From: Lionel Bouton <lionel-subscription@...>
Date: 2007-09-11T03:16:35+09:00
Subject: Re: What Linux distribution to choose for learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails

Trans wrote the following on 10.09.2007 19:40 :
>
>> 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.
>>     
>
> Well, I was just being funny. As for which source-based distro is
> better, they are all very much alike really (after all you're
> compiling form source), but Gentoo has much better docs and a bigger
> community, so it mostly "wins" for that reason alone.
>
>   

IMHO (even if I consider the docs really important) what defines a
distribution is its package manager. I don't know much about Lunar and
SourceMage (I find the terminology for this one entertaining though :
spells, casting, dispelling :-) ) and so can't compare them to Gentoo
(I'll let people with practical experience from both Gentoo and them
compare them, especially for gems handling by the distribution's 
package manager). It's though to make gems handling simpler than
Gentoo's though, on average I've only 4 to 6 lines to edit in a 20 lines
short template to package a new gem...

I was under the impression that Gentoo tried to get the best from
several packaging systems, including the port system so I'm curious
about what *BSD can bring to a Gentoo admin/user and especially one
having to deal with Ruby gems on a daily basis.

Lionel.