I've never used Gentoo myself, everything I know about it is basically what I've picked up from tclug, so please corrent me if I'm wrong. >From my understanding, when you emerge packagename (or whatever the syntax is in Gentoo) the portage system actually compiles the source code to make the binary, where Debian, RedHat, and others offer you binary packages that you can just install and confgire, thus skipping the compile time. I personally run Linux on a AMD Athlon 700. Even if I had a faster system, I don't see the security, performance, and other advantages of building the source locally as an acceptable tradeoff. I'm perfectly happy and comfortable with apt-get install package, and installing a precompiled binary on my system. It takes much less time, and to my point of view, the results are the same. Even if I'm wrong about Gentoo, choosing a Linux distro comes down to comfort level, personal preferences, and the coolness and Wow factor. Gentoo definitly has the Wow factor, but I perfer to only compile software when I have to. To me, being able to recompile all software on my system is just a "wow that sure is neat...but why would I ever need to do such a thing?" What you need to consider Patrick is where is your perferred balance of ease of use vs functionality. Distributions like RedHat/Fedora include lots of tools that are specific to Red Hat and Fedora for easing the most common task such as configurint hardware, your Xserver, printers, etc...where as Debian and Gentoo tend to lean more tward the expectation that the user knows how to do some configuration on their own, thus they tend to just provide some resonable defaults for software and not work too heavly on nice GUI based configuration tools. IMHO, there are some issues that deserve huge flame wars. Linux distributions aren't one of those isses. :) -- Andrew S. Zbikowski | http://andy.zibnet.us A password is like your underwear; Change it frequently, don't share it with others, and don't ask to borrow someone else's. _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list