People like Gentoo because they can compile from source, right? They claim they get major performance gains* and can tweak compile-time options. Nice advantages. * The amount of gain is up for debate, but I'm sure everyone agrees it makes it faster.
We know you can get these advantages in Debian right now. People who leave Debian for Gentoo probably don't realize this. Debian's an open source OS and you can download the dpkg sources with apt-get source and manually compile them for your architecture. You can tweak compile-time options. Fortunately, we're not required to do this... it makes installing/upgrading fast. Unfortunately, this requires much more work than with Gentoo and most people (myself included) don't bother. So I propose a project which is a suite of scripts that download (with apt-get source) sources to certain libraries (like glibc) and the kernel and compile them for your architecture. It could ask you if you want to compile all packages with the same CC optimzation settings. It could make tweaking compile-time settings easier. It could retain those settings across builds. I chose the name Debian Too as a pun.. Gen'too'-like, and Debian "version" two. If Gentoo is completely open source, we could grab their scripts, modify them to download using apt and compile using dpkg commands. Also, they've determined which packages have the most impact on performance. Much of the work for this project will have already been done by Gentoo, so Debian Too could be operational within a few months. You'd get Debian's stellar package management with *completely* optional, easy-to-use, fast source compile optimization. It's the best of both distros. ===== /dev/idal "GNU/Linux is free freedom" --Me __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com
