From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-09-11T01:46:09+09:00
Subject: Re: What Linux distribution to choose for learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails

On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 12:07:42PM +0900, Trans wrote:
> On Sep 9, 6:54 pm, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <zn...@cesmail.net> wrote:
> >
> > The bridge you have to cross (eventually) is whether you ever want to do
> > kernel builds or recompile packages from source. RHEL and its rebuilds
> > actively *discourage* rebuilding the kernel. It's too easy to trash your
> > system that way. But rebuilding packages from source is easy on all the
> > major distros.
> >
> > Or you could use Gentoo, where you *have* to recompile everything from
> > source. :)
> 
> Ah, come on! SourceMage or Lunar is where the real source code action
> is at ;)

No . . . the "real source code action" would be in a BSD Unix (FreeBSD,
NetBSD, OpenBSD), not any Linux distribution.  You can also get good
package-based software management, at least with FreeBSD and NetBSD (I'm
not familiar enough with OpenBSD to comment on it in this respect), if
you want that too.  Back when I was a Debianista, my response to any
recommendation to give Gentoo a try was "If I wanted to use Gentoo, I'd
use FreeBSD instead."  Now, I use FreeBSD.

As for whether SourceMage or Lunar is a better source-based Linux
distribution than Gentoo -- well, I'm highly skeptical of such a claim,
but I don't have the experience with them to argue one way or the other.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Thomas McCauley: "The measure of a man's real character is what he would do
if he knew he would never be found out."