One of the first things I learned many years ago watching the flame wars on Slashdot is that there are two types of people...(roughly)
1) People who learn to love things for what they can do, and appreciate them for what they are. These people tend to write nice things, that help do what they already wanted to do. Their advice is very weighted and judiciously given. 2) People who think that they look smart by saying other things suck. These people tend to write wrong, but strongly worded opinions that assume everyone should have the same goals as they do. Their advice comes with a lot of weight and is judgementally given. Suckless is a great philosophy to help people understand the security of simplicity. Things that are presented simply, kept simple, usually are easier to use. Dmenu is a classic example of a utility that is done so simply it becomes more than a feature to an already bloated program, its a tool you can use on your own. It perfectly justifies the suckless mentality in my mind. After trying many operating systems, I appreciate Gentoo as the easiest, suckless way, to do what I want to do. I want an environment that I can compile to my liking. Currently my laptop runs evilvm, uzbl, st, a kernel of my own choosing (compiled with only the options I want). I like how emerge prunes, revdep-rebuild heals, and how I can compile everything I want -- without gnome. I like how its source mentality keeps me from many of the archane "no non-libra for you" attitude that Debianistas inflict on their own distro (though I like it and think it is a good stable straightforward distro). Tiny-Core is a great idea which I think will have its day. Its philosophy of being the same thing every time you boot it, and then adds from there, is a time honored admin philosophy. I've not personally tried to maintain it from day to day, I don't know how well it persists changes between reboots (GRML has a persist option, for instance). But to be honest, I'm just too old to do anything but turn off when someone starts a rant where their own philosophy is the center of the universe, and everything else sucks. Except in this thread, because, well, the original post was inviting a distro war, wasn't it?
