The latest version of Gentoo Linux has just been released. Here are some of the highlights:

• an updated installer
• improved hardware support
• a complete rework of profiles
• a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD
• tons of updated ebuilds

I’m especially excited about the Xfce change; I love minimalist interfaces. So I think this going to be my main distribution here at home. I want to use Ubuntu more, but I just keep coming back to Gentoo. I think this speaks to the concept of,

Assuming you’re choosing from one of the leading options, the “best” Linux distribution is the one you’re most comfortable with.

And for me this is definitely Gentoo.

Screw the distro-religous wars: Gentoo rocks, Ubuntu rocks, Debian rocks, Fedora rocks, SuSe rocks. All these top distros rock because Linux rocks. Linux is the loyal companion that will be there if/when OS X deteriorates due to management or philosophy changes at Apple.

Support your favorite distro whenever you can; it’s good for Linux and it’s good for technology innovation in general.:

Itching to try out a new Linux distro? If you’re becoming disillusioned with Ubuntu or just feel like switching things up, head over and check out Sabayon Linux.

It’s a Gentoo-based system, which intruiges me greatly. This site runs Gentoo and it’s been my favorite distro since I started using it back in 2002. The news that there’s now a “desktop flavor” is interesting indeed.

Check it out and let me know what you guys think. I’ll have it in a Fusion Virtual Machine here shortly as well.

(thanks to Tim for the link)

[  Sabayon Linux ]

My fiancé just told me about a story she found on CNN about how male Gentoo penguins court their partners by bringing them the smoothest rocks they can find. Evidently the smooth ones are great for making nests with, and are sought after by the females.

The story caught her attention because she’s keenly aware of what distro I run. She then wanted to know when I would be bringing her some smooth pebbles. Geek humor. Geek affection. That’s why she’s my fiancé.

I just finished moving my email infrastructure to the new server (Gentoo + Deathgod Box of Doom). I had to wrangle quite a bit with SMTP-AUTH this time, and found very little help out there that didn’t have to do with using MySQL for the authentication piece. For me (and probably many others), that’s just overkill.

So after figuring out how to do it I decided to do a writeup on it. I would very much like to save others from having to go through the same thing I did. Plus, when I inevitably forget a step someday I’ll have this to refer to:

How To Get Postfix To Use SMTP-AUTH WITHOUT Using MySQL

So I’m getting a little freaked out lately. I keep hearing that both the Gentoo and Debian projects are in trouble.

I haven’t researched how much truth there is to these claims, but I’m getting bothered that I keep hearing the same thing over and over. What would I do if these projects were to die off or become unstable? I suppose I’d just huddle up into a ball.

I really don’t know what my alternative would be. I’m sure something would rise up and fill the gap, but I can’t see anything having the strength of community that the Gentoo and Debian projects have. To me, the death of these two projects would be the death of Linux.

I’m sure I’d snap out of it eventually and adopt whatever technical distro rose from the ashes (probably some sort of fork), but I can’t help but think that I’d be put off of Linux for quite a while. I really hope these rumors are greatly exaggerated; I love OS X, but I can’t see doing my day to day technical work without Linux.

And by that I mean not Redhat or SuSE. I’m sure those are great distros to some people, but I have no tolerance for versioned Linux. Requiring a hard upgrade to get new packages just isn’t morally sound, in my opinion.

I’ve been playing with Linux since 1999 and using it steadily in one capacity or another since 2001. I’ve tinkered with just about every major distribution out there and have come to some overall conclusions that I thought I’d share.

Gentoo

Gentoo has been my distribution of choice since 2002. My buddy Ken and I giddily installed it one night; we were admittedly taken with the whole source-based craze and couldn’t wait to get our hands on it. Another friend of mine was pushing for our circle to go the route of Sorcerer Linux — a competing, soon-to-be-dead source-based distro.

Anyway, Gentoo quickly became my distro. I’ve run it as a file server, a web server, a game server, and yes — I even ran it on the desktop for like a month (didn’t work out…). At one point I must have had over five Gentoo boxes running at once in various places. Anytime I installed Linux I insisted on it, and when people asked me about it I gave the standard fanboy responses, e.g. faster because it’s compiled for your system, etc.

But as time went on I started learning more and more about Linux. As I did I started realizing that most of the things that people said were über-cool about Gentoo were rather unimportant to me, and the little things started to matter more and more. I liked how they handled runlevel control, for example. I liked the fact that no services listened externally by default, unlike Debian, Redhat, SuSE, etc.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that networking seems more smooth and dependable on Gentoo. I can’t count the times I’ve tried to change IPs, change NICs, switch from DHCP to static, etc. with another distro and had it become a hassle. With Gentoo you get spoiled because most everything just works the way you expect it to.

Over time it became a simple matter of familiarity. I had used Gentoo for so long that it just felt right. And to this day it’s still my comfort distro. Hell, I even have it as my license plate. :)

The biggest advantage Gentoo has over all other distributions is its documentation. It’s insanely good–to the point of just making other offerings look silly. Many times I’ve been looking for how to do things in Debian or Redhat and found link after link on how to do the exact same thing in Gentoo instead. The forums are great too; between the docs and the forums I’ve almost never come across an issue in Gentoo that I couldn’t solve.

