[kwlug-disc] What's the best desktop distribution?

[Chris Frey]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2010 at 01:04:32PM -0500, Paul Nijjar wrote:
> At some point a Gentoo advocate will speak up and tell me why the
> underlying problem lies in binary package formats. I can believe it,
> but I am not sure that Gentoo is the right answer either. 

I'm not current with the latest Gentoo innovations, but the only
"advantage" that I've seen in Gentoo is that when you install a package
you generally get everything: headers, libraries, utilities, etc.
If you want to turn something off, you have to state it explicitly.

While in the Debian binary package world, they split the headers,
libraries, documentation, utilities, etc. into binary packages of
their own that have a web of dependencies.  If you *want* something,
you have to state it explicitly.

I don't think either really solves the problem you're asking for.
Except that it is slightly more natural in Gentoo to create an ebuild
that downloads from CVS automatically and installs.  But I'm sure that's
possible in Debian too, with some creativity.

- Chris