On Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 08:34:37PM +1000, Ben de Luca wrote: > > > Does spending hours compiling really save you time? Does your system really > > run so much faster that it outweighs the time spent compiling? > Well it doesnt really take that much time off me. If i want a bit of > software, I can normaly set up and @ job and know its there in the > morning. The interactive speed of a gentoo system seems to be > significantly faster than the binary distrobutions I have used.
Well, there's no reason why you couldn't do this with other distros as well. They all provide the source. > Its central system for install new software is great (yes i know deb can > do this too). I prefer to configure my systems, by the use of files and > not some OS specific application.I know where all the files i need to > configure live, rather than having to track down some weird app. Debian generally uses config files in predictable places for configuration (thanks to its strict packaging policies), but does provide a few configuration tools, for instance for XFree86 -- but even that's optional. I've heard horror stories about people attempting to configure X and so forth from scratch on Gentoo, which sounds like wasted effort when it's a solved problem in most distros, but perhaps Gentoo is now a little more advanced? > As i mentioned in an earlier post, I run a few different arch machines > here at home. And it suits me to have to only download source files. I > dont want to have to download 3 binary files. Again, I still don't see why Gentoo is special here :) Grab the source debs or srpms and away you go... using apt-proxy or an appropriately configured squid and you'll only need to download it once, no matter how many machines are installing it (or you could just do it manually, of course). > > Is there something about Gentoo I'm missing? > > Overall i find that gentoo suits my needs so thats why I use. It may not > be right for everyone. Well, if it suits you and you're happy, it's hard to argue with that :) I'm still not really understanding what its advantage is, but that's my problem not yours ;) -Andrew. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
