Linux Distributions

Well, I have a new hard drive on order, so I now should soon have the space available for a Linux install. At this point, two items remain: I need to decide on a distro, and I need to get the courage to install it <g>.

Here’s a message that I sent to netscape.public.mozilla.general:

I’m currently a Win2k user, and I download and install a new nightly trunk build [of Mozilla] at least once every day.

And, I’ve been giving some thought to switching to Linux. The two distros with a ports-like system (Debian and Gentoo) appeal to me most, as they appear to make program installation (especially dependencies) much easier.

However, do either of those distros offer a means of downloading the current Mozilla nightly through their respective “ports systems”? Or, would I have to just download a build and install it manually? And, if it is the case that I would have to download one of the files from ftp.mozilla.org anyway, would I be better off just going with another distro instead?

So, yes, I’m basing my distro-choice on which offers the easiest installation of the Mozilla nightlies — am I a fan, or what? ;)

So far, I’ve received two responses:

I’ve been using mozilla with debian. Whilst there are .debs available, I prefer to use nightlies and as such grab them manually off of ftp.mozilla.org and since I like giving talkback reports, I greb the sea archive. By default mozilla installs in /usr/local/mozilla and nowhere else (ie it wont put anything other then where you tell it, with /usr/local/mozilla being the default destination).

I've never had any hassles and my system remains nice and tidy so don’t let the manual install turn you off using Debian as, in the end, it's not really a hassle. You'll always grab from the same location, untar into the same location (or install if you go for the sea) and run from the same location.

Hmmm… hope that's not as confusing as it looks. :)

--
Hogarth

And, this one:

Debian has the “mozilla-snapshot” package which is generally only a couple of days behind the current build. I just keep my own tree and rebuild mozilla every morning via a cron job. It is faster for me than downloading a new nightly would be and it works pretty well.

--
Travis Crump

Well, that’s some food for thought. I don’t understand prcisely what they’re saying ;), but it does make some sense.

I’ve also run across this handy table comparing the software versions that come with the major Linux distributions. Looking over it, Gentoo appears to have very current versions, and Debian isn’t as far behind as I thought it might be ;). (In due fairness, the table may only be comparing debian-stable, for all I know)

So, I’m looking for additonal reviews for both Debian and Gentoo. I found this review on Gentoo 1.2 but some parts distrub me, such as this:

Emerge this, emerge that, and do a bunch of stuff by hand that you're used to being able to gloss over with handy dandy tools; for example, Gentoo makes us configure X by hand.

Err, what?? As a user used to clicky-this and clicky-that, I don’t want to be configuring anything by hand, if I can help it.

Then, there’s this Gentoo review, of which one of its first sentences is “I note first off that this distribution is not for the faint of heart &hellip”. Err, faint of heart? That would be me :-/.