Gentoo.

[Michael Brailsford]

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> on a PIII 733 with 512mb ram.  I don't want to spend 10 days
> installing...but isn't one of the selling points of gentoo that very
> building process?  The optimizations and everything?

10 days is an exageration.  I installed gentoo on a 300MHz dinosaur in
about 4 days.  That did not include KDE or Gnome (which I don't use), it
did include X and mozilla.  I later installed KDE and it installed in
<48hrs (granted I was using ccache and distcc with a 1400MHz cpu).  If
you are concerned about compile time then make sure that you use ccache,
and distcc (if you have a second machine).  They are real time savers.
I recently upgraded on my 300 MHz machine from 1.2 to 1.4.  That
required that I rebuild every package with gcc3.2.  That took about 5
days.  And that was a rebuild of over 380 pkgs, far more than you will
install at once.

> If I start with a stage 3, and then install xfree and kde from a pre-built
> package (I assume this can be done as an alternative to building the whole
> thing), will I lose the essence of gentoo?

Stage 3 will save you about 6 hours at most, and that is a generous
estimate.

> I want to be pure, but not at the risk of having my hardware become outdated
> while I try to run an install.

:)  Ahh, purity...  Purity is a crock, define a 'pure' gentoo install.
If you want a truly 'pure' linux experience, then you need to go with
LFS, and forget about X.  X is for sissies anyway, use the console
(Note: you should thump your chest now, you alpha male!).  :)  While you
are at it dump the use of perl, bash, C++ and use C with inline asm, or
just use asm, heck forget that, use a hex editor and build your own
binaries <Tim the Toolman grunt>.  Did, I say use an editor, I meant
editor as in ed, not the sissie sed, but ed.  Anyway, In case you didn't
notice, that was humor...  :)

Just use whatever you feel like.  There is no shame in using Debian, it
has a nice pkg management system.  RedHat isn't too bad either, but I
have reservations using a system based on RPM (I used mandrake for 2
years).  The point, IMO, is to just use linux how you like it best.  And
have fun.

-- 
Michael
GnuPG Fingerprint:  4C56 7C23 8BD9 8B39 C4D4 B8F3 42FB 3634 31B5 E963

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