Curious of who uses what Distro wand why

[Ex-Cyber]

For what it's worth, this is now supported If a package needs another package to use specific USE flag, emerge now tells you so ("please emerge foo-bar/baz-1.0 with USE=cairo" for example.)

AFAIK those messages are generated by manually coded checks in a handful of ebuilds, and have been around for a while. EAPI 2 seems to have "real" USE dependency support, but the migration looks like a long haul.

[Aradreth]

I suppose most people are using Ubuntu and openSUSE due to their "user friendliness". Me, I use Gentoo I've had enough with distros that make you keep old software for half a year or more at which point they provide major updates.

So I wanted a "rolling release" distro that is versionless. The most popular choices were Archlinux and Gentoo. I've tried them both and liked Gentoo better. Now I get software updates when they're ready, not when Ubuntu/openSUSE/Fedora/Debian/whatever decide it's time for a new distro release. This was one of the things I missed in Linux when compared to Windows; software updates when the software in question actually comes out. On Gentoo (and I suppose there are some more but less popular rolling distros), there's a new Firefox, you get it very soon and without breaking your system (see "Debian Sid" or "openSUSE Head/Factory").

I'm happy and I never looked back since.

PS:
There's a dozen other things I could write here about things in Gentoo (and Arch) I simply love. Live ebuilds for installing from SVN/Git/etc using the package manager (with full dependency tracking and un-installation), USE flags, large package collection (rivals even Debian), dead-easy way to integrate custom patches (Cairo with ClearType for example) into the package manager... And I'm finding even new stuff today

That pretty much sums me up although I ended up with Arch instead of Gentoo as I prefer binaries with the possibility of building from source then the other way round.

[deanjo]

That pretty much sums me up although I ended up with Arch instead of Gentoo as I prefer binaries with the possibility of building from source then the other way round.

You can build from source from any distro. In fact I usually rebuild the critical openSUSE 64-bit packages (ones that do seem to benefit processor specific optimizations) from with the flags I want using the build service.

[RealNC]

AFAIK those messages are generated by manually coded checks in a handful of ebuilds, and have been around for a while. EAPI 2 seems to have "real" USE dependency support, but the migration looks like a long haul.

No, it's part of portage now. No ebuild hacks or workarounds. There's a new syntax for ebuilds to specify USE deps.

[Ex-Cyber]

No, it's part of portage now. No ebuild hacks or workarounds. There's a new syntax for ebuilds to specify USE deps.

Right, but the point of introducing the new syntax was to make the kind of messages you mentioned unnecessary, because the package manager can just rebuild the offending package(s) automatically instead of bugging the user with it. I realize that this exists, but last time I looked almost no ebuilds were actually using it because the spec and implementations were both unstable.

Anyway, off to try my luck with Fedora 11.

[RealNC]

Right, but the point of introducing the new syntax was to make the kind of messages you mentioned unnecessary, because the package manager can just rebuild the offending package(s) automatically instead of bugging the user with it.

No, that is shooting the user in the foot. You will lose functionality that way (for example you need a USE flag enabled, but another package needs it disabled; if it did that on its own, you would be pissed that no one told you).

What you propose here is an example of not really thinking about a problem

[energyman]

gentoo
no jumping-through-loops to get mp3 or avi working
no 'we are smarter than thou' gui tools getting in my way
no rpm hell
no broken init (looking at you debian)
no hunting for header files (you are ALL guilty, fedora, suse, debian, ubuntu...)
easy to maintain
easy to setup
easy to repair
easy to de-crappify. I don't want gnome, nothing of it. Nor do I want sendmail. Or apache. Or gstreamer crap.

[deanjo]

gentoo
no jumping-through-loops to get mp3 or avi working
no 'we are smarter than thou' gui tools getting in my way
no rpm hell
no broken init (looking at you debian)
no hunting for header files (you are ALL guilty, fedora, suse, debian, ubuntu...)
easy to maintain
easy to setup
easy to repair
easy to de-crappify. I don't want gnome, nothing of it. Nor do I want sendmail. Or apache. Or gstreamer crap.

Oh come on now, rpm hell is a well out dated argument with the modern package management out there. MP3 and AVI playback on most distro's is as simple as clicking a unofficial package, some even popup a message saying would you like to install the restricted packages upon clicking a file. Hunting for header files is as simple as installing the devel packages. Decrappifying is just as easy, unselect the packages.

[energyman]

'modern' soso... the last time I had to install mp3 in an opensuse install it wasn't pleasant at all and a lot more than 'just klicking on an unofficial package'. It was like replacing every multimedia related app on the system - and ignoring some crap by the installer. I pulled it of. The girl who owned the computer wasn't able to.

[energyman]

That pretty much sums me up although I ended up with Arch instead of Gentoo as I prefer binaries with the possibility of building from source then the other way round.

arch is broken.

Look at your /boot. How is the kernel binary named?