Todd Walton wrote: > > Wouldn't it be a benefit that you get to compile it yourself? The > non-benefit is that you *have* to compile it yourself. I have two > thoughts about this: 1) I really wish that more packages were > available pre-compiled in portage. 2) It really doesn't matter, > though. I mean, c'mon, how much hassle is it to compile a new program > from source?
When you have hundreds of systems - and you have to compile libc and Xorg, amd mozilla. On each. When there is a 0-day vulnerability on ssh, and you need it done *NOW*. Yes, that 28 minute delay can mean the difference between preventing a breach, and sending out thousands of SB 1386 notices, because there was Personally Identifiable Information on the system. There may be a way to build once, then install many times with Gentoo. I honestly don't know. If this were the case, why bother with the whole compile on the end user system? Another drawback is that you are now a QA department of one. When something in a package beaks, why did it break? What was it compiled against? What options were used? What optimisations? You may very well have a very unique package, and the Gentoo maintainer (or whatever the equivalent is) could be at a complete loss. With a centralised build system, the maintainer can point to a standard package, and say ``try this one'' and have at least some basis. Granted, an end user system can still have a unique set of packages installed that could create interesting synergistic effects, or unique hardware configurations. Adding in a custom-compiled system is adding even more problems for the troubleshooters. Gentoo may be fine for a desktop, that is behind a trustable firewall. I would not run any public services, or anything mission-critical on it. Then again, I say the same thing of Debian Unstable, Debian Testing, and Fedora Core. > A couple of days ago I installed GnuCash, so I thought that'd be a > nice test. I recompiled it just now. A simple command: 'emerge > gnucash' (though I put 'time' before it). It took 28 minutes and 25 > seconds. Is that really so bad? When's the last time you decided you > needed GnuCash and damn it all you need it NOW! Or any package? > Anything that's going to take much longer than that will have a > precompiled binary available. How long did it take for the initial install? How long would that have taken, if you did not have GNOME already compiled and the development libraries compiled? How long would it take to emerge OpenOffice? How long would it take to compile projectmanager.app? Coming from a RedHat or SuSE world, where these things may not even be in the repository, looking at Gentoo is amazing: one command, and you can have it! Coming from the Debian world, where all the work of compiling and putting together in a usable fashion, one asks ``why bother?'' Second reading: ``precompiled binary available.'' Really? Gentoo is doing that? Is it available for all of hte stuff, or only some stuff? This is news to me. I remember reading, a long time ago, that Gentoo was not designed to be a build-from-source distro, it just kind of happened on the way towards being a binary-distribution, like the rest of them. > I can't give a fair comparison of apt to portage, since I'm really not > familiar with apt. I've heard it's great. But I definitely don't see > what people have against portage. I can't give a fair comparison, either, as I have never used Gentoo. I still have not found any good argument *for* other than having to/getting to compile oneself. At least you did not give the pat excuse that by building it from source, you gain a better appreciation of how it all works together. For that, I would point towards Linux From Scratch. Any other Gentoo users (past, present, future) want to weigh in on this? -john -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
