Gentoo vs Ubuntu

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Gentoo is for experts and people who like to recompile the wheel and all its dependencies. However, it is faster. If you're not a novice with Linux I would recommend Gentoo. (although it compiles everything from scratch, which can be annoying).

Ubuntu is a good distro in my opinion. I used it for a while then removed it to explore some other distros. None of them were as good, and I'm reinstalling Ubuntu this weekend. Ubuntu (and any other distro you want, it's just more complex to set up on some) can run Apache/MySQL. It shouldn't be that hard, but I've never done it.

mmiikkee12

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Both are great. I wouldn't recommend Gentoo for new users, but Ubuntu works great for advanced users, as well. Both are going to do MySQL and Apache just fine, though.

If you can't get Gentoo install, I'd pick Ubuntu by process of elimination. After you've cut your teeth some with Ubuntu, maybe you'll be tempted to give Gentoo a try yet again.

alc6379

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I have to second Ubuntu.
First ever distro for me that installed without months of having to constantly tweak things only to end up with a system that still worked only partially.

Only downside is that it takes up a lot of diskspace, the 4GB disk in my laptop is almost full of it.
But then, the same is true for most if not all other distros (and often to greater extents)...

jwenting

duckman

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Somewhere I've red that Debian is the rock upon which Ubuntu is built... What does this mean? What are the relationships between Ubuntu and Debian?

Mareq

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It means that the designers of Ubuntu started by building off of (modifying and adding to) the Debian releases.

chrisbliss18

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So it means, that now, there are "Debian-Debian" and "Debian-Ubuntu" distros? Why are they building something diffrent on Debian? Isn't the "Debian-Debian" enough or is it worse in some way?

Mareq

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I can't think of a single distro that has not been built starting with a code base from some other distro. A very popular Linux distro is Slackware, and there are dozens of distros that are based off of this code. The reason for this is simple: why start from scratch when you can start from a tested and proven code base that has most of the features that you like? Ubuntu isn't Debian, only Debian is Debian, but Ubuntu started with a base of Debian code because the creators of Ubuntu liked the core concepts of Debian and wanted to implement those in their distro.

A good analogy for this is Firefox. Firefox wasn't written from scratch; rather, it was started from the code base of Mozilla. Firefox isn't the only software that is based off of Mozilla code; Netscape, Camino, Flock, and other browsers have all been built from a base of Mozilla.

You may think all this sounds odd, but it happens all the time in open-source software development.

chrisbliss18

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Thanks man, couple of new information for me...

So Ubuntu is only based on Debian and it means, that Ubuntu uses some Debians' basic code like kernel fragments. It doesn't mean, that Ubuntu uses also Debian packages and its other parts. Do I understand right?

Mareq

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Actually, the package format that Ubuntu uses is the same as Debian. The Ubuntu team does develop some of their own packages however. You can find more information about the relationship between Debian and Ubuntu here .

The relationship between a distro and that distro's code base are always different. To find out the similarities and differences between different distros, go to that distros website and look around.

chrisbliss18

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yeah, debian is very stable and reliable but not very cutting edge. It isnt very newbie friendly either as theres no GUI tools, graphical installer or LiveCD mode. Ubuntu is the opposite. Its a cutting edge debian.

There the same distro at the core in the they both use .deb/apt package management.
(generally) ubuntu is based off of the development version of debian (sid)

Generally:

debian = servers
ubuntu = desktop

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yeah, debian is very stable and reliable but not very cutting edge. It isnt very newbie friendly either as theres no GUI tools, graphical installer

News to me... ;) http://goodbye-microsoft.com/

There the same distro at the core in the they both use .deb/apt package management. (generally) ubuntu is based off of the development version of debian (sid) Generally: debian = servers ubuntu = desktop

I had literally no problems setting up Debian on my MacBook, although there were many drivers that needed installation. My biggest gripe against Debian is its hardware detection as compared to Ubuntu, but once that's taken care of, it's actually quite easy to use. Of course, you know this since you've used Debian so much, but this is my opinion.

John A

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i personally prefer debian to ubuntu as i like to do a netinstall and build a stripped down, custom system but i was generalising

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Gentoo is hard to configure. for hard core linux users gentoo is better, but for newbies, ubuntu is a good starting place.

TheNNS

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i installed ubuntu on my main home pc today - works great apart from small gfx card driver issue

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Personally I think both of these distros kick ass. But it depends on what you want to use your system for as to which I would use. I personally use Gentoo as my server, and I use Ubuntu as my desktop. Ubuntu has excellent hardware detection (for goodness sake I plug in my Sansa and it opens Rhythmbox for easy drag and drop), but Gentoo has it's use flag functionality that enables certain functions to be compiled into the programs at compilation instead of having everything under the sun as in Ubuntu or pretty much any other binary based distro. Basically the main differences between Gentoo and Ubuntu is whether you would like to have a source based package manager to be able to have that functionality, or you want a binary package manager to have all program functionality enabled and fast installs at the trade of having too much bloatware and options that you will probably never use. Honestly I would pick Ubuntu for every Linux user that isn't an extreme expert because it's easy for installation, fast at installation, and overall very easy to maintain in comparing to Gentoo. Gentoo is an excellent distro, but to install it takes several hours (possibly days depending on what all you want installed) and sometimes it can uninstall packages when doing an upgrade that is dependent on another package (if you don't know how to handle this, it can be VERY frustrating - glibc did this to me and I couldn't open Amarok for 3 weeks and all I had to do was uninstall the old glibc). I have been using Ubuntu for about a week now and already I am exactly where it took me 6 months to be in Gentoo.

richcoosa19

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I wouldn ever use gentoo for a server after that incident a few years ago (the one where apache got so broken that you needed to reinstall the system)

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I wouldn ever use gentoo for a server after that incident a few years ago (the one where apache got so broken that you needed to reinstall the system)

Hmm, maybe I should reconsider using Gentoo as my production webserver then.... I have had that problem too, but I thought I had just done something wrong in the config files....apparently not, since you have had the same problem.

richcoosa19

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I assume this is related to the problem you were experiencing.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/apache-upgrading.xml

I wouldn't be so quick to throw it away. As far as I can tell, this issue has been resolved. And Gentoo is very stable; I've set up a Gentoo server and it's worked almost perfectly (granted, it's not running 24/7, but still that's saying something).

Ubuntu's also a decent server, especially for those who don't want a lot of configuration to get the server up-and-running. I have a friend who runs an Ubuntu webserver which has been extremely stable, however, there have been some issues previously with getting the virtual host directives set up correctly. I still don't have a clue what went wrong.

John A

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My redhat system has been running nonstop on my server since 2001. Has been rebooted only 24 times in 6 years (for updates)