Linked by Anthony Hicks on Tue 8th Apr 2003 16:17 UTC
This (quite long) article has been written by me for two primary reasons: One, to hopefully save someone else the time and hassle associated with trying out various Linux distributions, and two, to promote some discussion and feedback regarding what a modern Linux distribution should be, and of course to contrast this with what is currently available. I am exploring the offerings of MS Windows, BeOS and MacOSX, and then taking on a number of well-known Linux distributions.
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is the fact that you're more or less reliant on its creators in order to keep the list of available software up-to-date.
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With Gentoo, this really isn't necessary. Gentoo uses build scripts to download and configure software. The build scripts are very well documented, very short (usually less than 50 lines, most of it boilerplate), and very adaptable. As a result, it's quite easy to write your own scripts when a new version of a package comes out. I don't know bash scripting (what these scripts are written in) and I've still been able to adapt some for new programs. Since it's so easy, the Gentoo forums are full of user made ebuilds for all sorts of software, even for CVS versions. The result is that, although it has a much smaller userbase, Gentoo's software repository is very large and very up to date.