Re: [tlug] Enterprise Linux Support

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Alain" == Alain Hoang <hoanga@example.com> writes:

    >> Gentoo will be dominant among source-based distros,

    Alain> 	Is there even any competition with Gentooi the
    Alain> source-based distros for Linux?  I don't think I've really
    Alain> heard of many other source-based distros except Gentoo.

The competition is all latent, but both Debian- and RPM-based
distributions can be turned into direct-from-source distributions with
some mostly straightforward work.  Fink (the open source distro for
Mac OS X) is a good example, based on dpkg, apt, and the overall
"fink" distro manager---and it's not even Linux- or glibc-based.

Most RPM distros are harder than Debian because they do more patching.
With the exception of the ever-erratic Branden Robinson (X11 .debs),
the bletcherous Debian Emacs policy, and some mostly Japanese-inspired
braindamage (defoma, in particular), though, Debian is pretty true to
its policy of pristine sources.  The biggest headache, tracking the
kernel, is extremely well-handled by Manoj's kpkg tools.

This used to be hard because you had to track down sources for the
pristine tarballs.  There's a lot of bookkeeping in the BSD mk files
to handle that.  But nowadays things are a lot easier because you can
normally go direct to CVS, mostly with projects at sourceforge.net or
savannah.gnu.org.


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