Is there a binary distro as good a Gentoo?

[Dissident85]

I am getting a EEEPC 1008HA and upon its arrival I am I have been trying to make up my mind on what distro I will install on it. Now I primarily use Gentoo and I love it. But as the 1008HA has a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280, and only 1GB of ram. I don't think a source based distribution would be the way to go. I love to tinker with my computers all the time so having to compile everything would just take forever!

I created a VM on my work pc (Intel Quad Core Q9300 @2.50GHz) as a test and gave it one CPU @ 2.50GHz and 1024MB of ram. And it took me 3 days to install Gentoo, including the DE&WM. I was going to install the hardened kernel in which case I would have to recompile everything, but with computation times like that I just wasn't bothered.

So now I am stuck trying to find a distro that will give the same extensive control options, a vast number of packaged available and the speed of Gentoo... but in a binary distro. I have spent ages sifting through the distrowatch site trying to find one but have had no luck.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Or am I going to just have to put up with having to compiling everything?

[Gitsnik]

I use FreeBSD on every general purpose machine I have (there are some BT boxes, a few XP etc. around) - it always feels like it's giving me more control than a Linux, you can compile software via ports (if you so wish), or install via packages.

There is another path - one I often use to get my PII-333 up to speed with updates - you can compile the majority of your software on another machine and transfer it over.

Of course, Ubuntu (and thus BT) gives you a fair whack of control especially through the apt-get system, but it can be annoying sometimes when you want to compile in your own program. I usually install my programs to ~/bin/ so that any overwriting by the apt-get system doesn't mess with me too badly.

[Dissident85]

I have played around with the *BSD's and I do like them, especially OpenBSD for a Firewall/NAT router. FreeBSD might be an option. I guess I would just have to check hardware compatibly. All of my computers that I use on a day to day basis all have 64bit processers and nVidia cards. so the lack of support of nVidia cards on the AMD64 version of FreeBSD has always put me off...

I started off with ubuntu, i think as everyone did for their first distro. But i always found it really blotted, it's like the fat kid of the Linux distros.

[purehate]

Might want to look at saybyon, It based on gentoo. I run gentoo on my eeepc but I also have a few servers and a desktop so I use distcc to compile anything on the eeepc. Couple of q6600 quad cores and 1 or 2 dual 3.0 xeons and you can have a eeepc built in 4-6 hours.

[Dissident85]

But if I am going to take that approach I might as well go and use slackware with a custom kernel? compiling everything on a separate box would make the "emerge" system pointless? wouldn't it?

EDIT: Sorry, i just looked up distcc... And it looks like it may be the way to go... i didnt know such a thing existed..

[prowl3r]

+1 sabayon

In a different league, I love eBox Platform

Amazing toolset. The netcat of distros, in my opinion.

Edit: I also have crunchbang running on my eee 901 4g external sd.

[Archangel-Amael]

I use distcc to compile anything on the eeepc.

I used it too to compile packages on an old P4 Laptop after having spent hours getting gentoo compile the traditional way. Now I use distcc anytime i need to install something new onto the machine. Here are the two tutorials I used in getting up and running.
Gentoo Linux Documentation -- Gentoo Distcc Documentation
Gentoo Linux Documentation -- DistCC Cross-compiling Guide
Also some good info
http://distcc.samba.org/scenarios.html
Good luck.