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Fear and loathing in Las Linux

June 4th, 2007

Disclaimer: I’m a prick. No, really! I complain all the time.

Today, I’m going to complain about Linux, A-GAIN! Actually my gripe isn’t so much with the Linux kernel or community, I’m specifically irritated at Redhat, Fedora, CentOS and any other RPM-based distro that relies on “yum” for installing and updating packages. The yum tool itself comes from Yellow Dog Linux, a distro I’ve never personally used since it’s mainly targeted at PowerPC architectures.

First, some backstory: I’m one of those uber-geeks who likes Gentoo Linux. Gentoo has this very friendly package manager named Portage, which is a simple yet powerful rethinking of BSD-style ports. Like most everything else in Gentoo, it is extremely versatile and configurable in great detail. What I love most about Portage is its no-nonsense approach to version control. With Portage, you can specify which version of any package you want to install, and it will pull in the appropriate dependencies. You can also record custom configurations for any package through the famed USE flags, and the system will happily factor in your preferences when building related software. A seasoned Gentoo admin can finely build their system to perfectly fit his or her needs, all without ever touching any source code. Read the rest of this entry »