debian and remove Mandrake. I have heard Debian has a larger database of programs to choose from and that its apt-get system is more frequently updated. I am also finding programs on the net that are claiming to be Debian specific. I am now being told that if they are source's that I can simply compile them for my machine. But does Debian have as many bugs as Mandrake? Such as Mandrake seems to program crash alot and then the sound goes whack and I have to reboot.

I thought about Gentoo, went and hung out at the forums, read some stuff that didn't look good, Debian and its children are getting all the praise, and suse, redhat seem to be the most popular in the name recogition category.

*SIGH* I like Linux it is 10 times better than microsoft, but with all the Distro's out available it makes you wonder if the grass is greener else where. I don't want to nor have the time to install 10 different distros. Trying to find the best for me. I want the largest most rapidly updated databases, system stability, and a user friendly community.

Thanks
Kezz

why dont you try out ubuntu (based on debian) ??

and its number one now in distrowatch

I like the kde desktop better than gnome. There is a Kubuntu, is that 100% the same as unbuntu get kde based?

Also, if I use ubuntu or kubuntu do I have access to the entire debian library and programs such as peerguardian and flightgear that state they are made for Debian.

What makes ubuntu, better than simply installing Debian?

I've never had that happen, even when I installed it in the first place. Overnight has always been long enough. And judging by your sig., our hardware's similar enough for that to be a valid comparison.

I suppose KDE or Gnome might be the cause of an incredibly long compile, but as I use neither, I can't comment. But compilations lasting more than overnight are most definitely in the minority. Don't be put off by just them.

Gentoo is not SLOW. In fact, there is absolutley no connexion between this and your arguments(compilation takes hours, etc...). What you meant to say is: "compilation takes time". But hey? You know what? When you try to compile Gnome on a 486... you kinda know what to expect.
I have an athlon 64 3500+ with 1g of ram and a 10 000rpm sata hard-drive... Compiling takes 45min maximum...

LOL... This one sent my to the floor. Why? You'll find out(I guess).

BTW, no offense man. I'm just fooling around.
I'm happy today.

Just relaying what I read at the gentoo forums.

I completely understand your problem!
I'd say go for Mepis, it handles hardware better than any other Debian-variants I've tried and uses kde which you wanted. But then, installing kde in Ubuntu was really easy - Debian's apt is very very good for Internet-installations.
I also tried apt and yum with Fedora, but it's only giving me headaches.

Okay, after scanning the debian & Gentoo databases, I found more of the programs that I want at.....Gentoo.

So I asked some questions instead of reading other peoples gripes, and with my system they say that compiling etc etc wont take very long. Looks like I am migrating to Gentoo.

No offense to any Mandrake users, but I used urpmi and even created back up repositories and everything. However when trying to install larger newer programs such as kdebase 3.4 resulted in a lot of dependency errors ACK, now I know what people meant by dependency Hell. On the goodside it gave me Linux FEVER!

Er... Yess......

That is essentially sacrificing a few minutes (maybey more) for the program to take double the loading time.

Gentoo "COMPILES", most others "INSTALL"

compiling gives you the program in a perfect fit for your computer....