I have been out of practice on Gentoo for a while now, but found (especially on older/slower hardware) that side by side it did seem to run smoother and quicker (once you finally got it running smoother/quicker). For most common desktop applications and users, I doubt most would notice the difference without searching for it.
However, if you're talking a cluster deployment, conceptually, a 1% improvement is a free machine for every 100. If they can get 5% improvement, and deploy 1000 machines... And then consider the TCO of cooling and electrical consumption saved over the life of the machines. I would suspect that any shop deploying enough machines to REALLY make a difference is going to be doing a custom image with whatever distro they use, and in every distro I've tried, you can build the kernel and all apps from source if you really want to and can figure out how. The difference with Gentoo is that level of customization is the default option, so even a non-guru Gentoo admin can compile just about anything if they can find documentation, and since of course the organization keeps their documentation up to date... ... You can also do Gentoo deployment with distcc and/or build binaries to redeploy on other machines. I can't remember where I saw it (perhaps Ohio Linux Fest a couple years ago) but talked to some guys who had a small Gentoo build cluster and repository and had all the machines set up to see if there was an existing compiled binary in their own repository before requesting compiling. On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 8:47 AM, Paul Heinlein <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, 22 Dec 2009, Mike Connors wrote: > > > I recently had a tech interview w. an organization that runs Gentoo > > on all its servers. Part of the interview was to login into a test > > box, build a LAMP server, install some software and upgrade some > > stuff. > > > > This was my first time ever doing anything w. Gentoo and I was quite > > surprised by how different it was than say Debian or RH. Not to > > mention the lack of good documentation or what I call "build guides" > > that you can follow and will help you build out a server. Granted, > > they're never perfect but can usually get you 85% or more of the way > > home. > > > > So, my questions for discussion are: > > > > 1. Gentoo's claim to fame is that by compiling each package for the > > specific architecture that performance gains are realized. Has > > anyone found this to be empirically true? > > I found it to be true on my SPARC, but not so much on x86 boxen. > > > 2. If I were making the decisions on which Linux distro to run, I > > would choose one which I think would more people would tend to > > have experience with and that has a greater mindshare such as > > Debian or RH. > > Seasoned Gentoo admins are harder to come by than Debian/RH/SuSE > admins. If your local Gentoo guru is hit by the proverbial bus, it'll > take that much more time for the replacement admin to come up to > speed. > > > 3. Does anyone have significant experience working on or supporting > > Gentoo? If so, what has your experience been? > > I've only maintained a few Gentoo systems, two at home and two at > work. All are now retired. > > The big upside for me was flexibility. To install openssh-server on a > Debian system, for instance, you've got to install several X11 > libraries as dependencies. If you don't want X on your system, and you > don't want to compile your own sshd, you're out of luck in a > mainstream distro. With Gentoo, it's no problem! > > On the other hand... > > a) It's VERY easy to get a Gentoo box into an idiosyncratic state > with all sorts of mismatched package levels. I think a really > good Gentoo admin could avoid that sort of mess, but it would > take a lot of discipline and planning. > > b) Package updates can be very disruptive, and those disruptions > occur far too frequently. All of a sudden, for instance, you'll > get a major version bump that requires reconfiguration and > recompilation of lots and lots of packages. I don't think I > would run Gentoo in a production environment unless I had an > extremely accurate testing environment for staging changes. > > c) Broken packages were far more common in Gentoo than in > other distributions. That may have changed, but I grew to > dread updates. > > In short, my assessment is that the time required to build, test, and > deploy Gentoo packages wasn't worth the mild speed gains and packaging > flexibility it could provide. > > YMMV. > > -- > Paul Heinlein <> [email protected] <> http://www.madboa.com/ > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
