Gentoo Optimizations Benchmarked (Linux Magazine)

What I find it valuable for is that you can arrange to have all the source
for your whole system, exactly as it's running, all *there* and greppable.
No need to pull down source packages, you can do audits for uses of things
across the whole installed set of packages at disk speed. That's worth a
*lot*.

I have been a Gentoo user for five years, and most of the Gentoo users I know do view customizability as the reason for using it. I wrote the comment I did based on that experience.

Why you then turned around and talked about speed gains, when I had just said they're not a factor, is beyond me.

I disagree completely. I can't comment on why other users use Gentoo but when I used it (and I've had a machine that uses Gentoo for 7 years now that up until a few months ago was my primary router/firewall/dsl modem/general server for my home) was because I could configure anything and the package selection dwarfed any other distribution. I use some rather low user base software on my Gentoo machine because there were ebuilds in the emerge system for them.

Every single software package you can imagine is in their "ports" system. In my experience for small user base software Gentoo is the only distribution that has automatic install packages. When I stopped using it as my primary system (because they were making to many changes for me to keep up with in the unstable branch) they had introduced flags on thousands of packages that would trigger different options. Only want mysql support configured into every package instead of mysql and postgres? There is a flag for that. Don't want QT support in any package? There is a flag for that. The customization ability of Gentoo is unsurpassed. You can ensure packages have support for options and no support for others so users can't use unapproved software because the features won't be compiled in and libraries won't be installed.

Maybe it's not a big deal to have hundreds of different libraries and package options turned on in a generic binary package but the ability to limit that results in smaller binaries and a better system (and hopefully more stable) IMO. God forbid the system ever gets cracked, but I don't want said cracker to have an easy time of it with pre-built support for libraries and packages I don't use. That and the system was very easy to manage as long as you didn't ignore it for 2 years (the reason I dropped it as my primary firewall, that and power considerations). All it takes is to administer is a once a month cron job with "emerge --update world" then logging in the next day and doing "etc-update" to check for configuration changes in the new packages and restarting processes that have updated configurations or altered binaries.

As I said, Gentoo is a system that requires administration time monthly. My new firewall/home server was put in to reduce power costs (it's a mini-itx low power system, actually doesn't have a PSU, just a max 100watt power brick and 12v plug) and I decided to use Debian because it requires a LOT less administration time because they go to extreme effort to reduce or eliminate configuration changes in the stable branch and the stable branch is supported a very long time which is ideal for someone like me that no longer has time to maintain an active system monthly.

Gentoo is the system you want if you want a tightly controlled system. In fact if you run hundreds of systems Gentoo would be easier to manage than most distributions as you can build your own binary "ports" library and ensure each system has only the software it needs with no extra fluff such as unused support for features or other software and no libraries that aren't used. IMO it's all those extra features in binary packages that isn't used that causes system instability (rare) or program's to crash (not so rare). Most distributions compile their packages to support every single feature and cross support for other packages under the sun that 90% of people don't need. Ebuilds are also trivial to make (the reason Gentoo's ebuild library is so large) and explained in a few pages. RPM has 200 page books to explain it and I tried once to understand how it works and failed (put about the same time into it as I did to understand how ebuilds work)

Gentoo has it's uses, people that deride it IMO don't fully understand it's advantages.

You are both right and wrong in some of your comments.

First of all, I pretty much use Gentoo because it's easily customizable. It's easy with Gentoo. Before that I was a Slackware user. I would just install the minimal Slackware and for everything else I'd compile it myself into /usr/local because what Slackware had was either missing, too old or was missing a feature or another or just didn't do what *I* wanted it to. Gentoo gives you more options out-of-the-box but also makes it easy to go beyond what they provide (and not have to wait for someone else to do it for you). But not everyone wants/benefits from this and so obviously Gentoo is not for everyone. But to say there is no benefit or that the benefit isn't used is erroneous.

Secondly I do agree with you that Gentoo *is* kinda like a toy. Some people like to tinker. I'm a tinkerer. For some people a computer is just a utility. For others it's a hobby. I prefer Gentoo because for me Gentoo puts the "fun" back in computing (and Linux especially).

As far as optimizations are concerned, I don't optimize for speed, because I have fast computers and I don't do a lot of things that require a lot of CPU. Memory, however is different. I do use another binary distribution that uses a *lot* more RAM and swaps a heck of a lot more than my similarly configured Gentoo box that's running pretty much the same software. Now I don't know exactly why. I haven't looked into it that much truthfully. But my guess is that the apps in the binary distro is just linked to everything under the sun and it consumes memory, which is a needed "optimization" for me. Especially because I work/test things in virtual machines. But even simple desktop-like stuff takes much more memory. E.g. top shows that console-kit-daemon, which is a root-run daemon, takes up nearly 13x more DATA memory on my binary distro. These are single-user desktops that are similarly configured, but for any given process it uses *much* less memory on Gentoo. It all adds up, and before you know it you are in swapland.

And when other people ask me questions about Gentoo, it's usually of the type "how do I get Gentoo to do X" variety, not "How to I make Gentoo run faster so i can post some benchmark". Most of the things these people want to do are things that would be much more difficult to do in a binary-based distribution, which is what I assume brought them to Gentoo. And, to be honest, a few times I've wonder *why* these people want to do these things, but I guess they're people like me in that they like to have things the way *they* want them and not necessarily the way it was given to them.

As far as the "application" of Gentoo, that seems like you are asking for a business need. I don't have one. But Gentoo isn't about business. It's about individuals.

Actually, I've only ever heard people cite control and customization as reasons for using Gentoo and never have I seen performance benchmarks given consideration outside the odd magazine article. People who focus on the compilation issue and potential speed benefits in consequence tend to be Gentoo detractors, as it seems to play out again here. For my control-freak part, souce-based distributions are all about control, customization, and exclusion of as much horrifying backdoored and inscrutible and braindead software as possible as easily as it can be done. Gentoo counts among the pioneering projects that aim at giving computer owners a real say in what and how their machines run.