[OT?] Re: Gentoo users?

On 7 Apr 2004 at 15:15, Devraj Mukherjee wrote:

> Just interested to know if there are any Gentoo users using Postfix? I
> am currently a Red Hat user and am thinking of switching distrios and
> have been quite seriously considering Gentoo for use on the server.

I've never really used Red Hat, but I could grow quite fond of Gentoo. I've got
it on one of my "play" systems here.

To update your Postfix installation, you type two words. 'emerge postfix'.
That's it. (Well, maybe four. You may have to 'emerge sync' to find out about
the newer version first.) No downloading stuff in advance; emerge does it all
for you, and compiles it to whatever specs you specify (optimizations, other
features you might want added in like database support or LDAP or whatever).

Gentoo's Portage system (their package manager on steroids) is smart enough to
not overwrite your existing config files, and if there are any major changes
that may need to be made, they even thoughtfully point them out to you (in
addition to storing the new config files in a convenient place). It's a bit of
effort to get used to it, just like any new system. (I grew up on Slackware and
having anything automated just boggles my mind. :)

The downside is that they seem a bit too eager to push out new versions of
stuff. They usually have several stable versions, a few betas, and a couple of
"OMG never use this" all at the same time. (emerge --pretend is your friend
here, to see what it'll try to upgrade, in case you want to avoid the weird
unstable versions.)

I haven't yet done any benchmarks to see whether the "compile everything on-
site" feature really offers improved performance, though.

David Smith
MVN.net