the distributrions are all differentiated by their packaging systems, and then by choices t of what-goes-where, which affects interoperatbility, then by choice of library versions, which also affects interoperability, then by sysadmin interface. Gentoo uses a modified version of the BSD ports packaging system. Debian has "apt." Red Hat has "rpm" and the rpm wrapper "yum." All these package formats are mature.
On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 4:47 PM, Nathan Cerny ncerny@gmail.com wrote:
Likewise, there is absolutely no room in the corporate environment for Gentoo...it takes too much time to get a stable system running, and the corporate environment doesn't need what it offers.
The things a corporate environment could use that gentoo offers are:
centralization of configuration management (although this is also offered by others) more secure because not using widely distributed binaries; possible to enforce that all systems corp-wide are compiled using [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack-smashing_protection StackGuard or similar]
If you want full control, though, "Linux From Scratch" recipes may be better. Gentoo offers a LFS-like situation where a lot of the groundwork is already done, and everything can get branded OurCorp instead of Fedora.