Gentoo vs Debian (written in 2004)

Gentoo vs Debian

Lately Gentoo has emerged as one of the most popular distro's around, and some people seem to keep suggesting it to others, even if it's totally unsuited in some particular cases. I always like to warn people before running good ol' fdisk and replacing a working system with Gentoo. I run both Debian and Gentoo at home (while i am pretty fond of Red Hat too)

I think Debian is better suited for server installations and production environments while Gentoo is better suited for home desktop systems or learning purposes. Gentoo needs a lot more care than Debian and if you want a system that works right after install, or you don't want to spend time figuring out your system or fixing it, steer away from Gentoo.

Both Debian en Gentoo are great distro's with their own merits, and both have an excellent package management system, but while Debian is a rock solid workhorse you'll never have to look back at, Gentoo gives you the power and control you need to try out all kinds of things. But you wouldn't experiment on a production system, would you?

Gentoo's portage downloads the sources off a mirror and compiles them for your system, automatically solving dependencies. Debian on the other hand has apt, which also solves dependencies for you, but uses binaries instead of sources. Gentoo's portage allow for gcc optimization flags and "use flags", both have an influence on your system and this flexibility makes Gentoo harder to troubleshoot. These kinds of settings in Gentoo allow you to optimize your system to the extreme, but if you're not carefull you could also break it seriously.

If you run into a problem with a debian package you can almost certainly find the answer on the net. The solution will talk about the same versions of packages you are using etc. But on Gentoo if you have a problem it depends on what use flags you are using, which version of gcc and such. So while in Gentoo is a lot more interesting to solve problems in Debian it's usually done quicker. OTOH, on Debian it's a lot more hassle to try out new gcc's or compile your glibc with NTPL support for example (or install the latest KDE for that matter).

Both in Debian and Gentoo you "could" schedule a cron job to update all packages on your system, but with apt you really don't have to care about those updates. Each and every upgrade i had to do so far worked flawlessly and no configuration has ever changed because of an upgrade. On Gentoo, if you let upgrades run overnight and never look back at it you're in for some headaches.

Configuration files need to be merged manually, even if you just rebuilt the same version portage installs a new config file in another location and keeps asking you to merge the two versions.

Downloaded sources are left in a temporary directory after the package has been installed, filling up your disk pretty quick, so you'll either have to schedule an additional command to clean up that directory or do it manually.

While Gentoo offers more packages than Debian, their packages are also more up to date and most of the time you can choose between multiple versions of a package. This also means that Debian's packages are a lot better tested and reliable than Gentoo's, especially in combination with other packages (if you don't install deb's from all over the net).

It also shows that Debian is a lot older and mature than Gentoo. APT is more or less finished, but every so often there is an upgrade to portage. Portage is even going through a rewrite at the moment. Gentoo is evolving very fast but I think that on servers a mature and stable distribution is a better option.

So what's my point then. Well while Debian or any other distro might be a better choice in a production environment, Gentoo still is a lot more fun and excitement on a box where you want to tinker and get to know your system and such. In Gentoo you can emerge beta's, cvs versions, recompile your packages with or without support for a feature and more of those goodies. In Gentoo you get a lot more power and control, but you also get the power to mess up your entire system. In Gentoo you configure a lot more manually than in Debian and it generally takes more commitment than Debian.

Gentoo is the greatest distro to learn about linux, to play with linux, to tinker with computers, ... But if your installation serves another purpose, go with another distribution.

By Tom V.