Mandrake 9 vs Gentoo

I would like to know which is better for me to use. Obviously you just can't say X, so here is some of my background.

I have been using Linux for many years now. IIRC I started with the 0.9? kernel. I started with slackware, then moved to debian, then Redhat, now Mandrake. The last version I am using is Mandrake 8.1. I occasionally update my kernel but build in XFS. Since Mandrake supports XFS, rather than downloading the kernel source from kernel.org, and patching for XFS, I download the Mandrake rpm, but find that enormously confusing ( with all the patches and no instructions ). So badsically I still go with lernel.org ( about once a year).

Technically I am realtively adept, being a proffesional C++ programmer. I use Linux generally on two machines ( alltough that changes with configurations ). One machine acts as a CVS server, db server, print server, file server, and local web server ( it only serves my LAN, with things like the SGI STL documentation or the PYthon html documentation loaded on it ). The second is often I use as dual boot ( hopefully for Linux programming work when I can find that ).

I connect to the net through a Win machine ( for proffesional reasons many places I need Windows to connect), and don't use a proxy ( I really don't want to export what's on other machines ). However I can share directories between any two machines. This means no autoupdates. A distro which does something like produce a batch script ( I have cygwin on my machine and most scripting languages ) which I can run on my WIn machine, download needed packages into some agreed on location, then do a batch upgrade from the downloaded packages would be nice.

I really don't have a lot of time to maintain the setups I have. It would be nice to setup once and only spend a little time updating. However 'Coffee time' is not a problem ( meaning time I go off and have a cup of coffee, ie compile time ), as long as I come back and discover that the computer has not stalled after 5 minutes requiring some user interaction.

I would stick to Mandrake but for one thing. The setup I have now is OK, but there are two things I needed/strongly wanted: the latest gcc/g++, KDE 3. KDE 3 has provided me all sorts of nightmares, and g++ 3 has given me problems with compatability with older so's ( for example libxml2.so ) compiled with gcc 2.9x. So a distro that recompiles everything when I update looks real attractive to me, as long as it doesn't mess up my config files ( for example I really don't understand my bind configuration, and it's a pain when I lose then, I also don't want to lose my cron jobs ).

Is there a particular reason that you didn't include Debian in your list of possible distributions? It seems like a near-perfect solution for you: it's extremely easy to update, and both GCC3 and KDE3 are available for it.

Gentoo is very nice, and should get along well with you considering your experience. Definitely not for the noobs.

I'll want to say something about Debian and Gentoo and pass on Mandrake. I haven't run Mandrake in 3 years.

I recently had Gentoo 1.4 installed here. Got everything running. It compiled fine. The only complaint I had of it was the handling of configurations files during upgrades, I didn't like the way Gentoo handled that issue.

What was of interest is I started going some performance testing. What I would do is to open a full directory of .jpg's in GIMP, 144 at a time. I found out that Gentoo would not open the pictures as quickly as my testing upgraded Woody would on the same machine!

WOW! I thought! I wonder why! Debian is just 386 compiled!

I do have the 2.4.19 kernel on Debian installed with the new pre-emptive patches applied.

I think the people at Debian have just done such a job on the system that it shows.

On aother note, I can't wait for Debian or release Sarge with it's propsed apt-build system which will offer a custom compiled distribution.