On 8/13/07, Gauland, Michael <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Now that Aidan's developed a Computer Acquisition Strategy, he'd like some > advice on distributions. > I hope you realise that you're asking a religious question. :-)
I'm a Gentooter [0] myself for the following reasons. 1) They seem to have gotten the inter-package dependencies sorted out pretty well. It's not absolutely perfect, but by and large rpm hell really is a thing of the past. 2) It is easy to adjust the compilation flags and tune gcc to produce output specifically for your chip-set. The speed gain is not all that dramatic, but if you are in a position where every little bit counts then you can count on a few percent. 3) The irc channels are - in a word - exemplary. There are number of very knowledgeable developers resident in Europe, so the best time to get on the channel is around about 10pm our time. 4) ditto the support forums and documentation generally. 5) Although the original modus operandi was to compile everything, there is now a binary distribution derivative called Sabayon [1] which offers pre-compiled packages. It's also very easy to create binary packages from the files on your machine for installation on other machines. 6) Updating your machiine is just a one-line command. 7) You have genuine control over what is installed. Now for the down side. 1) Updating your machine is just a one-line command. So you are tempted to fiddle about with the machine far too much. 2) IMHO, the transfer of packages from unstable to stable takes far too long, So one is led into the temptation of running at the unstable level in order to get the new features. Doing so can occasionally lead to problems. 3) Compilation can be a time consuming PITA, but if you have a local network of machines they can be corralled into a compilation farm using ccache [2] and distcc [3] 4) Getting set-up in the first place can be another time consuming business, but once you are up and running, adding extra packages and keeping up-to-date is an absolute doddle. Further general opinions and remarks:- In my experience real-time computing speed is much more dependent on having: a fast disk, a fast file-system, lots of RAM, and a decent video system rather than raw cpu clock speed. Nvidia video cards work better with Linux than do ati ones. The *Ubuntu distributions while being pretty good overall, are vastly over-hyped. While the E17 window manager would be considered by many to be 'off the wall', once you get used to it, it can be an extremely efficient work environment. [0] http://www.gentoo.org/ [1] http://www.sabayonlinux.org/ [2] http://ccache.samba.org/ [3] http://distcc.samba.org/ HTH -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell
