<quote who="Patrick Kelso">
> > > The sheer boredom and pointlessness of compiling an entire
> > > distribution, for a start! Beyond that, it's fragile, broken most of
> > > the time (I have to deal with Gentoo bugs on GNOME stuff - hideous),
> > > and... I could go on. ;-)
Ahr. I was hoping that my off-list post would stay off-list. That's why I
posted it off-list. :-)
> > I like to optimise my system as much as possible, Im not in a situation
> > that I can always have the most upto date hardware. I also have several
> > machines with different achitecture. Seeing that downloading binaries
> > is just a waste of my downloadable limit its nice to be able to get the
> > src.
>
> I agree with this, I like being able to have everything compiled for my
> system, if I wanted a OS that was designed to run everything, I would use
> windows.
Building everything from source gives you negligible performance benefits.
Only very particular software will benefit from compiler optimisations, so
on the whole, it's a waste of time. If you want faster software, write it to
be faster. :-)
> > > Plus, they refuse to build on the expertise and shared knowledge that
> > > has gone into the major distros.
> >
> > well I guess thats how you start a new distro.
Do we need a new, generalised distribution? I can see the need for many more
distributions suitable for specific purposes, but the aforementioned distros
are wheel reinventions (and not very good ones).
Beyond that, it's better to work within a project and amongst people who
know what they're doing - the existing works have an enormous amount of
'corporate knowledge'... Not something that should be wasted willy-nilly.
> in what sense? Gentoo integrates a lot of components of other distro's and
> OSs, for instance the portage tree, similar to the awesom slackware and
> freebsd ports collections, which make installing something so much easier.
Great, it integrates a concept that implements its most useless feature,
that everyone else is doing so much better other ways. ;-)
> > > Some Gentoo/LFS users say, "oh but hey, if we choose to waste our
> > > time, what's wrong with that?" That'd be fine, if it were as simple as
> > > that. The reality is that they waste a hell of a lot of developer
> > > time... I was foolish enough to provide a tool for GNOME testers that
> > > is particularly attractive to Gentoo/LFS/Slackware users (GARNOME),
> > > and man... Do I waste a *ton* of time because of them. Pain!
> >
> > Are they real bugs they find? have you ever thought of ignoring them?
Generally, they're find breakage in their own systems, not bugs, and
viciously blame *us* for it! Hard to ignore, as much as we'd want to.
> I thought the idea of open source was that we could all choose to use it
> in the best way we see fit, if you dont like the questions posed by gentoo
> users send them to /dev/null. I dont see the point of open source, if your
> always going to use pre-compiled binaries.
Then the point of open source / Free Software may have completely escaped
you. :) On one hand, it's a political initiative, on the other, it's an
efficient starting point for (economically and geographically) distributed
software development. It's not about compiling.
Remember: The most boring and unproductive element of Free Software / Open
Source is compiling software! Do something more useful with your time and
CPU power! :-)
- Jeff
--
"Laughter is a force for democracy." - John Cleese
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