Linked by Bob Minvielle on Wed 17th Jul 2002 19:18 UTC
There have been many articles as of late about the so called "source" distributions of Linux. Articles about "rpm hell" and how to get out of it. While I have been using Red Rat since the first release (and do have some things for and against it) there is no distribution that will please all of the people all of the time. Then again, that is what makes an OS like Linux nice, in my opinion. Choices. Today, Gentoo Linux is my choice.
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Although considering the nasty tone of remarks back and forth I hate to make yet another BSD vs. Gentoo post, I'll do it anyway. ;-) FreeBSD, along with the technical advantages and the easier to administrate BSD init system (which it shares, from what I understand, with Slackware) has a port system that works well over a dial-up modem. Gentoo does not work easily out of the box with trying to emerge a system over a dial-up link, and in fact the docs reccomend that you set up a second system with automatic redialing and an ethernet connection to your Gentoo box to get it to install reliably.
FreeBSD doesn't have that weakness, and it's easy to keep the entire system up to date with cvsup once or twice a week even over a modem connection (more than that if you're an up-to-date maniac, less if all you do is update for security purposes - and it allows it to easily be set up just for that for those that need extra stability; or to be set up to track either the -stable or -current (development) branches if you like the bleeding edge). Ports are of course a snap, just like Gentoo; or rather Portage is "just like" BSD. :-)
It is noteworthy that the two distros viewed as most hacker friendly, Slackware (BSD inits) and Gentoo (port system clone) both immitate parts of BSD that distinguish it from Linux. Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery; but if you have hardware that works OK with FreeBSD, and most people do, why settle for an immitation? :-)
BTW, I saw some misinformation about nvidia and BSD. Nvidia's 3D acceleration is not supported, true, but via either the familiar "nv" driver or a more experimental non-3D but 2D accelerated driver, nvidia cards are supported just fine in X; I'm using one now; with no hardware-related problems from it; though I imagine Quake 3 would run real slow on it. :-( Luckily, however, a lot of other games, and more serious software among the over 7,000 ports in the FreeBSD ports tree (a greater packaging of software than most Linux distributions), work just fine.