How many packages do Gentoo have in their repo? about 8000?

If you can name one of the 800 packages (9193 in Portage)in the Mandrake repos that aren't in Gentoo (minus urpmi or whatever), I'd be pretty surprised. I get six million results when I search for "blah" in Google, but I'm probably not going to go past the first couple of pages, if that. Volume doesn't necessarily mean much.

Any distro released every 6 months will have packages that are slightly behind - Fedora and Suse have this problem too. Gentoo may not but often the price is a bit less stability

I've never really understood the "stability" argument. It's not like you're forced to upgrade all the time with Gentoo. It's just an option. You can certainly stick with older versions if that makes you happy.

and less of the polish of a 'shrink-wrapped' distro (installer, hardware detection, out-of-the-box functionality, etc) as you mentioned.

That I'll agree with. I wouldn't describe the Gentoo install as difficult, but it is long and involved. The benefit I see is that you only have to do it once. I always hated having to upgrade Mandrake with every new version.

I'm no blinded fanboi though. I think it's good to have different distributions. Gentoo's right for me, but I know people I'd much rather have running Mandrake or whatever. :-)

What message do I give my kids if I tell them to respect their mom, and then celebrate the hedonistic world view demonstrated in the shows and commercials?
There are plenty of places to get the equivalent of the Man show or Howard Stern. Publicly broadcast TV does not need to be one of them.


Too many people plop their kids down in front of Barney on TV and expect their kids to learn values and right from wrong. What ever happened to teaching kids without the help of Tv? Stop relying on Television to cater to what you THINK they should be showing you. Tv is run by the almighty dollar, and ratings are up. Any parent that is "offended" by what was shown needs to point the finger at THEMSELVES imo. Don't let your kids watch TV then. It's most likely counter productive. The sad part is that YOU not being aware that Janet Jackson, Pdiddy, Nelly, and Justin Timberlake aren't going to do something provacative is sad. Don't try to protect the general population from something that YOU find offensive. If it bothers you, don't watch it, otherwise, get over it. The media and all the money spent on advertising make people feel like everyone NEEDs to watch the superbowl on tv. Why don't you use the time spent watching the damn televsion to play a board game or teach your kids about something that interests you?