Gentoo Is Not About Performance

Posted Nov 5, 2009 18:49 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
In reply to: Gentoo Is Not About Performance by dambacher
Parent article: Gentoo Optimizations Benchmarked (Linux Magazine)

Let's take them one by one...

You can build your own packages for all distributions I know about, so this isn't any kind of advantage
See above.
See above
See above

There is no advantage whatsoever here. There is just one *huge* disadvantage from building everything with tweaked configuration and environment: You are the only person in the world with that exact software. If something breaks, you are totally on your own. And for me that one alone by far outweighs anything else.

If you factor in the comment above that you need to babysit the system constantly, it is just a time drain. I've other things to worry about, thank you.

Gentoo Is Not About Performance

Posted Nov 5, 2009 19:26 UTC (Thu) by hathawsh (guest, #11289) [Link] (1 responses)

I disagree:

1. Building packages for binary distributions is time consuming. I have built .debs and .rpms and have always ended up regretting the time I spent on it. By contrast, Gentoo's automated package building saves a lot of time.

2. I find bugs that are apparently unique to me in Ubuntu and Debian a lot more often than I find such bugs in Gentoo. Why? I don't know. Maybe Ubuntu/Debian users are more prone to suffer in silence, while the Gentoo community communicates more, digs in, and solves it.

3. What babysitting? Yes, you have to keep up with the rolling upgrades, which is the main reason Gentoo is not good for everyone, but the rolling upgrades are very beneficial for certain purposes.

Gentoo Is Not About Performance

Posted Nov 9, 2009 2:14 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

I don't see the difference here, sorry. You get the new source ball, fix compilation problems, look if some configuration changed (or has to be redone), tweak any changed flags, ... The time spent actually creating the package is miniscule in comparison.
Good for you! But I really doubt very it much that you see more bugs in $RANDOM_DISTRO than in DIY compiling from fresh out of the oven sources. I do see more random fallout from the (few!) packages I do follow upstream than from the (several thousand) packages from Fedora. I just don't blame the distribution for them... and I guess you don't either.
Yes, exactly that babysitting.