Well, I''ve finally done it. I''ve switched over to Gentoo. I have to say, I love it already (even though I''m still in the process of building GNOME and KDE...). I mean, it combines the wonders of Debian''s apt-get with the speed of building from source. Anyway, I think I''ve finally found a distro I actually like better than Slackware. <img src=http://webspace.utexas.edu/~mvdepala/random/resist-ignorance.png

The speed of building from source? Building from source is slow and dreadful.

The speed you get after you build it

I''m well aware of the fact that the actual buliding takes forever.

<img src=http://webspace.utexas.edu/~mvdepala/random/resist-ignorance.png

To install Gentoo or Debian?

My foray into Gentoo didn''t produce any speed increases worth the extra install time.

I''ve ranked Gentoo in the "Hype category" for the most part.

Interim

I''ll admit that the speed increase isn''t really all THAT wonderful. However, if you''ve got time on your hands (time that you should be using to, say, study for finals ) then why the hell not?

As for Debian vs. Gentoo... Either one. I like some things about Debian, but there are some things about it that I really don''t like. So far I haven''t found a think about Gentoo that I absolutely hate.

<img src=http://webspace.utexas.edu/~mvdepala/random/resist-ignorance.png

I actually use gentoo as my primary distro, because, I like the fact that I get to choose what goes into my distro(switched from redhat), and also what compile flags, and such. Debian probably would be just as good, with perhaps a 5-10% performance hit for not being fully optimized, but the best thing, IMHO, in gentoo is the documentation, it explains everything you have to do in order to get a working linux distro up. And that is really cool.

quote:

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Original post by bastard2k5
Debian probably would be just as good, with perhaps a 5-10% performance hit for not being fully optimized

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Just a correction, since he forgot the decimal point...

.5 to 1.0% performance hit.

Yeah, that small. Heck, compiling for your arch might make the code SLOWER.

gcc isn''t all that great about things like that. They tend to come up with brilliant and stupid things at the same time.

Yeah, agreed.

On a side note, however, I just discovered yesterday that you can actually use emerge to get binary packages (mostly for the bigger things). So, you don''t even need to sit around forever to wait for X or KDE or GNOME or something to compile.

<img src=http://webspace.utexas.edu/~mvdepala/random/resist-ignorance.png

Thats odd.. Gentoo works between 10-35% faster.. but that of course is because I have a P4 2.0 GHZ and am using ICC

J