[mythtv-users] Distro roulette... (slight OT)

[Stephen Tait]

At 09:33 11/09/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>Ack, I'd forgotten about Gentoo.  But it seems to me that you still need
>the 'emerge' packaging scheme?  I've not used it, so I'm not sure about that.
>Does it still allow the oldschool make, make install routine?

Aye, the emerge thing is just the package management system, a la every 
other distro. The "right" way of installing custom software from source is 
to roll your own ebuild and then install it via portage/emerge along with 
the rest of your software, same as downloading a source deb and making your 
own .deb, or rolling your own RPM. Of course there's nothing preventing you 
from installing straight from source via configure make make install, but 
of course as with other distros this can have a bad effect with clashing 
packages (the guy who used to roll out our linux boxes at work had a 
fantastic habit of installing a debian stable system, and then installing 
all the important software - namely samba and MySQL - straight from source, 
which made my job of maintaining these boxes a complete and utter nightmare).

Obviously, if you're more comfortable with the make make install way of 
doing things, something like Slackware would probably be a better option, 
as I imagine it'll give you even more control than "Slackware for dummies" 
;) However, I'm very satisfied with Gentoo at the moment, and don't have a 
good reason to switch yet :)