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May be offtopic, I am thinking about toying around a linux distro, configure with my own preference. Which distro should I choose? Gentoo or Arch linux? There w

by mun2mun 15y ago

May be offtopic, I am thinking about toying around a linux distro, configure with my own preference. Which distro should I choose? Gentoo or Arch linux? There was a post about Arch linux in HN few days ago where people praised about its configurablility. Can someone put some more insight about it?

wyclif 15y ago
I would recommend Arch Linux as more current. It's fun to build up a system from base, and there's plenty of help available on the IRC channel. I believe you are thinking of this HN story: http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Arch-Linux-It-is-what-you-make-it-1343717.html http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Arch-Linux-It-is-what-...
- kamechan 15y ago
  hmm, i wouldn't necessarily say that arch is more current. both arch and gentoo use rolling releases, and the gentoo community is still fairly active. what i might say instead is that the arch community has become quite active, and created a lot of new documentation whereas gentoo, whose documentation is still updated frequently, hasn't recently had any kind of redesign. but, it's still gentoo's stated goal to have the bleeding edge of the linux community development process, aside for possibly gnome3, which they've been actively masking out of the stable (and even dev) branches. the real difference is that the predominant number of packages in gentoo are compiled specifically for one's machine based off of the specific set of use flags and package.use, and package.mask parameters, and relatively few precompiled binaries exist for gentoo. with arch, there are a lot more precompiled binaries and not having to compile everything from scratch (yes, i know you still can with arch, but this is not the default model) is more appealing to some. all this said, i absolutely love emerge. arch's pacman is a very good package manager, but emerge is just amazing in my opinion. for someone just starting with a rolling release distro of linux, i'd say take a look at the documentation for both gentoo and arch and see which one you relate to more. after all, you'll be reading a LOT of documentation either way.
  - wyclif 15y ago
    Yes, I fully grant what you are pointing out. If I were to write it over again, I definitely would have said "more active" instead of more current. I've never used Gentoo, but I understand it may be attractive to users who want a ports-based system as well.
billswift 15y ago
One of Slackware's strongest points, and the reason I have stuck with it, is its configurability. Unfortunately, this can be a problem for newer users since it also requires more manual configuration than most newer distros. Also Slackware's installer sometimes has problems with some machine configurations.

by mun2mun 15y ago

wyclif 15y ago

I would recommend Arch Linux as more current. It's fun to build up a system from base, and there's plenty of help available on the IRC channel. I believe you are thinking of this HN story: http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Arch-Linux-It-is-what-you-make-it-1343717.html http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Arch-Linux-It-is-what-...

kamechan 15y ago
hmm, i wouldn't necessarily say that arch is more current. both arch and gentoo use rolling releases, and the gentoo community is still fairly active. what i might say instead is that the arch community has become quite active, and created a lot of new documentation whereas gentoo, whose documentation is still updated frequently, hasn't recently had any kind of redesign. but, it's still gentoo's stated goal to have the bleeding edge of the linux community development process, aside for possibly gnome3, which they've been actively masking out of the stable (and even dev) branches. the real difference is that the predominant number of packages in gentoo are compiled specifically for one's machine based off of the specific set of use flags and package.use, and package.mask parameters, and relatively few precompiled binaries exist for gentoo. with arch, there are a lot more precompiled binaries and not having to compile everything from scratch (yes, i know you still can with arch, but this is not the default model) is more appealing to some. all this said, i absolutely love emerge. arch's pacman is a very good package manager, but emerge is just amazing in my opinion. for someone just starting with a rolling release distro of linux, i'd say take a look at the documentation for both gentoo and arch and see which one you relate to more. after all, you'll be reading a LOT of documentation either way.
- wyclif 15y ago
  Yes, I fully grant what you are pointing out. If I were to write it over again, I definitely would have said "more active" instead of more current. I've never used Gentoo, but I understand it may be attractive to users who want a ports-based system as well.

billswift 15y ago

One of Slackware's strongest points, and the reason I have stuck with it, is its configurability. Unfortunately, this can be a problem for newer users since it also requires more manual configuration than most newer distros. Also Slackware's installer sometimes has problems with some machine configurations.