philosophy of design; request for instruction

[Peter Humphrey]

On Monday, 8 June 2020 20:00:31 BST Erik Quaeghebeur wrote:
> On maandag 8 juni 2020 18:13:23 CEST, Paul Vixie wrote:
> > Kontact Version 5.14.1 (20.04.0)
> > KDE Frameworks 5.70.0
> > Qt 5.15.0 (built against 5.15.0)
> > The xcb windowing system
> > 
> > how do i get a KDE PIM that new without using an OS that's crossed over to
> > systemd?
> Gentoo <https://gentoo.org/> can deliver this, of course. It is different
> from other distributions in multiple ways, so you'll have to learn how to
> do things the Gentoo way. But much is the same. It brings with it its own
> set of time-sucking issues.
> 
> I like Gentoo, because it gives me (the feeling of being in) control, which
> I do not have with debian/Suse/Fedora.

The main thing Paul would have to learn is its package management system, 
which is true of any distro. It's complex, but wonderfully capable and robust, 
and if I can do it, so can anyone else. Then there's compiling the kernel 
yourself, but there are tools to help with that. The system documentation is 
pretty good too, and there's an active, helpful user email list.

It's main advantages, for me, are the feeling of control you mention, and the 
ability to tailor a system to suit you, without much of the bloat that comes 
with a binary distro, nor being forced into a single solution to any given 
problem. You do have to spend CPU cycles on compiling everything in situ, but 
I don't find that a great burden; this box runs 24x7x52 on BOINC projects, and 
a bit of compiling fits in well.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Gentoo testing system, openrc-0.42.1
gcc 9.3.0, sys-kernel/gentoo-sources 5.4.38
QT 5.15.0, KDE frameworks 5.70.0, KDE plasma 5.18.5
KDE apps 20.04.1 incl KMail 5.14.1 (20.04.0), akonadi 20.04.1
dev-db/mariadb-10.4.12, net-libs/webkit-gtk-2.28.2
x11-drivers/xf86-video-amdgpu 19.1.0
dev-libs/amdgpu-pro-opencl-19.30.838629