> On Mon, 09 Jun 2003 01:19, Jason wrote: > Couldn't pass up on this ;)...Sure Gentoo takes a bit of time and effort to > install but it's worth it. You get a stable system without the bloat. > Optimizing package is easy, you simply have to edit one file and there's > plenty of tips on how to do it. And optimization does work. I've got an > Athlon XP 1600+ and Gentoo starts KDE in at least 2/3s the time of > Mandrake.
This is rather relative, your still dealing with a fairly decent Machine there. An athlonXP is alot faster than my k6-2 450Mhz it took me 8 hours to compile Gnome 2 when it came out with out any fancy flags. And the Kernel it self takes 40mins even when I've cut it down to only the modules and bits required to run on my computer! The kernels I compile won't run on any other machine unless they have the same cpu, mobo, sound card, network card and so forth. Also Athlon XP's get one of the biggest boost's when compiled for (I've heard figures in the area of 30% mentioned for some apps.) However for older computer K6-2's k6-3's pentium II etc the speed boost is not noticeable compared to runing packages compiled for i586 (Mandrake's target). As for things like boost speed that is less to do with recompiling the machine for your cpu than it has to doing with you setting up the machine with only those things you need enabled or installed. Package based distros are designed to be run on as many machine as possible remeber and therefore trade some speed for portability. Several times it's been discused moving Mandrake to an i686 target in Cooker but it's allways been rejected as testing has not revealed enough of a boost and after that level you start having to compile for indiviual chips (eg either P4 or Athlon the only exceptions being some multimedia stuff which gets a nice boost from MMX and SSE). Any way if you real want to recompile mandrake linux for your computer it's easy enough simply mirror the src.rpm directory or cvs set up your .rpmrc file with the optomisations you want and start the job!after compileing you'll have a full verion of Mandrake compiled for what every you set the flags to. Also you'll be able to distribute this version to any other Machine you or friends have with the same or similar specs. As well as creating your own isos and every thing all the tools are avaliable. > So yeah, gentoo takes a lot of time and effort to install, but once you've > installed it you have a system that is easily maintanable (you don't have > to reinstall the distro everytime a new release comes out), that has the > best package management system ( :) ) and one that is fast. Perhaps but my computer will spend less time installing the new version than it will compiling the new apps as they're updated. And I've never had problems with urpmi. And I'd bet if you installed a version of Gentoo and a version of Debian then waited to the next version came out and updated using there respective methods apt-get vs emerge (or what ever it's called) that debian would be updated quicker and with less probems. I'm quite happy to admit that gentoo is one of the better distros for those with decent computers but for those of use with 3-4 year old or older machines a package based distro is alot lot better! Chad PS please do not use this as an excuse to start a flame war!
