[gentoo-user] "selling" Gentoo to the RPM heads? (was Re: ..

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Jonathan Nichols wrote:

> Here's a question.. what do you tell the "Just use RPM" heads out there
> when the question of "which distro" comes up?
>
> I'm curious to hear how other Gentoo users that are using Gentoo in a
> corporate environment (not just desktops) deal with the updates & Red
> Hat Heads saying "RPM is sooo much easier!"
>

It's easy when it all goes as planned, but get a little off the
beaten path and it's a pain in the ass. Have Redhat 7.3 and want to add
xslt support in php? Welcome to 15 plus hours of pain. Need to have Apache
1.3 on Redhat 8.0 and modules? That take a few days to build right. Need
Postfix 2.0? Sorry you're stuck with 1.1 unless you want to build it
yourself.

Myself and the other admin have a friendly rivalry on the Gentoo
vs Redhat thing, but he's starting to come around. Partly due to the
above, portage being kick ass, and not having to mess with the OS every
year. Also we've been pretty conservative on rolling Gentoo out and only
doing it when it's an easy win so far. As long as you are truly making an
admin's job easier he'll usually go along. There is some bitching about
the install process, but once I get around to playing with catalyst and
other tools that should go away as well.

kashani

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Ajai Khattri wrote:

>>Hat Heads saying "RPM is sooo much easier!"
> I used to be a RH guy... using up2date was great until they started
> increasing the rate of releases (and hence the rate of obsolescence!).

This is *exactly* why I moved to gentoo. I wanted a server that was
always running the newest (at least stable and secure) packages, without
having to wait on a vendor to release their RPM - or trying to build one
from the source (a pain).

I am using Gentoo with Con Kolivas's ck patch-set for low desktop
latency and autoregulated swapiness on a server that is acting as a
terminal app server for about 15 employees.

Had I chose RH, and I had to update something, I would more than likely
have to build my own RPM's from source or "upgrade" from a new CD in
order to keep the system current - especially in a year or two when they
come out with a new version.

> I am in the process of moving 4 servers to Gentoo (3 done, one to go). I
> work for an ISP and Im using Gentoo for shared web servers. (I guess Im

I thinking about converting over our mail, web, domain, sql and
e-commerce server to gentoo as well. However, things are working, and
I'm afraid at the moment to "fix" anything.

If it ain't broke...

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On Thu, 29 Jul 2004, Billy Holmes wrote:

> I thinking about converting over our mail, web, domain, sql and
> e-commerce server to gentoo as well. However, things are working, and
> I'm afraid at the moment to "fix" anything.
>
> If it ain't broke...

True. In our case, we have old servers being retired soon so it was a
prefect oppotunity to buy nice new hardware and make the switch to Gentoo
at the same time.

I used a couple of old boxes lying around the office as testbeds...


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Aj.
Sys. Admin / Developer

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