[Linux-disciples] Debian v. Gentoo

[Adam Rosi-Kessel]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 04:24:55PM -0400, Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> Does anyone have any compelling arguments one way or the
> other in favor of Debian or Gentoo? I'm in a discussion with
> my boss over this, on which distro to deploy to a bunch of
> our servers. He prefers Gentoo for various reasons, none of
> which sound that compelling to me; I prefer Debian because
> of its stability and because of the centralized package
> management, but of course I need to spend some quality time
> with Gentoo to make the comparison. Has anyone out there
> spent time with both?

There was a good mini-discussion on linux-elitists about the quality of
the Debian packaging system and adherence to policy. I would start by
reading that if you haven't.

Unfortunately, I know next-to-nothing about Gentoo, other than it seems
to be unnecessarily obsessed with building everything from source on each
and every installation. But I think the selling point on Debian would
generally be the very conservative release and security policies,
combined with the high number of available packages.

Perhaps the fact that so many other distros are Debian-derivatives (e.g.,
Ubuntu, Linspire aka Lindows) is evidence that some other corporate
decisionmakers thought it was the best way to go. I'm not aware of any
corporate Gentoo-derivatives.  
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