Debian

While Gentoo’s been my true love since I got into Linux heavily, I’ve always had tremendous respect for Debian. I have a number of friends who’ve always been Debian fanboys proponents, and we’ve had plenty of Gentoo vs. Debian debates over the years.

The thing I love about the Debian project is that it’s so professional and stable. It’s “business-class”, so to speak. It’s comforting to know that a ton of Linux administrators all over the world depend on it daily and demand excellence from it. Gentoo, as cool as it is, has “screwed me” on a number of occasions while running it in important roles.

Granted, this wasn’t Gentoo’s fault really; it was my fault for assuming things would “just work” when running emerge -u world using the "~x86" option. Shame on me for not being more careful, but still–having a distro that you can do confidently do a full update on is golden. That’s what Debian offers.

It’s The Package Manager, Stupid

These days, now that I’m a professional first and hobbyist second, I have a very practical approach to my Linux distribution choice.

I’ve found that distributions come down to one thing for me — the package manager.

In this space there’s simply nothing better than apt. Don’t get me wrong, Portage is great…but it’s no apt. What makes apt so great? First of all, it installs binaries. Watching stuff compile is cool, to be sure, but when time is of the essence there’s no substitute for now.

Plus, apt doesn’t break stuff. It’s rock-solid. I mean, I’m sure it gets borked every once in a while just like anything else, but I’ve never had it break. Trust in a package manager is of the utmost importance when you run Linux on a server that’s important to you, i.e. anything more than a box at home running your own personal stuff that nobody else expects to be up.

Once you start hosting something that people depend on, package management (and the stability of the distro’s packages in general) becomes crucial.

My Current Distribution Breakdown

• Gentoo Personal Servers // any Linux file, web, or other type of server. Primary Security Distribution // my main Linux distro for basic security tools such as snort, nmap, nessus, hping, tcpdump, etc.
• Debian Primary Web Server // the distro dmiessler.com is hosted on. Confidence in the stability of updates is critical, hence Debian.
• Ubuntu Work Desktop // serves as host OS for VMWare, upon which I run all my OSs required for work. I put nothing in my host OS. Recommended Linux Desktop // I point anyone interested in trying Linux to Ubuntu.
• Backtrack Standalone Security Distro // for a security-only distro this is currently my favorite.

This system works for me. In my opinion it uses each distribution’s strengths to the most advantage. This does mean I’m basically moving from Gentoo to Debian (and from emerge to apt-get) as my primary Linux OS. I’m still feeling some guilt pain over this, but I can’t help it that I find apt so attractive.

I’ll still continue to give to the Gentoo project as I always have, and it’ll still remain the distro that I have the most feelings for. Oh, and if Portage ever develops the speed (binaries) of apt along with the stability and polish of the Ubuntu desktop (as a base for VMWare), I’ll be right back where I belong.:

Indeed, the impossible has happened. I convinced a buddy to give FC5 a try the other day and he’s absolutely loving it (well, actually I convinced him a couple days ago to reconsider his view that Redhat sucked). Since my current Gentoo install is a bit stale (I havent’t done anything cool with it lately), I figure I’ll give FC5 a go myself tomorrow.

Not only is it to try something different, but it’s also just a general good idea to be familiar with Redhat* given its dominance in the corporate Linux space. So anyway, for a number of reasons I’m going to give it a go. We’ll keep you updated on how it turns out.

So being in a new state and all I had to get a new license plate for my car. When making my selection of which “skin” to use (wildlife, colleges, etc), I remembered that I could go the personalized route too if I wanted to.

So, as of tonight, I now have my very own “GENTOO” license plate. I’ve been highly enthused about getting it, but to be honest it feels kind of lame now that I have it. I’ve never liked the whole “display” thing too much — bumper stickers, flags, etc. But here I am not only sporting a glider on my car, but now a Gentoo license plate.

I guess my only saving grace is that nobody knows what they mean. That makes it better, I think, but not much. The question I keep asking myself is, “What would I think if I saw a Gentoo plate on someone else’s car?” The answer is that I would simultaneously think it was two things — cool and lame.

I’d probably go up to the guy and share some Gentoo stories, but I am inclined to think less of people who fly flags for their causes. It’s so…”look at me”.

So what the hell was I thinking in the DMV when I got a damn Gentoo license plate? Oh, I remember, I didn’t want to get one randomly assigned to me. I wanted to define myself what went on it. I tossed around a few ideas and settled on Gentoo. Bah.

Oh well, most people won’t think it’s custom anyway. I went with the default theme and it’s not a common word by any stretch of the imagination. Most everyone seeing it will assume it *was* assigned to me.

So what are your opinions? Is it ok to support a distro like this since it’s obscure enough to not stand out, or is it lame to do anything that’ll be recognized? That’s my problem — I’ve always liked to blend in. I’ve never liked to stand out, and that’s what this runs the risk of doing (at least with a few people).

Thoughts?