Why Gentoo is Still Better than Ubuntu

Submitted by David Grant on Mon, 2007-02-05 17:56

So I am on a Kubuntu edgy laptop at work and I am trying to get WPA wireless networking working before the upcoming demo that we are putting on. Since I have no idea what kind of networking is set up at both demo locations I am making sure all options work. WPA is the last one to take care of.

I finally found a front-end for wpa_supplicant that actually works. It's called kwlan and it is currently at version 0.5.8. Ubuntu edgy only has version 0.4.7. I really want 0.5.8 because 0.4.7 has some glaring bugs. Feisty actually has 0.5.8. There is no way I am upgrading this entire box to feisty. Because of ubuntu's binary nature, in order to get kwlan-0.5.8 installed I might actually have to bump a lot of packages to feisty just to get it working. Even if I just want kwlan-0.5.8, how to I get it? I'll have to add some sources to /etc/apt/sources.list and possibly jump through a few more hoops to be able to install one package from feisty without apt-get upgrade wanting to upgrade everything to feisty. If kwlan-0.5.8 wasn't available in feisty, my only option would be to make my own deb package. Good luck with that (I maintained a debian package once, called camserv a long time go. Way harder than ebuilds.)

In gentoo it is as simple as coping the ebuild to my /usr/local/portage folder, renaming it to kwlan-0.5.8.ebuild, creating the digest and then emerging the 0.5.8 version. Assuming the upstream developer did not make massive changes to the build process, simply renaming the ebuild name from kwlan-0.4.7.ebuild to kwlan-0.5.8.ebuild should work. Like a lot of things, it's a hell of a lot easier in Gentoo.

Sure that's just one reason why Gentoo is better than Ubuntu. There are many others. Just look at Ubuntu Guide. A whole friggin' guide to install a lot of things that can be easily installed in Gentoo (mplayer, acrobat, java, flash, etc...). Not to mention that eix rocks compared to anything apt has, and paludis is awesome. Every time I think Ubuntu is better than gentoo, I end up taking that back soon after.

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Comments

numerodix (not verified)

Tue, 2007-02-06 00:59

I totally agree, I just cannot do without the flexibility of gentoo. Ubuntu is wonderful in a great many ways, but when it comes to installing "non-standard" software and "experimental" versions, binary distros are a big pain.

David Grant

Tue, 2007-02-06 02:48

It's so versatile. I have a MythTV box that is totally lagging behind as far as some updates go. I did not want to update MySQL from 4.x to 5.x, nor did I want to upgrade gcc from 3.x to 4.x and recompile everything. Those packages are stuck far behind, along with glibc, ivtv, and a few others. But I can still update other packages like amarok and many others all I want. I love having a custom system that is still managed 100% by a package manager.

Brendan (not verified)

Thu, 2008-08-07 20:18

Anytime I've run the bunt, i always go back to the gent.

To say the bunt is better than the gent - is simply ridiculous.

Gentoo for life. Ubuntu still has way too many shortcomings - the time skews on thousands of machines, you can't watch a movie with totem when u had a flash movie playing on youtube...

When the bunt matures, it may be a contender, but it's still in it's infancy.

David Grant

Thu, 2008-08-07 21:51

Well I know use Ubuntu exclusively on my desktop and laptop. I only use Gentoo on a MythTV box.

I don't have any problems with audio in multiple applications anymore, probably because they use PulseAudio now. Anyways, I had problems like these in Gentoo as well. The nice thing about Ubuntu is that I have to do almost no configuration. Everything just works. Ubuntu has a huge user base and amazing documentation online. Gentoo's documentation is also amazing but the overhead is just too high, and the fact that packages must be compiled can be a disadvantage when you don't need to flexibility of being able to have a mixture of package releases on your machine.

vlad (not verified)

Sat, 2009-06-27 11:57

Ubuntu is the way, sorry.

I wanted to try Gentoo, opened the site...what? Install manual? step-by-step commands to compile this and that?? you must be kidin... wake up! it is 2009, not 1996.

Jack (not verified)

Thu, 2010-04-08 03:30

Gentoo is still the easiest to customize and get stuff working.
Sure the first install is a pain but after that it just works Ubuntu is the opposite install is easy but the pain comes in the long run.

Ubuntu is very easy for noobs but when working with it everyday in the end Gentoo wins and costs less time and works faster, more stable and flexible.

Only on a very slow system (lower than a p3 1GHz) I would install something else like DSL, Puppy or knoppix but never ubuntu

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 2010-03-19 09:49

Wake up! its 2010, not 2009 or 2007.
- could you just remove those, atleast? put some new staffs kindly.

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 2010-04-30 02:54

I visited the http://www.gentoo.org/ and initially felt like I am on some of the spam sites or have misspelled the name. I believe in some embedded platform you want the power of tweaking not only packages but the kernel itself. Quite surprise to see why people still want to spend 2-3 days in getting a OS installed considering downloading of source and builds.

I am using Ubuntu 9.04 and it works awesome. Yeah once in a while I compiled device drivers or so but now days very rare. My productivity is fully available for my work and not wasted on finding what are the build dependencies of open office.

Harry

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