Gentoo or Slackware

[Kibbo86]

Hi all

Just joined the ranks of linux users this month (Ubuntu breezy badger), and I think I'm addicted.

Although I love Breezy, I would like to use a spare partition on my drive for a distro without the training wheels.

Reading around, Slackware and Gentoo both seem to start off pretty barebones, so I figure that both will be learning opportunities for me. Also, neither have apt-get, and part of this project is wanting to learn different package management systems.

Which one will help teach me more about linux?

 

[Hyperblaze]

Slackware won't teach you as much as Gentoo.

That being said, their file structures are rather different too.

If you really want to learn about Linux, go for Gentoo. Great documentation and great community to help you out (not quite here, many folks here are debian/ubuntu fanatics)

gentoo has "emerge" to install packages. Just a word of warning though, it does compile from source (one of the reasons why I absolutely love it!). The downside of it is that it does take a bit more time to install.

slackware as far as I am aware doesn't have a nice utility to install packages. It' just the old school method of ./configure, make all, make install

 

[Nothinman]

IMO Gentoo won't teach you much either other than how to partition your disks and such, 99% of the installation is typing 'emerge something' and watching compiler output scroll. Unless you use the binary packages they provide and then you might as well just stick with Ubuntu.

Slackware does have a package manager, sort of, AFAIK Slackware packages are pretty much just precompiled binaries in tarballs. Also there is an apt-get work-alike, call slapt-get or something similar, that will fetch Slackware packages off of the Internet for you.

If you want to learn how Linux works any distribution will do since they basically use the same software. There will be differences in package management and such, but Xorg on Debian is pretty much the same as Xorg on FC, they both have the same commands, config files, etc. Compiling software by hand will just teach you how to read ./configure output and search the Internet for more software to compile. And that just takes very basic troubleshooting skills and IME you can't learn that, you either have it or you don't.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to discourage you from trying other distributions. Everyone has different opinions on what's good so it's essential that you try a few to get a feeling about where you fit in. But if you think that installing Slackware is going to give you any insight on how to build a Linux distribution, how the system boots up, what kernel modules do what, etc you're just going to be disappointed.

 

[nweaver]

the thing with Gentoo is that (at least with the old stage1/stage2 guides) was that you could pick between different crons, differnt syslog daemons, and the guide pointed out the basics. Also, understanding some of the basic stuff, such as partitions, filesystems, mounting (building your own fstab) etc are usefull. Having said that, I like the debian installer, because it's easier for patitioning, and setting up s/w raid out of box.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Slackware is better than Gentoo. Always has been, always will be. I learned more on Slackware than any other distro.

 

[JohnBernstein]

The "boys" have not mentioned the articles at

http://linux.coconia.net/

If you are interested in installing Gentoo quickly, you will find a walkthru to help you through a Gentoo Linux 2006 installation (including KDE Gnome and Xfce)

You get GENTOO 2006.0 and the GNOME desktop in about 15 minutes.

If you want KDE and Xfce it will take another 2.45 hours, for a total of about 3 hours.

This is a binary install.

It assumes you have the necessary CDs or iso-images.

 

[Nothinman]

the thing with Gentoo is that (at least with the old stage1/stage2 guides) was that you could pick between different crons, differnt syslog daemons, and the guide pointed out the basics.

You can do that with any distribution, the only difference is that you have to replace them after the initial install. It's an extra step or two, but it's still quicker than a Gentoo install. =)

Slackware is better than Gentoo. Always has been, always will be. I learned more on Slackware than any other distro.

IMO just about anything is better than Gentoo. There are some really noteworth quotes on http://www.funroll-loops.org/

 

[bersl2]

Slackware

Gentoo doesn't teach you jack.

 

[hardcandy2]

Slackware would be a good distro to start with as it forces you to think about how to get the dependencies configured for installing things.
The ultimate teaching distro is Linux From Scratch, compile and install everything from the ground up.

LFS

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
You can do that with any distribution, the only difference is that you have to replace them after the initial install. It's an extra step or two, but it's still quicker than a Gentoo install. =)

do the install instructions provide some info about what they are, the basics between popular versions, and how to install the other? That's what gentoo profides during it's install, it forces you to think about it. I learned a lot about linux using Gentoo. I was a RH9 -> Gentoo -> Debian progression kinda guy. Nothing like Gentoo/portage to make you realize the polish and grace of Debian/Apt

 

[Nothinman]

Slackware would be a good distro to start with as it forces you to think about how to get the dependencies configured for installing things.

But what good is that? Why should I care if an app uses libxml or xpat? The developers of the application and maintainers of the package are the only ones that should really care about the apps dependencies.

do the install instructions provide some info about what they are, the basics between popular versions, and how to install the other?

Looking at the Gentoo handbook, I don't see any information on the differences between the available packages. They mention their names and what the basic job of all of them is, but the individual descriptions are all like 3 words. Essentially they call the different syslog daemons traditional, advanced and highly-configurable. Not terribly descriptive if you ask me.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Slackware would be a good distro to start with as it forces you to think about how to get the dependencies configured for installing things.

But what good is that? Why should I care if an app uses libxml or xpat? The developers of the application and maintainers of the package are the only ones that should really care about the apps dependencies.

do the install instructions provide some info about what they are, the basics between popular versions, and how to install the other?

Looking at the Gentoo handbook, I don't see any information on the differences between the available packages. They mention their names and what the basic job of all of them is, but the individual descriptions are all like 3 words. Essentially they call the different syslog daemons traditional, advanced and highly-configurable. Not terribly descriptive if you ask me.

How discriptive is the process to change/differences between the syslog daemons in Debian during install?

 

[sourceninja]

I think everyone should do linux from sctach just once. Just to see how hard it freaking is to make a OS work. Then go back to their favorite distro.

 

[Nothinman]

How discriptive is the process to change/differences between the syslog daemons in Debian during install?

Probably about the same, but you don't do it during the initial install so AFAIK there's no real mention of the other options. But the fact is that which syslog daemon you choose doesn't really matter, 99% of the time is a just a bit of minutia that runs in the background and 'just works'. The other 1% of the time you either know which daemon you want to run because you have a specific reason for it or at least you know that you can run 'apt-cache search syslogd' to see what's available and will want to do research that requires more docs than either Gentoo or Debian include in their package descriptions.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Slackware would be a good distro to start with as it forces you to think about how to get the dependencies configured for installing things.

But what good is that? Why should I care if an app uses libxml or xpat? The developers of the application and maintainers of the package are the only ones that should really care about the apps dependencies.

Everyone should do it once so that they know how good they've got it.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Slackware would be a good distro to start with as it forces you to think about how to get the dependencies configured for installing things.

But what good is that? Why should I care if an app uses libxml or xpat? The developers of the application and maintainers of the package are the only ones that should really care about the apps dependencies.

Everyone should do it once so that they know how good they've got it.

agreed...I tried installing updated stuff on Redhat 9 about 3 years ago, and got into dependancy hell really quick.

 

[Brazen]

I like Fedora Core. Go with version 4 (I don't like version 5, much more dumbed down) and start with a Server install and choose "minimal" at the bottom of the package customization at the end. Start from here and you'll be forced to learn the inner workings of linux in order to get anywhere.