OJ’s rants What would OJ do?

To-buntu, or not to-buntu. That is the question.

Right now I'm finding this question a tough one to answer. The hardcore geeks out there are probably saying "install all the distros you need!", but I'm not sure if I want to do that or not. Right now, I'm thinking not, and it's going to take a bit of time to convince me that having multiple distros installed is valuable to me.

I do want to have at least one Linux distribution running on my machine at home. I think over time there's a very strong possibility that I will end up with a few, but right now, having more than one will not serve any purpose. So I have to make the decision.

The short-list is Gentoo and Ubuntu. Why? Well, I've played with Gentoo in the past and I really liked it, partly because it was very similar to buying a bunch of bricks and wood and attempting to build a house. It took a bit to learn and get going, and that was part of the appeal for me as learning new stuff was a key part of the undertaking. While I'm sure I've got stacks more to learn as far as Linux goes, I'm not sure if I want to go through the pain of getting it set up again, I'd rather have it just work for me without a great deal of effort (yes, you Linux geeks at the back, settle down! :)). There are a few other things I like about Gentoo, including portage and the way things are compiled using settings that are configured to make the most of your hardware.

On the other hand, I've heard some really nice things about Ubuntu, and I'm yet to play with this distro myself. I've heard it's much easier to set up, and is a very "friendly" Linux distro - that is, one that I don't have to fight with too much to get going and get configured to work well for me. One negative thing that I have heard about this is that the 64-bit version isn't quite as 'solid' as it is on Gentoo, but I might be wrong.

There is one side of me that says "go with what you know" and stick with Gentoo, but the true geek in me says "get your hands dirty with something new and see what all the fuss is about" and go with Ubuntu. Dan the Man over at Shifty (and at least one of his colleagues) are using Ubuntu, and Dan himself likes it very much. I have a close mate in the USA (greetings Bryce :)) who has been a fan and an advocate of Gentoo for a long time, and his arguments are always hard to ignore (though I'm sure he'd be happy to hear of people using any form of Linux over Windoze).

So which is it going to be? I think I might just go the Ubuntu route and see how it treats me. If I feel that it's not enough I may even put the effort into getting Gentoo running alonside it. The ultimate goal would be to have Win32, Win x64, Gentoo and Ubuntu all running at once. Of course this comes with the question: Should I be doing multi-boots? Or should I create Virtual Machines instead?

Tough call. I think I'll answer that in my next post when I respond to Dan's blog