Hm…. I’m not really making progress here. Although I’m still not sure if using a binary distribution is really some much a progress over using a source distribution after all. Anyway. Today we installed another machine in the office and this time we used Gentoo. And… what should I say? It was fun enough to make me homesick. Then in the afternoon I had some problems getting the ati-drivers to work under Ubuntu which motivated me even more to get back to Gentoo.
This doesn’t mean that I will replace Ubuntu tonight… hell, I need some sleep ;) But somehow binary distributions simply don’t really feel right with me. Ubuntu is a great distribution but I’m simply once again missing living on the bleeding edge of free software and day-to-day update sessions. Also producing .debs compared to simply writing an ebuild is still way to complicated. I’m also a little bit concerned giving the slow response times in the ubuntu bugtracker. A few months ago I filed a bug about ubuntuforums (which is after all listed as the official forum) and only after quite some time the bug was closed with the note that they will inform the responsible people since they are not responsible for the forums. A few days ago I noticed an IMO quite serious bug introduced with one of the security packages that now (at least for me) blocks nearly all important gnome developer packages. Not reaction on this report so far.
Also developing under Gentoo feels easier but this is just my opinion. I’m probably used too much to having the latest libraries available :) Anyway, I will definitely give this whole thing another night or two before I move back to Gentoo on my laptop or stay with Ubuntu. Let’s see ;)
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