Moving on from Gentoo

[Dapper Dan]

I didn't know crux was so popular around here. Maybe I should give it a try sometime. It's source based, no?

Hi reed9. Yes, CRUX is source based but not one of the more popular distros which is puzzling to me. As you might already know, Arch was inspired by the CRUX philosophy of "keeping it simple." That's probably why I love it so much. It's like Gentoo but to me far simpler and easier and boy is it ever fast! As a champion of Arch, you may indeed enjoy a go with CRUX sometime because of the similarities in philosophies. I keep trying to find time to install and run Arch but haven't gotten around to it yet. I will one day soon though.

[reed9]

I've looked at Crux before, but the two things that have held me back are 1) no 64 bit version, and 2) I tend to install and uninstall programs a lot. For example, everytime KDE puts out a new release, I keep succumbing to temptation and trying it out on Arch. (And then rapidly finding myself dissatisfied and wiping it from my system.) So source based distros always seemed like they'd be a wee bit time consuming to constantly be compiling new software, only to remove it a few days or weeks later.

I also like the range of software available for Arch. There really is nothing I haven't been able to find in the repos or through the user submitted package builds. I like the ease with which I can keep up with the daily snapshots of google chrome, for example. I like that the new release of WICD has been available pretty much since the day it came out. (Which includes an awesome ncurses interface now as well as the GTK one!)

I like to fiddle, but I also don't always have the time or desire to keep tabs on and compile new releases of things myself. Arch is such a nice balance of control and ease.

[Dapper Dan]

I've looked at Crux before, but the two things that have held me back are 1) no 64 bit version...

Oh but there is! CRUX86_64

...and 2) I tend to install and uninstall programs a lot. For example, everytime KDE puts out a new release, I keep succumbing to temptation and trying it out on Arch. (And then rapidly finding myself dissatisfied and wiping it from my system.) So source based distros always seemed like they'd be a wee bit time consuming to constantly be compiling new software, only to remove it a few days or weeks later.

I can see how that might be a problem. Don't know if this would help you any if you decided to try it, but I've found most Slackware packages will work easily with CRUX and have used them often.

I also like the range of software available for Arch. There really is nothing I haven't been able to find in the repos or through the user submitted package builds.

Same is true for me with CRUX but everyone has different needs and mine are likely substantially less than yours. Last ports check, I had 3730 packages to choose from and rarely run into a case where CRUX ports doesn't have what I want. Of course that's a fraction of packages available for say, Debian or Red Hat but a minimal number of packages is in line with CRUXs stated philosophy.

I like to fiddle, but I also don't always have the time or desire to keep tabs on and compile new releases of things myself. Arch is such a nice balance of control and ease.

If one likes to constantly fiddle and doesn't want to take a lot of time then I think binaries are the way to go too. That's why I use Ubuntu and Slackware on work related boxes. I like having CRUX on my home machine as it keeps me on my toes. I never know when I just might have to crack that terminal in Ubuntu...