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On 3 Feb 2009, at 22:39, Grant Edwards wrote: |
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> Whenever I see a write-up of Gentoo, it's describe as a system |
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> similar to BSD "ports" where you build packages from source. |
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> The main benefit claimed for this approach is that you get |
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> better performance because all executables are optimized for |
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> exactly the right instruction set. |
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> |
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> Where did that bit of apocrypha come from, and why is it |
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> parroted by so many people? |
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Back in Ye Olde Days, Gentoo was as cool & popular as Ubuntu is now. |
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This is before Ubuntu existed, but when the perception of Debian as |
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"boring" (because package versions in stable were so old) was already |
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fairly established. |
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If I look at, say, Slashdot now, I see articles like "Setting Up |
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Ubuntu On a PS3 For Emulation", "Jumping To Ubuntu At Work For Non- |
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Linux Geeks" and "The Secret Lives of Ubuntu Users" but back before |
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2004.0, when the Gentoo installer disks and profiles were called 1.2 & |
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1.4, all the generic "using Linux" stories which happened to mention a |
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distro by name, mentioned Gentoo. Honestly, Gentoo was in the news |
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_all the time_ - that's how I learned about it when I was looking for |
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a new distro (when Mandrake went bust for the second or third time). |
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The most popular distro will naturally have the largest number of over- |
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enthusiastic recent Linux converts, and also the largest number of |
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idiots. Also your mom. :P |
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So as you now regularly see blog posts or forum comments or social |
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news stories about how "I love Ubuntu because I did this with it" or |
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"Ubuntu's loads better than Windows because" - posts which completely |
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ignore that the same thing could done just the same with ANY Linux |
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distro - we used to see those comments made about Gentoo. |
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Just as now (a minority of) people will make idiotic claims about |
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Ubuntu, back in the day the most common over-enthusiastic claim about |
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Gentoo was "it's so |33t - it makes your whole computer faster". A |
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couple of posts in this thread have given genuine anecdotes which |
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support this, but when the claimant was blatantly an idiot (which |
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inevitably was sometimes the case) then one can see how the claim |
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might not seem credible to an outside & independent observer. |
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This is the background which the funroll-loops website satirised - |
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"optimised executables" sounds just like it came from that site, and |
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EXACTLY the sort of phrase that would've been used by a Gentoo fanboy |
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at the time. "Performance" was another favourite word, always used |
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blindly or with claims that the GUI felt snappier on Gentoo, rather |
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than any actual benchmarks. I'm sure there was at least one amateur |
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performance benchmarking article that came out at that time - showing |
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Gentoo to be the fastest, of course - and which was immediately |
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discredited because the competing distros used safer, more |
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conservative defaults (for filesystem settings or something). |
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To be honest, I am surprised this notion of "optimised executables" |
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has stuck around long enough that you've heard it, but it's an old |
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joke to many of us who were around in 2004. |
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Stroller. |
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