[ale] Gentoo vs. RedHat

[Geoffrey]

Mike Millson wrote:
> I'm considering giving Gentoo a try for a box that will act as a router
> and run dhcp, squid, and portsentry. But I'm wondering, how fast are bug
> fixes available compared to when RedHat fixes are available via up2date.
> Also, it sounds like whenever Gentoo installs an update, it has to
> compile in the background. Is the Gentoo update process so resource
> intensive that it could bog down a production box until the update is
> finished? Or is it no worse than downloading files using up2date?
> Anything I should be wary of using Gentoo on a production system router?

If you're building a box that is going to have such finite 
responsibilities, you really want to build just what you need into it. 
The larger distros (RH, SuSE, Debian) are probably not good choices for 
such efforts.  Gentoo, on the other hand will require full development 
env., I suspect, and that's not necessary for this solution either. 
Three choices I'd look into: roll your own, slackware, then gentoo.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey                     Registered Linux User #108567
Building secure systems inspite of Microsoft