[ILUG] Suggestions for best 64 bit Linux distro?

[Colm Buckley]

My, Gentoo users are defensive, aren't they?  I can understand people  
wanting to defend the decisions they've made, and to promote the  
systems they're familiar with, but some of the responses here have  
been frankly startling.  You weren't Amiga owners in a former life,  
were you?  Hint : what works for you might not be a generally-good  
solution.

My opinion - that source-based distributions are an utter and  
ludicrous waste of time - remains unchanged; I fail to see any  
significant benefits gained from compiling locally as opposed to  
centrally.  Certainly I don't believe the vaunted "10% performance  
increase", and even modest gains in runtime performance would be more  
than offset by the time spent compiling.  CPU cycles aren't free.   
What if someone has 100 servers to maintain?  What about 10,000?

Portage is often cited as a Gentoo advantage, but every argument I've  
seen in its favour has been more than adequately answered by apt as  
implemented in the current Debian and Ubuntu systems.  On Debian/ 
Ubuntu, I can have a new package installed, configured and running in  
*seconds* - for example, when securing Morrigan (the new ILUG  
server), I needed nmap to test what was visible on localhost versus  
on the public IP interface.  NMap wasn't installed by default, so the  
one-line command "apt-get install nmap" had it downloaded and running  
in less than ten seconds.  Packages which require configuration  
generally have sensible defaults installed, and a simple set of  
configuration options for the common cases.  Why should I switch to  
Gentoo?

My advice : spend some time using Ubuntu, and experience what a  
*really* easy-to-install and easy-to-maintain distribution looks like.

     Colm

-- 
Colm Buckley / colm at tuatha.org / +353 87 2469146

PS : one-line responses such as "whatever" or "yawn" do not reflect  
well on people who are simultaneously trying to paint Gentoo  
detractors as "lamers".