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

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 4:39 PM, Grant Edwards <grante@××××.com> wrote:
> Whenever I see a write-up of Gentoo, it's describe as a system
> similar to BSD "ports" where you build packages from source.
> The main benefit claimed for this approach is that you get
> better performance because all executables are optimized for
> exactly the right instruction set.
>
> Where did that bit of apocrypha come from, and why is it
> parroted by so many people?

I've never done any benchmarks on my system of i386 vs core2 or
anything like that... I think the fact that gentoo allows you to
control compiler flags which can potentially give you speedups is more
of it. But, like you, building from source is kind of a side-effect of
Gentoo and not the reason why. Compiling for the sake of compiling is
just a waste of time, and that's why a lot of people say "Just use
Ubuntu" or whatever.

> AFAICT, the "performance" benefit due to compiler optimization
> is practically nil in real-world usage.

I can't say, but it "feels right" to use things tuned for your
specific hardware, even if it's meaningless. And some things like
running 64-bit vs 32-bit definitely makes a difference. But,
absolutely, the time spent compiling for core2 versus installing a
binary package for i586 is never going to be worth it.

> In my experience the huge benefit of source-based distros such
> as Gentoo is elimination of the library dependency-hell that
> mires other binary-based distros.

I agree completely. Portage and the lack of dependency nightmares
(usually :) ) is so nice. Things like live SVN ebuilds are so simple
to maintain, rather than building binary snapshots etc.

I'm a 4-year or so Gentoo user, and have donated money, and using
redhat at work is always a nightmare when I'm used to the flexibility
of Gentoo :)