[ale] Favorite distros

[Joseph A. Knapka]

Mike Panetta wrote:
> 

[scissors of brevity]

> Just because you are running a distro that is package based, it does not
> mean you have to use packages for the software you want to run. 

True, but hey, if you're not going to use the package
manager, you might as well use Slackware :-)

Anyway, I understand your point. I just find that in general,
my frustration level with Slack has been less than my frustration
level with package-based distros I've tried, because I
invariably want to use some weird package that's broken
or unavailable (Slackware may be tedious at time, but it's
rarely frustrating, in the sense that something bizarre
happens and you have utterly no idea why).
And it makes me nervous not to know exactly what's going to
happen when I tell the package manager to install or remove
something - I've heard too many tales of people running
Red Hat-derived distros getting into some bizarre
pseudo-Windows land where their RPM database is screwed
and there's no way out.

And wrt building packages myself - if I'm using a package-
based system, it's because I wanted to *avoid* that
hassle!

I freely admit that few of those reasons are objectively
justifiable, which is why I'm gritting my teeth and
trying out Gentoo. :-)

-- Joe
  "I'd rather chew my leg off than maintain Java code, which
   sucks, 'cause I have a lot of Java code to maintain and
   the leg surgery is starting to get expensive." - Me

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