[Beowulf] [AMD64] Gentoo or Fedora

[Mark Hahn]

> track down -- that it's not precisely correct to think of Gentoo as a
> distribution.  Rather, it's a set of tools and a software index which
> provide the opportunity to create one's own distribution.  The article

I'm being pedantic, I know, but I would disagree.  whether you build,
configure, assemble it yourself does not really make it your distro.
the distro, to me, is defined by the set of overall config choices - 
does it use sysv-type init scripts, does it use /etc/defaults or sysconfig?
what major version of glibc/etc does it use?  so centos isn't really 
a distro, just a version or RHEL.  similarly, taking a RH-ish install
and recompiling everything from SRPM doesn't really change the status either...

> to (potentially very many) similar systems.  For some large networks,
> the advantages that Gentoo allows in terms of control and system usage

I'm curious to hear the advantages.  I assume, for instance, that most
installation will run customized kernels, rather than the distro one,
but wouldn't normally recompile basic tools like 'ls' (but over time 
might well have their own gcc, openssh, etc)

thanks, mark hahn.