This thread started since I was seeking for a good professional Linux distribution to set up a hosting company in my country,
I used to work with Slackware, which is a great distribution, really, fast, stable, old, and very static, when I say static I mean, not really changing, except that versions go up (kernel/compiler/glibc updates), it has the old classic init scripts and the old classic Linux directory structure, and what I personally don't like that it's built on one person and there's no serious growing community for Slack, which is sad.
So I started to seek for something in the same style, professional, smooth and clean but couldn't, and mentioning why I couldn't while trying to compare RedHat/Mandrake dist style to Slackware is not neccessary and for sure is clear for all of us
And then I found Gentoo, which mix the professional Slackware built, all compile from sources, you end up after installation with smooth and clean system, no thousand of libraries, files and shits you need to clean up, and when you do 'ps auxw' you don't need to scroll up with opened eyes to see the huge list of services RH installed by the MINIMAL installation,
And ye, Gentoo's community is great, definitely, lots of professional and kind guys here!
Anyway, I still think Slackware is greater, you download a package directly from the official site, you untar it, compile by your own with selected prefix, customize it as you want and you end up with a clean system that you know exactly what file does what. no automatic tools, no automatic updates and stuff but clean and fast.
But I guess it's possible with Gentoo/Portage too, I guess I just don't know to use Portage very well yet.
Anyway, doing 'emerge openldap' and getting an ldap service installed automatically for me sounds bad, you feel like you missed something on the installation, and for some reason, I still feel unsafe to have that package downloaded from Gentoo (after that some changes have made) instead of downloading the package from the official site and compiling it manually, so yet again, I guess it's possible to make the emerge download the package and use your own --configure while installing, but then, what makes the different between Gentoo and other Linux distribution such as LFS/Slackware if not the Portage tool?
Anyway, anyone feel like me? or you feel great using 'emerge critical_package' and smile when it ends?
