Re: [PLUG] debian dist-upgrade from woody (stable) to sarge (testing) report

[Rahul Karnik <rahul@genebrew.com>]

christophe barbe wrote:

> I run unstable on all non-server computers and stable on all server
> computers (to get the security fix quickly).
> In my opinion (I am not alone) the release cycle is too slow and you
> can't reasonably stay with a pure debian/stable install between two
> releases. You end up adding a lot of unofficial source entries and with
> a less stable systems. 
>
> I personally consider unstable (that I call sid because it is not unstable) 
> a very good choice if you are aware of the debian dev.

And yet, unstable is still behind in some respects, e.g. gcc 3.2 is not 
supported as the core compiler yet. Meanwhile we have (at least) Gentoo 
1.4, RedHat 8.0 and Mandrake 9.0.

http://people.debian.org/~willy/c++transition.html

In Gentoo, at any point I have the ability to upgrade to the latest 
version of any package, including alpha/beta versions if I override the 
defaults. Works surprisingly well, except for those darned compile 
times. There is some ongoing work on offloading the compiles to another 
possibly faster computer, which would help immensely for laptop installs.

> A lot of tests have been done and they show nothing significant except
> for a fews apps. For example ssl is greatly improved when compiled with
> the appropriate optimization. We have a few packages with per-cpu-type
> optimization and a work is ongoing to allow automatic recompilation with
> cpu-optimization.

I don't know if this is still true since GCC 3 includes very specific 
optimizations for Pentium III, Athlon and so on.

> Does gentoo supports powerpc or the 10 others architectures?

Only Sparc and PPC ATM. An Alpha port is in the works. This is hardly a 
selling point for me, especially since I am speaking with a specific 
machine/need in mind. I don't want to rehash the age-old distribution 
war, but would rather evaluate them wrt my specific needs. As with OSs, 
to each his own.

Thanks,
Rahul
--
Rahul Karnik
rahul@genebrew.com

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