[ltp] Re: Preferred distro for Thinkpads?

[Christopher Sawtell]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:57, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> Dillon Lawson <dillon@phasefour.net> writes:
> > I second Gentoo as the best os for a Thinkpad, it has the best support
> > with forums and wiki's.  Installing Gentoo really lets you know
> > _everything_ about your system.
>
> I am, personally, unconvinced that watching software compile grants any
> sort of magical knowledge of how it operates, or the best way to
> configure it. ;)
I agree, but seeing the software compile and configuring it reinforces your 
knowledge about what s/w you have installed on your machine.

> > Tho the install is time consuming but once thats done it will be
> > faster then any Thinkpad using binary packages out there.  Who know
> > where those Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, or Suse packages were built.....
>
> Have you actually /measured/ a performance difference between Gentoo
> packages and packages compiled on Debian, Fedora, etc, or do you simply
> assume that they are faster?
Gentoo is perceptably faster for certain apps, but the percentage is small and 
probably not of much relevance.

The very real advantages Gentoo offers are the incredibly friendly and helpful 
#gentoo* irc channels on freenode. The quality of the Gentoo documentation 
which is simply outstanding. The wealth of knowledge in the Wiki and Forums.
The portage system seems to have gotton the incredibly complex net of package 
dependencies properly sorted out. Of course there are a few errors, but they 
are few and far between, and are sorted out remarkable quickly. Like an hour 
and 20 mins for my simple dependency bug report to be actioned and 
registerered into cvs.

I have been using Linux for nearly 10 years, Gentoo is the fifth distro I have 
used and currently I do not intend to change.

With the release of the experimental GUI Installer a day or to ago Gentoo will 
become considerably more 'approachable'. It will be interesting to see how 
that changes the support situation.

-- 
CS