Looking for a new distro to try

[hamburger123]

I have been using gentoo for a couple of years now, and before then, I've used both ubuntu and fedora core. The thing that I really like about gentoo is its package management because, unlike with apt and yum, portage's packages are all located in one tree and not spread out across multiple repositories. I also like the ability to customize my packages with USE flags. However, what I don't like about gentoo is having to spend so much compiling for small or unnoticeable performance gains.

Is there a distro that has package management similar to gentoo's minus the compiling from source?

[i92guboj]

I have been using gentoo for a couple of years now, and before then, I've used both ubuntu and fedora core. The thing that I really like about gentoo is its package management because, unlike with apt and yum, portage's packages are all located in one tree and not spread out across multiple repositories. I also like the ability to customize my packages with USE flags. However, what I don't like about gentoo is having to spend so much compiling for small or unnoticeable performance gains.

Is there a distro that has package management similar to gentoo's minus the compiling from source?

Maybe Arch.

Arch Linux

One good thing about arch is that it supports installation from source natively, even if it's mainly a binary distro.

ArchWiki :: ABS - The Arch Build System - ArchWiki

There's also vidalinux:

Home - vidalinux.org

It's based on Gentoo, and I think that it has binary repositories as well. I haven't tried it, though.

[dxqcanada]

Look into Sabayon ... I have heard that it is based on Gentoo but it provides Binary Package repository.

[Dapper Dan]

There's always Slackware.

Several choices for package management -- slapt-get, swaret, CruxPorts4Slack and Emerde. Slackware binaries are easy to install and you can use CruxPorts4Slack or Emerde if and when you want to compile from source.

[bryansmith]

You might enjoy Slackware as long as you install some sort of third party package management system. You can tweak Slackware nicely and you can install some source (NetBSD's pkgsrc for example) and binary (slapt-get for example) based dependency handling package management systems.

No packaging system, IMHO, is similar enough to Gentoo unless it is source based.

Bryan

[hamburger123]

Thanks for the replies guys! I'll look into these distros.

[pcxman]

Try Suse 10.3 it is different or freesprire.