Re: where to start -- what Linux distro?

[Stroller <..hidden..>]

On 26 May 2008, at 08:15, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> ...
> - I'd like to start with a distro that isn't too far behind the times
>   so that I have a higher chance of going a long time without needing
>   to upgrade.  Ubuntu 8.04 beats CentOS5.1 on this count.

Gentoo f0r teh win!!!!
You need never reinstall again.

> - I'm more comfortable with CentOS than Ubuntu.  But this isn't as
>   important as the other issues.

I don't know how you can do this, and envy you. Maybe Gentoo is  
_loads_ different to those binary distros, and they're all very  
similar to use. I've been using Gentoo for 4 or 5 years, and now  
simply can't seem to get along with any other distro.

I started Linux with Mandrake, but I was very much a n00b then, and  
it was very much a first-steps distro for me. I learned to compile  
applications from source on it, but some gripe made me look for  
something else. I tried Ubuntu a while back, because I figured it  
didn't make sense to compile everything on an old laptop, and just  
couldn't get along with it - there were a couple of things I wanted  
to do and couldn't, it drove me quickly barking. I've also had to do  
stuff on Suse and RedHat in the time since I've been using Gentoo  
myself, and each time I've ended up despairing, "why can't they just  
do things the RIGHT way?!!?!"

Anyway, Gentoo has versions 7.3.21, 7.4.19, 8.0.15, 8.1.11, 8.2.6,  
8.2.7 and 8.3.1 of PostgreSQL available in the Portage tree. I would  
imagine that if you had a system with 7.3 installed then Portage  
would try to upgrade automatically to 8.2.7 when you next install  
updates, but that's easy to prevent - a single line in a text file  
will pin the version of a critical package. Likewise 8.3.1 is marked  
not to automatically install, but you can override this easily.  
Upgrades never require use of an install CD - you can always get the  
latest version of the distro simply by typing `emerge world`;  
dependencies are always handled properly.

If you're aware of Gentoo then apologies for rambling on. I do accept  
arguments that Gentoo shouldn't be used for production systems, but  
it works here, and I know many others also use it in production.  
Gentoo would, however, appear to solve your PostgreSQL dilemma.

Stroller.