I was Windows + Mandrake then Windows + Redhat and am now turning to Gentoo. I never run Debian before. I am interested to know what is the difference between Gentoo and Debian.
Debian - mainly a binary distribution with source packages available for rebuild of anything requiring a rebuild, excellent package management system, fully-documented policy and procedure for build/installation locations, as well as the the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) for ensuring software meets the highest standards of Free Software availability for inclusion in the main distribution. The downside is Debian is VERY slow to release stuff into their "stable" branch, but 99% of the time, their "testing" and even "unstable" branches are both usable on non-production machines. Packages can be backported from unstable to stable pretty easily by installing the source packages and re-building.
Gentoo - source-based distro still working on their procedures and documentation, showing promise, but not there yet. Has excellent support for a lot of newer software that's not exactly stable yet, and even some non-Free software that has questionable licensing.
(I'm sure I'll need the flame suit on for this one, but Debian's development process is MUCH more mature than Gentoo's... the discussions on Gentoo-Dev are stuff Debian dealt with and came up with policy on some four or five years ago.)
In general, I run Debian on production boxes and Gentoo on development or desktop machines right now.
They're both Linux. And as I always say, Linux is Linux. It really comes down to whether or not you have time to wait for machines to rebuild their binaries every week or so and whether or not you can handle that amount of change to your production servers that often. Many companies can't even think about doing that many updates. I can accept this on a desktop machine - I can't on servers.
It's ultimately a personal choice - the underlying software packages are the same on all Linux'es.
Nate, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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