Chapter 13 . Running Gentoo (Hosting web) Linux 387 Given
Chapter 13 . Running Gentoo Linux 387 Given its slant toward personal use, there is a lot of interest in Gentoo forums for configuring desktops, configuring multimedia applications, and getting popular games running. There are also significant discussions on securing Gentoo because most of its security tools don t come with friendly, graphical interfaces and require a lot of manual setup. Despite the fact that you can use Gentoo to create an extraordinarily efficient, finely tuned Linux desktop or server, the distribution is not yet widely accepted in business or educational institutions. There are probably several reasons for that: . Stability To stay on the bleeding edge of the latest Linux software, Gentoo sacrifices the level of stability demanded by most businesses. People I know who use Gentoo on their personal computers tend to use Debian or Fedora Core for small Web, file, or print servers when they do consulting work, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Linux for larger enterprise installations. . Support There are no official support packages offered with Gentoo, so if something goes wrong, no official help is available (although the forums can be quite helpful). . Training If you are supporting many machines, the people who support those machines will need training. Unlike Red Hat or SUSE Linux, you can t get training from Gentoo s creators. So far, the factors just mentioned have kept Gentoo from making any significant inroads into enterprise computing. However, as a learning tool and a personal Linux distribution, Gentoo is hard to beat. What s in Gentoo No two Gentoo systems are alike, because you can select and build only the pieces of Linux you want to use. In late 2005, there were more than 8,000 software packages available for the project, and the list was growing. Unlike distributions such as Red Hat and SUSE Linux, Gentoo tends to not force its own look-and-feel on the projects it includes. Each software package ported to a Gentoo system gives the user a view of the included open source software packages as they were intended from the individual projects. For example, a KDE desktop will look like a KDE desktop as it was delivered from the KDE project itself; there are no Gentoo-ized menus and icons or graphical administration tools to alter it. Gentoo s focus on tools for managing and building source code has helped make Gentoo extraordinarily portable. Besides the common Intel x86 (PC) version of Gentoo, there are Gentoo ports for AMD64, PowerPC, UltraSparc, Alpha, and MIPS Note
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