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speed / source distros (was Re: [LUG] Debian)



On Sat, 2003-05-10 at 18:54, dan prisk wrote: 

> I fail to see why I shouldn't use speed as an arguement. My current Gentoo 
> install is utterly configured for my system, right down to the individual 
> modules in my kernel. Thanks to this it runs significantly faster than any 
> other distro I have run and more importantly I know my system from the ground 
> up (well ok, there are parts I'm hazy about in the running of it, but by this 
> approach I have learnt a hell of a lot more than I would have done 
> otherwise).
Because these days speed increase by compiling for a certain arch is
negligible? 

To be honest I have absolutely interest in any source distro at all.  If
I want to make a system byte-code optimised then I'll compile the
sources, although these days you're much better off just giving it some
extra HW resources. (cue holy war about intel/ms/etc pushing hw
boundaries just to increase revenue).  Why in the world should I have
any interest in compiling every bit of software on my system before I
have a working installation? That's totally counter-productive. 

Linux needs to be more user friendly.  It's much better than it was back
in 1996 when I started using it, but there is still room for
improvement.  To be honest %99.9 of users should never need to consider
compiling their own kernel, whether you consider it a triviality or
not.  And much as I risk putting the numerous debian zealots on this
list's noses' out of joint, debian is (imo) one of the worst offenders
of this (cue flame war..). 

It's my opinion that Dan is overstating the advantage of compiling an
installation yourself by quite some margin.  To be honest the
distributons do a very good job at making their kernels work with pretty
much everything.  People should not need to be compiling software. 
That's hardly helpful from a evangelical point of view is it?

As for source distros, I've got many better things to do with my time
than compile a whole OS.  They usually involve going to the pub.

Alex.


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