Mandrake Expatriate Syndrome
Mandrake -> Gentoo a.k.a. "Mandrake Expatriate Syndrome"
by greenfly
Preface/Addendum (Added 2003-07-30)<br>It was brought to my attention that some people on the gentoo forums think that I'm the guy who posts some sort of anti-Gentoo threads on Slashdot. 1) No that's not me. 2) No, I don't know who that is. 3) Why in the world would someone think I'm that guy? Because I posted a page that happens to be somewhat critial of Gentoo? For what it's worth, on Slashdot I'm "greenfly" UID 40953, and I spend very little time posting on there (as you can see looking at my comments). I'm not here to troll or flame Gentoo, these are just some observations I've had about it -- specifically some theories I've had about why I've seen so many Mandrake to Gentoo converts.<br>Introduction<br>I've never quite understood the popularity of the Gentoo distribution, let's get that out and in the open to start with. I've always figured that if you want to run Linux "from scratch" you actually use the Linux From Scratch distribution; if you want automated updates, you use Debian. As someone who has used BSD systems with "real" ports, I never understood the concept of having a source-only distribution, and automating updates... it simply creates a lot of overhead if you want to have an up-to-date desktop system, and in the case of Gentoo, it causes you to run quite a bit of untested software (See, at least in the BSD system the ports tree is better tested, and you always have the option of pre-built packages, plus on a production server you aren't going to want to update much beyond patching as needed.)<br>I've debated these points and more with Gentoo users I have come across, because I simply couldn't understand why anyone with any lengthy experience with Linux or Unix, would think this was a good idea. I expected them to realize that for the most part, recompiling from source doesn't magically make all programs faster.<br>Anyway, in talking with these people I started to notice a pattern or two, and discovered that a great many of them had switched to Gentoo from Mandrake. After I thought about this for awhile, I realized that this made quite a bit of sense, and explained a lot of the questions I had. I call the mentality behind switching to Gentoo from Mandrake "Mandrake Expatriate Syndrome" (MES) and here I will attempt to lay out some of the rationale behind it.<br>"Optimized"
When you hear a Gentoo user talk about their distribution, usually the first thing you hear is them saying that building from source generally, and a Gentoo system specifically is "so much faster" than any alternative. Of course, these sorts of things are often hard to measure, and are usually just anectdotal accounts anyway. Of course, if you had to sit through X compiling, you'd probably like to think that all that time wasn't for nothing.<br>Now, this isn't the first time that "optimized packages" have been touted -- Mandrake Linux has made a big deal in the past that they had 586-optimized packages, and I remember hearing people at the time discuss, again, how it is "so much faster" that way. Of course, Mandrake likes to attract people who haven't had much experience with Linux, or even programming, so often they don't know any better than to believe that their 586 packages are substantially faster than the 386 packages everyone else is using. Also the Mandrake system typically doesn't encourage people to do a lot of compiling themselves, so they don't tend to learn this lesson from experience, either.<br>"From Scratch"
Another thing you hear from Gentoo users is that they have a "much better understanding" of their system on a "low level" because they had to do so many things "by hand" and "from scratch". Now, it is common knowledge that Gentoo has a lot of programs set up to automate the features it touts. You run a command line program, and it grabs and builds all of your packages and installs them for you. The rest of the system configuration is about as "low level" as Debian, Slackware, or any other distribution that expects you to edit config files sometimes.<br>Now, why would anyone think this is "from scratch" or a "low level learning experience"? Well, if you are coming from a Mandrake background, where you have most things done for you, including compilation, system configuration, hardware detection, etc. watching gcc output might very well be "low level" to you, as well as editing config files without a GUI. Heck, running a package manager from the command line might appear to be "from scratch" if you were used to GUI Mandrake tools.<br>"Quality Assurance"
You sometimes see Gentoo users talk about how their system helps them easily keep all their packages up to date. Of course, the downside to this is that with the Gentoo system, you have a QA department of one. You are really the first and last person in the package testing system. I know that even with Debian sid, sometimes packages get held back for a bit so they can be better...