| Pat Regan on 16 Jul 2005 13:04:06 -0000 |
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Dan Widyono wrote: >> What exactly is the real advantage of a source based distro? > > I never used gentoo, and I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea. However, > I'll take a stab at answering with what I believe are potential positives. > > The way I see it, gentoo is a pain the first time, and after that you're > golden. You don't have to recompile everything anymore, and when changes > come out you just recompile portions. At least, in my ideal world, changes > are just patchsets. > I will have to expose my ignorance of Gentoo... Does Gentoo actually distribute changes via patches instead of full tarballs? If so, then I am more impressed with their package manager than I was before. That is very smart. > Another good thing is if a vulnerability is released along with a patch, you > can immediately patch yourself and recompile (and with make and typical C/C++ > code, you're only recompiling a portion of the package, not the entire > thing). Binary packages require the distribution maintainer to recompile > with their flags, QA test, release, and you have to reinstall an enitre > package. > If a vulnerability is released with a patch you don't need to be running a source based distribution to recompile a single package. > You'll notice very few changes with most packages with respect to interactive > performance, if you're talking about compiler optimization flags. That's > mostly due to kernel optimizations. > I didn't have high expectations on my attempt to optimize Firefox. I just wanted to see if all the crazy optimization flags the Gentoo guys use lived up to the hype :). > All that said, I can't see doing this on a slow laptop alone. If you have > several machines, one being a fast compile server, then you don't have any > serious issues with recompile times. For me the primary issue boils down to > control over your distribution. Gentoo is ultimate control. > I don't compile too many things from source, but I have at least one or two packages handy to check out. My 2.6 kernel tree is 330 MB, source + object, is almost 10 times bigger than the tarball. I still have a copy of Freeciv 2.x laying around from before there was a Debian package. The tarball is 8 MB, source plus object is 126 MB. I use Emacs CVS, I don't seem to have the source around anymore, but I recall it taking up quite a bit of room after compiling. I know that is a terribly small sampling but if that holds true I would be afraid to see how big my Gentoo source cache would become. Anybody have any real world number for this? > For me the primary issue boils down to control over your distribution. > Gentoo is ultimate control. > I don't have the patience for ultimate control anymore, but I am glad it is there for those that need it. I know there have been plenty of times when Debian unstable has been behind enough version to ALMOST make me want to roll my own. My laziness nearly always kicks in first :). > Regards, > Dan W. > Pat Attachment:
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