On 8/29/06, Cocoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 8/29/06, Dean Michael Berris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Sorry, but doing an update/upgrade on a piece of software and > requiring a recompile is not blazing fast. i found gentoo responding faster as a desktop running on 256mb ram on a pentium-m than than say opensuse. ;) there are binary ebuilds for those who'd prefer it. but it seems to defeat the purpose.
I'm not really into Linux on the Desktop, because I feel that a lot of work still needs to be done on the applications arena (not anymore related to the Linux Kernel) to get me moving that direction again. But I digress... And I'm not really into "fast" too -- fast can be a function of the amount of stuff you put into your desktop installation, as opposed to actual performance brought about by the recompilation of the applications. And do rememeber that the modern OSes are built for the i586 or i686 that work well with the more modern processors.
> And besides, it's only as blazing fast as your hardware anyway -- > compiling everything from source for your platform gives you an > illusion that it should run faster, which is not always the case. oh certainly... its more of a user perception. but like i said, it really would depend how you build the system, what kernel modules do you have set on. and all that. the response time on the same box (pentium-m, 256mb ram laptop) running opensuse 10 and gentoo differ with gentoo being faster. perhaps it is largely because i tuned in a lot of stuff in the gentoo kernel and kept the opensuse thing to the standard option.
Sometimes, you just don't want to do that especially if you're focused on getting things to _work first_ -- and once they work, tuning by compiler magic is nowhere near tuning by algorithmic enhancement. It doesn't really matter if the compiler magic gives you 1% performance increase when an algorithmic enhancement gives you 30% performance increase.
> And > if the compile fails, then what? i find it rarely happens when you use the standard packages since those are stable enough. though i prefer masked packages. i like living on the edge. ;)
Tell this to someone who's actually making a living deploying solutions that are as fool-proof and fail-safe as possible. ;) Living on the edge is alright if you have the luxury of failure -- in other circumstances, the option of failure is just a bit too painful to swallow (think, nuclear reactor computers). Although we're not building solutions to those scales (yet ;) ) I'd certainly like to be assured that the solution will not fail because an upgrade in a system library that's not being used by the solution I'm building caused the whole platform to break. Or even perhaps when the service is already required, that the system isn't available because it's being DoS'ed by the compiler.
> But maybe if I had all the time in the world in between updates and not really. gentoo updates almost every 24 hours. all you need is to emerge, you could probably set cron to do the job for you but i'd advice against it... updating has its dangers and you can say about that with every distro and every piece of software.
Check that: when you update, you (re)compile. If you're updating a considerably large library (libstdc++, libc) or application (gcc) then that takes time. Compilation requires a lot of resources (memory, processor, disk) which could better be used to serve the actual solution's purpose than "upgrading a library".
> the client can wait a few days to get the system *set-up*, then maybe it would really depend on the situation. it takes about a day to get a box running to full spec, depending really on what kind of packages you select. optimization over general specs? or a myriad other consideration.
Whatever happened to "install base system, install required packages, harden, then deploy" in half a day or even less? Then you have the problem of when the box actually gives up and you need to put a replacement back in quick. Good luck with that. :)
> I'd consider Gentoo. Support? I just might have to dream on. ah yes support, the killer word :)) people always expect someone to watch their back. it is our way.
When you say "it is our way", what exactly do you mean by that? Not everyone is a Linux guru/expert nor is everyone willing to bear the fact that you need to recompile everything because something changed.
> Thanks, but no thanks. ;) i know. some people prefer the safety of a toyota-class car, or the comfort of a bmw-class car... gentoo is not for everybody. i associate gentoo with a formula one race car or a roadster--- customized, optimized for a particular purpose. it isn't for the faint at heart. gentoo carries a lot of risk but when tuned to your needs can be great box.
But do you really need a formula 1 race car when what you need is to be sure that your car won't conk out on you in various road and weather conditions? I see Gentoo as a novelty distribution. It just wants to be different, so it's different -- no particular reasoning behind it really. Just like SuSE, RHEL, and Debian, they're all different from each other (and there isn't really any reason why they shouldn't or should be different from each other). Now if you like that everything is "tuned to perfection" at the risk of easy breakage, then go ahead and trust your mission critical application to Gentoo. Let me know how you do after a few load tests, hardware failures, and software upgrades. ;)
to each his own i guess :)
Indeed. :) Thanks for the insights! :) -- Dean Michael C. Berris C/C++ Software Architect Orange and Bronze Software Labs http://3w-agility.blogspot.com/ http://cplusplus-soup.blogspot.com/ Mobile: +639287291459 Email: dean [at] orangeandbronze [dot] com _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
