> I am not sure what benefit it would bring to the user. It would be different. It would be highly portable. I personally also like the idea that, when someone wants a program, they're automatically given the "complete and corresponding source code" at the time.
It wouldn't be more or less portable than binaries, the source has to be compiled at some point. > Resolving library dependencies is always cumbersome, and we > should aim so that anyone can install GNU. It needn't be hard. Indeed, I'm sure that the installer/package manager/whatever could be made to handle dependencies. Source-based doesn't *have* to mean manually compiling everything yourself. But it does imply that you have the CPU and RAM to finish the compilation, not everyone is on a super fast computer. So you'd need to provide binaries anyway, making the idea of a `source based' operating system moot. What would be useful is to make it easier to re-compile what you have installed, much like BSD's have done.
