2005-09-28

a pleasant surprise - gentoo

It's night and I'm sleepy, so this will be short. I've replaced ubuntu with gentoo on my laptop. I have to say that gentoo is a pleasant surprise. No behind-the-scenes "magic" - you have to do everything by yourself. All important aspects of the system are well documented. Compiling stuff is not that of a chore with the emerge - their packaging system. I also like the non-SYSV init because close to BSD-style init.

I also have to say that I have a very good experience with their support. The only package that failed to compile was bochs. I decided to report the bug and received an answer within 15 minutes. Impressive.

So far - no frustrations and a feeling of a well-designed system that gives great freedom to its users.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Documenting your search for a "better OS" is interesting and I hope you'll keep reporting. I am on a similar quest, but am in what appears to be a minority of one: I'm looking for an environment where the delineation between the OS and the application software if not this fuzzy "no-man's-land", infested with inconsistent versions, out-of-sync interfaces and free-for-all change authority. I desire an OS that provide a well-crafted base for applications, not one that includes them.