Daniel Lemire's blog

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Comparing Linux distros: gentoo vs. Mandrake

6 thoughts on “Comparing Linux distros: gentoo vs. Mandrake”

  1. didier says:

    I use mandrake in all my machines

    Here’s the bug tracking website for mandrake:
    mandrake bugzilla: http://qa.mandriva.com/

    I found that once you have the 3 repositories at your disposition, most (not all) packages you need should be a urpmi command away. Not perfect, but good enough.

    I agree that gentoo makes it easier to stay up to date. But you can upgrade mandrake also. I usually do “urpmi –auto-select” and the system upgrades itself.

    How does uromi compare to portage? Are they basically the same or do you like portage better?

  2. Thanks for the link to Mandrake’s bug tracker. I couldn’t find a link to it anywhere on their web site.

    Which 3 repositories? There are definitively way more packages in gentoo. I didn’t count them, but I’m sure the number is much larger. I had to install all sorts of things from tar balls at the office.

    When you say “the system upgrades itself”, you mean that Mandrake 9.0 becomes Mandrake 10.2, or merely that whatever updates for whatever version of the distro you have are applied?

  3. Thanks Trent. I wonder though if rpm under gentoo would work well with portage. It is nice to know it exists!

  4. Trent Arms says:

    “There is a tool called “epm” which allows you to mimick the “rpm” command under gentoo, but it is not the good old rpm.”

    Did you try “emerge -av rpm” ?

  5. Trent Arms says:

    Works great. Actually, installing Portage in other distros is pretty popular…

  6. andrew says:

    seems like a common problem on the gentoo forums but even searching through the old posts at the gentoo forum i haven’t been able to find a solution to this problem:

    Code:

    eth0 does not exist

    now i’m using the integrated Marvell Yukon Gigabit nic integrated into my asus k8vsedx and there are 2 options when compiling the kernel under networking support -> ethernet (1000mb). one is deprecated and one is experimental. i’ve tried marking both with a “*” and neither of them have worked…

    i’m using the instructions for recompiling and installing the kernel found here. i’m manually confguring so section 7.c is what im using .

    any advice?

    edit: i’ve also downloaded a bz2 file from syskonnect.com for the nic but i don’t know exactly where to extract it. i know i’d have to modularize it in menuconfig and probably add it to the /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6.12-gentoo-r4 file right?