From: George Sherwood 

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 13:03:45 -0800, Randall Parker wrote:

>
> Gary,
>
> I agree. For example, I want to upgrade FireFox. It is a few clicks in
Windows. In
> Linux it is a research project.
>
> I haven't even posted my latest problem with doing that.
>
> Got KDE running though.

Randall,
     For reasons like that about 4 years ago, I gave up on the mainstream
distributions and starting using a source based one, Sourcemage GNU/Linux.
I understand the system so much better and updates such as the new firefox
are very simple.  I have been working as a developer on this distribution
for the last few years now.  Major downside to source-based is the amount
of time it can take to get a machine up and running say to the
"X" level with kde/gnome level.  Many people will say you need a
higher knowledge level also, but as I see you struggle through some of the
issues that you have, I don't agree with this.

As a side note, I have pretty much given up on kde/gnome and am using xfce.
I run this distro on both an original athlon and also a new P4 duo-core. On
the duo-core, I am up and running to xfce in not long at all. Maybe 6 hours
or so.  I tried gentoo (also source-based), but just found it more
difficult then sourcemage.

George

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