Matthew Perdue wrote:
> Gentoo's update is one of the easiest update and patching processes I've ever
> seen and the time window for my personal review is more than thirty years. The
> command is "emerge --sync" and the list of current module release levels on
> your machine is updated. 

I'm a little partial to RedHat/Fedora/CentOS, but there may be some admitted bias because I've used it for so long.  HPUX certainly wasn't fun, and I've cursed at SuSE and fumbled through a xBSD or two.

> Gentoo Linux has since it was started allowed the user to streamline
> the OS down to only what was needed to run the OS environment and
> intended application(s). If you're running a box that will only be an
> email server then why load in video drivers suitable for high end
> graphics? Gentoo lets you leave out the unnecessary (for your needs) 
> video drivers.

You can do this "to an extent" on most distributions.  Where this starts to get less than elegant is in the area of dependencies.  If you don't need a particular "module", you can't remove it until you have removed all of the pieces that depend on it.  The overlooked part involves dependencies in the other direction -- now that you have removed this module, what underlying pieces where there solely for the purpose of satisfying your module's dependencies?

Jeff

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