I must be an odd one then ...I have built it numerous times on anything from a 
p120 to my desktop (only a p3 733 sdram baby)(and the first few times were 
over dialup lol)  , I REALLY like the package management though ;-) and like 
the ability to build an os how I want it .
 

Cheers
Dale.

On Mon, 09 Jun 2003 17:31, you wrote:
> > 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!

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