Gentoo Portage Package Management System

[jeffd]

Here's an interesting article in LinuxJournal.com on some advantages to using Gentoo, including a discussion of how the emerge system works.

I liked that the author didn't consider the speed issue too important:

:: Quote ::

So, from a speed perspective, it really doesn't matter whether you use a build-it-from-source distribution or a binary-package distribution. If improved speed is not a reason to use Gentoo, why would you want this built-from-source thing?

But rather focused on features like portage package management system, which does really sound very impressive, more so even maybe than the debian style apt-get, which is also an excellent package management system. Not that I'm going to move to Gentoo any time soon, but their technology is impressive, if complex and hard to learn.