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William Hubbs wrote: |
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> On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 05:42:54PM +0100, bn wrote: |
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> > So, I would really want to understand where the Gentoo flexibility beats |
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> > down a binary distro. |
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> |
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> > Don't get me wrong -I like Gentoo. Really. But the claim that a binary |
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> > distro is "unfixable" just because I had someone compiling it for me |
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> > instead of having emerge doing the job, looks odd to me. |
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> |
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> For me, one big difference is in our use flags. |
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> |
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> Binary distros have to force you to install packages with all of their |
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> dependencies, but that is not required on gentoo since you can select |
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> which features you want to support. |
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> |
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> Another difference is that, since you are compiling everything from |
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> source, with the correct CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS settings in make.conf, you |
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> can optimize the binaries you produce to take full advantage of your |
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> processor, which you can't do on a binary distro since everything is |
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> already compiled for you. |
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> |
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I agree with this 100%. I remember Mandrake and how it would install a |
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whole bunch of stuff just because I selected one package. It wasn't |
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that they were a dependency or anything but that the only choice you had |
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was 'all or nothing'. They built-in support for a lot of things when |
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they built a package so it pulled in all its buddies to. This and the |
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upgrade process was why I switched to Gentoo. |
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Dale |
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:-) :-) |
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