> Whenever I see a write-up of Gentoo, it's describe as a system > similar to BSD "ports" where you build packages from source. > The main benefit claimed for this approach is that you get > better performance because all executables are optimized for > exactly the right instruction set.
More often than not, when I read that description of "Gentoo's advantage" it is meant to turn people off. Ricer, etc. - Grant > Where did that bit of apocrypha come from, and why is it > parroted by so many people? > > AFAICT, the "performance" benefit due to compiler optimization > is practically nil in real-world usage. > > In my experience the huge benefit of source-based distros such > as Gentoo is elimination of the library dependency-hell that > mires other binary-based distros. > > For many years I ran RedHat and then Mandrake. After a year or > so, they became impossible to maintain because of library > version conflicts. Every time I tried up upgrade an RPM package > to fix a bug or security hole, it required a handful of > libraries to be upgraded, but doing that would break a bunch of > other RPMs for which upgrades weren't available. The solution > was always to start building stuff from sources. Once you > started doing that, the package manager would get upset because > it doesn't know about some stuff that's installed (unless you > built from source RPMs, which had another set of problems). > > The second benefit is that with Gentoo, upgrading a system > actually works over the long-run. With RedHat/Mandrake, things > would gradually deteriorate to the point where the system was > unmaintainable, but attempting to upgrade between major > releases was always futile. I've had Gentoo machines that have > been upgraded for 4-5 years without any significant problems > (failed hard-drives don't count). > > The third main benefit I've seen is that there are vastly more > packages available for Gentoo. Putting together and > maintaining an ebuild appears to take a lot less work than > putting together and maintaining a binary RPM package. I've > had far fewer problems with third party ebuilds than I did with > third-party RPMs (on the rare occasions when I found one for > some obscure application I wanted to run). Again, the solution > was always "build from sources". > > Are the real benefits of Gentoo too hard to explain to the > unwashed masses, so instead they're told the fairy tale about > imporoved performance? > > -- > Grant Edwards grante Yow! ! Up ahead! It's a
