Linux "equivalent" to freebsd

[Erik Osterholm]

On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 08:55:41AM +1100, Norberto Meijome wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:17:10 -0800 Simon Gao <gao at schrodinger.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Why not give Gentoo Linux (www.gentoo.org) a try. By using Gentoo
> > Linux, you not only get the similar port system, portage, as with
> > FreeBSD, but also enjoy all the benefits Linux can provide. Gentoo
> > Linux is very flexible and has a very good support community.
> 
> risking making this a discussion about linux : I've used gentoo...
> portage is OK.... but is nowhere near as good as the ports
> collection, IMHO. First, you need to build everything from scratch,
> no binary packages. There is an annoying split of portage sections
> (dev | production | good | bad | pink ..whatever), that someone else
> puts on you, rather than allow you to chose what to use. And masked
> ports?!  -USE flags are confusing, to me (global? local? )
> Anyway..maybe I haven't got the patience needed for linux....i
> rather get on with life :D

No binary packages?  Could have fooled me.

From:  http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/faq.xml#ebuilds

"For full ISO releases, we create a full suite of binary packages in
an enhanced .tbz2 format, which is .tar.bz2 compatible with
meta-information attached to the end of the file. These can be used to
install a working (though not fully optimized) version of the package
quickly and efficiently."

Erik