I am not going to jump into a huge debate about which distro is better. I am going to simply state my observations of using both and the potential target audiences.
Gentoo
"What stage of Gentoo are you intoo"
I have used this distro and must say that if you are into building your own system or looking for a time investment than look no further. I really would sum Gentoo up as a friendly Linux from Scratch system that helps you, through the community, to understand the inner workings of the Linux Kernel and GNU userspace.
Portage is the package manager and feels like ports from FreeBSD, as it should since it's based off of it. Gentoo is greased lightning in a bottle. If you take away the community then it will strike you down with all its might. This infrastructure to me is similar to the Debian infrastructure.
Once you go Gentoo its hard to look back. If you set your make.conf file up properly you will experience Nirvana on hardware you would probably give up on with many large distros. I really hate to say it but Gentoo has taken Slackware down a few notches.
Ubuntu
I really can't say enough good things about Ubuntu. For a fresh, clean install for someone looking to jump from Windows XP then this is a serious distro. apt-get is far superior to RPM for package management and ofcourse Ubuntu is Debian based. I think Ubuntu succeeds where Linspire/Lindows failed. It is truely easy of use even for the grandmoms ( as long as a grandkid installs it ).
If digging into your Install isn't your thing then Ubuntu is the heavy hitter. It is fast, and for a Gnome install, it is fairly lightweight. Kubuntu exists for KDE zealots. If you want a Debian machine then look nowhere else.
Overall... good stuff.
Mandriva 2k5
I have been a mandriva fan since mandrake 9.0. Quite possibly the best RPM based distro for many reasons such as easy of use, fast, stable-yet-bleeding-edge, pretty, supports vast range of hardware and has a great community. Where Ubuntu is a grass roots movement, Mandriva is a Linux Superpower. Urpmi > yum > Yast imho. Long ago would be Suse users would take up the Mandrake front because of Urpmi's OS nature while Yast was not.
People tend to think of Mandriva as a GUI oriented OS. This is far from the truth actually. Mandriva is quite well at home headless with or without X. Urpmi puts the apt-get into RPM in my oppinion. My biggest problem with RPM distro's are the dependencies that simply do not exist yet are required.
If you want a good RPM distro then this is a one stop shop. It also runs Cedega nicely for people interested in a good gaming rig via Linux/Cedega. At the end of the day I still say its not too different from Fedora Core, Suse, or YellowDog ( for you PPC users ). It shares the same refinement of Suse but the same bleeding edge of Fedora, howerver OpenSuse is aiming to best both.
These observations are my personal oppinions at *this* time. Hope this helps anyone wanting a point in the right direction.
Gentoo
"What stage of Gentoo are you intoo"
I have used this distro and must say that if you are into building your own system or looking for a time investment than look no further. I really would sum Gentoo up as a friendly Linux from Scratch system that helps you, through the community, to understand the inner workings of the Linux Kernel and GNU userspace.
Portage is the package manager and feels like ports from FreeBSD, as it should since it's based off of it. Gentoo is greased lightning in a bottle. If you take away the community then it will strike you down with all its might. This infrastructure to me is similar to the Debian infrastructure.
Once you go Gentoo its hard to look back. If you set your make.conf file up properly you will experience Nirvana on hardware you would probably give up on with many large distros. I really hate to say it but Gentoo has taken Slackware down a few notches.
Ubuntu
I really can't say enough good things about Ubuntu. For a fresh, clean install for someone looking to jump from Windows XP then this is a serious distro. apt-get is far superior to RPM for package management and ofcourse Ubuntu is Debian based. I think Ubuntu succeeds where Linspire/Lindows failed. It is truely easy of use even for the grandmoms ( as long as a grandkid installs it ).
If digging into your Install isn't your thing then Ubuntu is the heavy hitter. It is fast, and for a Gnome install, it is fairly lightweight. Kubuntu exists for KDE zealots. If you want a Debian machine then look nowhere else.
Overall... good stuff.
Mandriva 2k5
I have been a mandriva fan since mandrake 9.0. Quite possibly the best RPM based distro for many reasons such as easy of use, fast, stable-yet-bleeding-edge, pretty, supports vast range of hardware and has a great community. Where Ubuntu is a grass roots movement, Mandriva is a Linux Superpower. Urpmi > yum > Yast imho. Long ago would be Suse users would take up the Mandrake front because of Urpmi's OS nature while Yast was not.
People tend to think of Mandriva as a GUI oriented OS. This is far from the truth actually. Mandriva is quite well at home headless with or without X. Urpmi puts the apt-get into RPM in my oppinion. My biggest problem with RPM distro's are the dependencies that simply do not exist yet are required.
If you want a good RPM distro then this is a one stop shop. It also runs Cedega nicely for people interested in a good gaming rig via Linux/Cedega. At the end of the day I still say its not too different from Fedora Core, Suse, or YellowDog ( for you PPC users ). It shares the same refinement of Suse but the same bleeding edge of Fedora, howerver OpenSuse is aiming to best both.
These observations are my personal oppinions at *this* time. Hope this helps anyone wanting a point in the right direction.
