[ Thanks to Gentu for this link.
]
“I was told some time ago of a new distribution. One unlike
RedHat with its redhat package management (rpm) system. One unlike
Debian with apt-get. One that takes some time to build, but is
worth it. Well, as the old adage goes, hard work pays off in the
end, so I decided to take Gentoo Linux for a spin and see what it
was like. I will describe the install, breifly, which can take
quite some time, the performance of the running system, and then
contrast that slightly with ports of Gentoo.“I note first off that this distribution is not for the faint of
heart, but does have some advantages (which in some cases are
disadvantages) right from the get-go. The install image is small.
The release I downloaded (1.0) was a scant 16MB. Now that is a
small image. Those of you tired of grabbing RedHats 2 CDs or SuSes
7 might be glad to hear that, but wait. The install CD is just
that, like an install floppy, it has enough to “get you going”.
Then the installer will download the packages it needs for your
system to build itself, then after that (and a reboot) if you want
any other packages you can download them also. Of course, I am
leaving some things out for now, but that is the basic concept. Now
onto the things I left out…”