[Tombar]

We tried both and finally end using puppet.

In our experience puppet is easier to setup and start, chef server stack is HUGE compared to just installing a package for puppet master and certs/knife setup is a PITA.

The DSL is pretty similar except for how they track dependencies and general workflow, where chef is `procedural`, puppet internally builds a call graph based on a declarative syntax which can be hard to track down and understand in some situations.

Regarding cookbooks vs manifests, both have tons of modules around, but like with any plugins/modules software the basic stuff in general is cover, but you will need to get your's hand dirty to get things to work your way and not all manifest/cookbooks are good to use at all..

We don't found compilation and install time to be an issue for us, a complete lamp stack install fully customized takes less than 2 minutes per node.

We have a linux background and didn't find ruby hard at all to hack and mess around to solve some of our issues like custom facters and install some rare stuff like nsis :)