Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?

[Christopher Walters]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Mike Edenfield wrote:
> On 2/5/2009 7:01 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>
>> no. He is an idiot if he does not read the docs. Simple. Like people
>> who don't
>> read the manual to their car or vcr and then complaining if something
>> does not
>> work. Idiots.
>
> "They should read the manual" is *not* a valid design goal for a system.
>  At best, it's a justification or rationalization when outside
> constraints force a design to be non-intuitive.
>
> Given the choice between two otherwise equally functional systems (of
> any sort -- electronic, mechanical, digital, etc); if one requires me to
> spend extensive time reading an instruction manual to use and the other
> is designed to be easy to use out of the box -- the "idiot" is the
> person wasting their time reading instead of being productive.  To use
> your own example, I have no problem figuring out how to start my car,
> turn on the A/C, tune my radio, and drive to work without reading the
> automobile manual.
<snip>

I am afraid I am going to have to disagree with you on this issue.  If you
don't read your car's manual, you'll have no idea what kind of maintenance
schedule that is recommended by the maker of the car, nor will you know what
the appropriate tire pressure is, and the recommended tires for your car.

Of course, if you plan to do your own maintenance on your car, you'll need not
only the manual, but also a technical manual and some tools, as well as a garage.

Gentoo provides the tools and the equivalent of the manual and technical
manual, and you provide the "garage" (the hard drive) and "car" (the memory,
CPU, etc.)  It is up to you how you use those tools, and if you feel you
shouldn't have to read the docs to have a working distro, then maybe you should
consider Ubuntu or something similar, where no reading is really required, and
no familiarity with programming is needed.  Sorry, but it just had to be said.

I believe that Gentoo was made for programmers and others who wish to tinker
"under the hood" to make a better, faster and more efficient distro suited to
their needs.  I have absolutely NO problem reading the docs, looking at source
code, and the like, since these thing help me to learn more.

The thing that separates Gentoo from other metadistributions (kudos to the
person who first coined this term), is that Gentoo has a relatively large
number of maintainers who write patches to fix bugs, test new versions of
packages, and new packages for stability on a range of different systems, set
up USE flags for each new version or package, and so on.  So long as you know
the system, and know one or more programming languages, you can also submit
packages, patches and ebuilds for consideration, or just use them on your system.

Real speed improvements may be achieved, if and only if, you know how a package
is coded, gcc compiler options, and linker flags, and so long as you have
optimized the kernel for *your* system, as well as the system libc (glibc for
Gentoo).  The compiler and linker will only do what you have told them.  As has
already been stated in this debate, the main benefits of Gentoo over binary
distros are the virtually endless configurability, and being able to merge a
package without a ton of additional "required" packages that you neither need
nor want.

In contrast, the binary distributions are compiled with all package options on
(this can pull in hundreds of unnecessary packages, just for the want of one),
and for maximum usability on just about any system:  Case in point, for 64-bit
systems, Debian and its child Ubuntu, have packages compiled to use the
"generic x86_64" option, so they can be used on an AMD64 and an IA64 system.
In addition, all kernel options are either directly in the kernel, or modules
that will eventually be required by some package.

While it is possible to get the source and compile packages yourself, these
distributions don't exactly make it easy.  They are geared to people who don't
want to read the docs - who want something that will set up a desktop
environment "out of the box".  They are not geared to people who want to tinker
around "under the hood" (to keep the car analogy going).  JMHO.

Oh, and one final question, and observation.  Observation:  Anyone who tries to
fly an airplane (or repair one) without reading the docs, assuming no flight
experience, is truly an idiot, and a dangerous one, at that.  I think that it
is better to compare Gentoo to an airplane than to a car or a VCR.  Although
both of the latter are certainly complex, they in no way come close to the
complexity of aircraft.  Whether your Gentoo will be a single engine propeller
plane, or a fast jet is up to you...  Again, JMHO.

Regards,
Chris
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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=TYwT
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----