Unlike many linux users I started with linux and had to learn windows later. In both cases I was already an `old man'. On my fiftieth birthday in 1996, I started with Redhat linux somewhere in the 3X version area.
I stumbled and plunged, plunged and stumbled all the way up to now. And here 10 yrs later am still capable of asking dead stupid questions. It may not show too much but I have learned hugely along the way. I finally tired of redhat (by then it was the fedora branch) and had tried quite a few others along the way, Slackware, Debian were really the only two `others' for quite a while but then I tried mandrake and suse too. Always returning to redhat/fedora in the end for the simple fact I knew it best. So none of the others held enough draw for me to drop redhat/fedora. Until I met Gentoo. About 1 1/2 yrs ago now. It wasn't love at first boot as many here have reported but by then I was tired of the need to basically reinstall every few mnths or face the dependancy hell people have mentioned that can arise in rpm systems. I bounced back and forth for a few wks until I finally learned enough to keep my gentoo system up and have some confidence I knew how to upgrade etc. Unlike some posters here I haven't noticed that this list is really much different than the old redhat now fedora lists. Only to say that the old redhat lists seemed to have more real experts than the later Fedora branch lists. But both were incredibly helpfull too. This list follows a long linux tradition of being very helpful to new and not so new users. Gentoo lists may well be setting the high water mark in having a high `real experts' ratio. The only real breach I ever noticed in that tradition was Debian lists which (Putting on asbestos drawers now) are very snotty and have a religious zealot overtone not found elsewhere. And now finally getting to the point: In a brief summary one might say: emerge -u world and all the emerge jobs in between when needing specific tools. That is, the emerge/portage system is really a well rounded, and robust software managing tool. -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
