OT - Which Linux?

[JPF]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Michiel Helvensteijn" <m.helvensteijn.remove at gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:h6hoeh$2enp$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Paul D. Anderson wrote:
>>
>>> I'm going to add Linux to my PC to get a dual-boot configuration. (I'm
>>> tired of sloooow start ups and want to tap into the great tools
>>> available.) The tutorial I'm looking at suggests Ubuntu. Is there a
>>> significant difference in Linux implementations? Is Ubuntu one of the
>>> better ones? Does it make a difference for running D2?
>> It depends on what you want and how much experience you have. Ubuntu is
>> certainly a good one to start with. Or one of its flavors. E.g. if you 
>> like
>> KDE, go for Kubuntu.
>>
>> I myself have never looked back since I started using Gentoo. A bit more
>> advanced. But a great way to learn the internals of Linux. It has a lot of
>> online documentation and a helpful community. It also makes my system
>> blazing fast, since every package is compiled from source.
>>
>> There's really no difference between distro's when it comes to running,
>> well, most any linux application.
>>
> 
> One other difference I've noticed that may or may not matter is package 
> system. Ubuntu, like all other Debian-derived ones, use .deb packages (but 
> usually done indirectly through apt-get, which I've been very happy with). 
> Redhat (and I think Mandrake as well) uses .rpm. And I think some of them 
> have no package system and you have to do everything from source (which can 
> be kind of a pain.
Note that most systems using sources still help you in compiling those.
Compiling a package on Gentoo might be done with just one command, where
compiling completely from source could be much more complicated.
Compiling from source without package management help also makes
software removal much harder (you usually have to keep the source around
then).
> Michiel said it makes the system fast, but although I've 
> never used Gentoo, I've find that most linux apps take absolutely forever to 
> actually compile in the first place, so there may be that tradeoff).

Yes, especially big packages(KDE, Gnome, even scribus on slower systems)
can take some hours to compile.
> There also seem to be differences in how low-level system details are 
> configured, like automatic service starting/stopping and such.

That's different in almost every Linux distribution. There are often
GUIs which abstract such things, though.