[GRASS-user] Any Gentoo/Funtoo grass-gis users?

[Nikos Alexandris]

Hi!

I recently had the luck to be able to obtain a new system.  I am doing various 
trials (speak OSes) on it to make the switch from K-Ubuntu to something that 
will be more fun to work with.

I've tried Scientific Linux 6 which I find nice, clean, but I dislike the old 
KDE (4.3). I can't live without KDE's Kontact goodies.  Also, myself being a 
specialist in messing up normal running systems, I managed to quickly mix up 
some of the repositories that don't go well along ;-p.  I didn't read the 
"signs" I guess...

I am running currently on openSUSE 12.3 which offers a fantastic installation 
experience and appears to me to be very stable, even with latest KDE 4.10.  
Indeed, the experience was brought with the least of tweaking actions I needed 
to do so far, among various Linux distros I have tried (K-Ubuntu, Slax, Fedora 
once, Gentoo once, Debian some years ago).  I think, anyhow, that zypper (the 
cli package manager) isn't that good as apt-get (yes, apt-get has some 
functionalities which make life easy when hunting dependencies for example -- 
me thinks at least).

The third on the row is Funtoo.  I managed to install quickly the base 
following the official tutorial, had to fight a bit to install Xorg (since I 
didn't understand quite some stuff), wait hours for KDE to "emerge".  Yet, it 
feels it's worth the time spent!  It seems that portage is quite an advanced 
tool and offers everything and even more (?) apt-get has to offer.  It'll take 
some time I guess till I gain a good understanding of the advantages and how 
to use'm properly.  But it feels like once set-up, you never look back.

Herewith, I kindly ask you to share your experiences on-list.  In particular, 
are there Gentoo/Funtoo users out there who regularly build grass_trunk and 
the rest? GRASS-Wiki looks "empty" in this direction.

Also, relates in a way, there is this 
<http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GIS_workstation_setup_tips> page which deserves an 
update since Technology advances rapidly into new areas.

Best, Nikos