Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Improvements to the About Gentoo page

[Angelo Arrifano]

On Qui, 2011-02-24 at 08:29 +0100, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr." wrote:
> On 2/23/11 1:39 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 2:08 AM, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr."
> > <phajdan.jr@g.o> wrote:
> >> Instead of custom patches (which most of people don't apply anyway I
> >> think)
> >
> > Perhaps ok to drop, but you gotta admit that no other distro makes
> > this as easy to do as Gentoo, without causing problems (beyond
> > whatever your patches do).
>
> Good point. Yeah, that's one of the things I like a lot in Gentoo.

Maybe not drop then, so I'll try to squeeze it a little.
>
> >> and custom CFLAGS (easy way to hose the system)

People have to learn it somehow, no? I remember when I first starting
using Gentoo, I only started caring about sane optimizations when
Mozilla (which at the time didn't filter CFLAGS) started exhibit crashes
and regular instability. Still, CFLAGS are for sure important when
working with devices with limite resources.
> >
> > Yet probably 80% of our users use them, I'm guessing.  They also
> > provide significant performance boosts, especially on x86 where half
> > of the other distros still build everything for vanilla i386.  I think
> > that pulling this out really does remove something that makes Gentoo
> > distinctive.

+1
>
> Makes sense. On the other hand, we should avoid as much as possible
> creating an impression of crazy racers who will compile things for hours
> to squeeze out a few milliseconds.

Well.. LOL. If you receive a brand new Mustang which you can disassemble
and have total freedom of tunning for more performance, what will you
do? I think its the same with new Gentoo users, they are totally free of
changing CFLAGS, so heck! Why not?
I think we all were crazy racers at the beginning, but for sure now we
just want the system to run stable.
>
> > All three of those features really touch on the fact that Gentoo puts
> > the user in control, when they want to be in control, and yet Gentoo
> > takes care of all the other stuff on its own when the user doesn't
> > need this control.
>
> Yeah.
>
> > That said, I don't think we need to have a paragraph worth of the pros
> > and cons of custom CFLAGs.  I'd just talk about how Gentoo puts users
> > in control with the ability to apply patches, optimize CFLAGs, and
> > strip unnecessary dependencies.  Go ahead and mention that binary
> > packages are available for large packages for users who have slower
> > systems.  I'd drop all the stuff about the pros/cons of actually
> > taking advantage of any of those features - save that for some other
> > page for people who actually are going to start tweaking their
> > systems.
>
> Okay, I think it can be done. We should just avoid overpromising, and it
> should be fine.
>
I'll then try to squeeze the paragraph a little and append a line on how
tunning compilation flags (read USE) helps stripping dependencies (which
reduces memory usage and improves security).

Thanks
-- 
Angelo Arrifano (miknix)
Developer / GPE maintainer
http://www.gentoo.org/~miknix
http://miknix.homelinux.com