29 Dec
2011
29 Dec
'11
12:39 p.m.
On 29 December 2011 03:11, Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
Ahh, fair enough!
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
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On 28/12/11 9:54 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
I am curious; why not?
I tried Gentoo myself. I spent about 3 days building a system which
wouldn't boot as a result.
But overall, I read all the notes and the (very detailed, if
poorly-written) Handbook, and came away utterly unconvinced. I do not
see any real benefit in compiling your own distro and the notes and
FAQs and so on did not convince me. I don't believe that a few
optimisation tweaks can make that much difference, frankly. It all
seemed like a colossal amount of work, and wasted time, for a
percent's benefit if you're lucky.
The clincher for me, though, was that this ultimately-customisable,
build-your-own distro didn't support the customisation I wanted.
Specifically, that of the init system. I really don't like the System
V init; I find it to me a maze of twisty little shell scripts, all
alike. I wanted a BSD-style init, like Slackware.
You can't. I asked on the fora and mailing lists. I got the ASCII
equivalent of a blank stare. Most of the contributors didn't know
there was a choice of init systems, or what an init was. Those that
did, didn't see why one would want to change it. Those few that
understood that there were differences said "but we've chosen the best
one; deal with it." Which *completely* misses the point of a
"completely-customisable" compile-your-own distro, if you can't make
the one customisation you really want.
I decided at this point that Gentoo was a complete waste of time and
walked away.
Nothing I've ever read has convinced me otherwise, frankly. Although I
met a few smart people, in its time - 5-6Y or more ago - that could
argue why it was a good thing, frankly, all the most professional
Linux types I've met use Debian. A few corporate wage-slaves favour
RHEL. Anything else seems to be just being different for the sake of
it, which is not what I would choose if I were hiring a Linux
sysadmin, personally.
Desktops are slightly different, but not massively. If you like to
play, Arch seems to be the modern choice. If you just want it to work,
Ubuntu. If you want something more Free or with your own choice of
desktop, Debian. If you want to be a corporate wage-slave, CentOS.
Other choices, frankly, are either simple boosterism, like the
overclockers building AMD PCs because they're AMD supporters, even
though Intel comprehensively won the performance race 5Y or more ago
and AMD will never come back again.
Distro choice in the 2nd decade of the 21st century seems to me to be:
Noob? Ubuntu. Expert?
Server:
Is someone else paying? Run RHEL. Otherwise, run Debian, unless you're
after a toy not a tool.
Desktop:
Ubuntu, unless you're really seriously opposed, in which case, Debian.
If you're not man enough for Debian (and I'm not), Xubuntu or Mint.
On Dec 29, 2011 1:18 AM, "Toby Thain"<toby at telegraphics.com.au>
?wrote:
Hm, if so, that's sad. The binary distributions don't really cut it, though
Arch should. Maybe I don't have time for this adventure after all. :)
On 28/12/11 11:22 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:
on. Is dual boot possible, and what distribution have you tried (I'm a
Gentoo man)?
Yes, dual-booting is perfectly possible. My Mac mini G4 triple-boots
between OS X 10.4, 10.5 and an Amiga OS called MorphOS - and I used an
Ubuntu 10.04 PPC boot CD to get it working.
Gentoo is somewhat moribund note, AFAICT, but if you really like your
Linux
1995 style then you might B4R able to find a build of Arch or something.
Or
a BSD.
On 12/27/2011 03:42 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>
>
> Over Yule dinner, a friend offered me a free computer. Not really
> vintage by CCtalk standards, I guess. A dual-core 2GHz G5 Mac Pro.
>
> The thing is, I am considering getting rid of my PowerPC OS X Macs. I
> like OS X very much, but despite Cameron's valiant efforts with the
> very nifty TenFourFox, it's running out of current browsers and it
> only runs a version of Mac OS X that's now 2 releases out of date. As
> a writing tool, a G3 with MacOS 9.2 on it would almost be more use, as
> it makes no pretence of being a current machine and one wouldn't
> expect most modern websites to work...
>
> I am torn. I'd love it, but I'm not sure I really have any use for it,
> and I'm short on space and already paring back the collection... :?(
Linux runs quite well on that hardware, quite zippily too. That'd get
you current browsers and everything else, along with a whole lot of CPU
performance.
Hmm, when my dual 2.5 is fixed I'll have a spare dual 1.8 to experiment Me, I'd
probably suggest Debian.
But if I want to run Linux, I'd probably just use a PC, myself. More
drivers, plugins and so on. A large part of the reason to use a Mac for me
is Mac OS.
Yes, I already run (Gentoo) Linux on an x86, and OS X on my Macs. This would
be a spare G5 only; the main one would be OS X.