From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-09-11T04:18:59+09:00
Subject: Re: What Linux distribution to choose for learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails

On Tue, Sep 11, 2007 at 03:16:35AM +0900, Lionel Bouton wrote:
> 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'd say there are really four primary aspects to separating distributions
from one another:

  1. software management system (package manager, ports manager(s),
  whatever)

  2. installation system and procedures

  3. community and maintenance policies

  4. software archives and how they're managed

Hopefully the reasons I made those choices are fairly obvious.  In the
past, I've overlooked the "community and maintenance policies" item when
discussing the important differences between distributions, but I've
obviously seen the error of my ways.


> 
> 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.

I have had zero problems with Ruby that I haven't had, either exactly or
in rough comparability of the nature of the issue, with any Linux
distribution.  My experience so far is that Linux distributions tend to
want to override Ruby's preferred management systems (such as gems) a
fair bit more than FreeBSD, though there are some exceptions.

More in general than that, the big wins FreeBSD provides for me over
Gentoo are related to stability, ease of ports management, and the
benefits it grants me over Linux distributions in general (which I've
addressed elsewhere in this thread today).  As I'm so fond of saying
lately, your mileage may vary.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
John W. Russell: "People point. Sometimes that's just easier. They also use
words. Sometimes that's just easier. For the same reasons that pointing has
not made words obsolete, there will always be command lines."