There is no information what compiler versions the distributions used. It''s hardly possible that Gentoo is slower, thing about it.

quote: Original post by C-Junkie
http://articles.linmagau.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=227

Gentoo isn''t faster. You just think it is. Placebo effect.

You should have seen the topics on the gentoo forum about that particular artical!

The gist of it is, If you think that getting binaries compiled for generic computers will run faster then binaries compiled specifically for your box then you''ve got sh*t for brains. Think about it. The binaries are built using the same compilers, if you used the same flags it would be exactly the same speed. If you useds flags specific to your processor wouldn''t it make sense that it would work faster?

Also there was a large discussion on why the artical wasn''t a fair artical since the author didn''t use appropriate flags.

Actually, Gentoo *is* faster, but if and only if you compile with a lot of optimization. That said, it works the best if you have a Pentium 4 and use Intel''s compiler instead of GCC. Of course, you can really just compile everything from source using this method regardless of the distro you use, so that''s irrelevant.

Gentoo isn''t bad if you don''t mind mucking with a lot of stuff. It''s not a simple installation, and takes a long time. For example, emerge xfree && emerge gnome took about 36 hours on my Athlon 1800+ with full optimization (-march=athlonxp -O3). emerge mozilla-firebird takes about an hour. Everything else varies, from five minutes to a very long time.

The documentation is excellent, however, so really RTFM. The forums are also a great resource, but the search feature tends to be hit-or-miss.

I think I''ll stick with Gentoo from here on myself. My next project is to build a LFS system for my mediaplayer, but I think Gentoo will remain my toy OS for quite a while.

My question would be this, is it a viable option to release commercial software for a custom compiled kernal such as those of gentoo (or home brewed linux). Since you dont want to release the source code, I believe you are kind of stuck on options (or does someone know a work around)

I don''t follow you Paul. Very little changes with the kernel ABI between releases much less compiles...

Unless you''re talking about a kernel module.

You can run a Linux program on any distribution if it has at least the kernel and glibc version the program needs.

You can boot Gentoo with a Red Hat kernel if you want to...

[edited by - noVum on November 25, 2003 8:38:10 AM]

that article is highly biased. Its like comparing a 21 speed bike where you only use first gear to a bike with no gears: you hate the 21speed bike because its tough as hell to ride but you like the no gear bike because its works moderatly well everywhere.

i managed to install gentoo as my first *nix operating system in 1 day using an outdated gentoo-x86-install.xml. If you can''t get past the partitioning part then its not gentoo''s fault. thats common knowledge and fdisk is a common program. If you have any previous linux experience then the only thing you should need to know is

32MB Linux Partition (recommended ext3)
512MB Linux Swap Partition
2GB+ Linux Partition (recommended reiserfs)

quote: Original post by ze_jackal
Gentoo isn''t bad if you don''t mind mucking with a lot of stuff. It''s not a simple installation, and takes a long time. For example, emerge xfree && emerge gnome took about 36 hours on my Athlon 1800+ with full optimization (-march=athlonxp -O3). emerge mozilla-firebird takes about an hour. Everything else varies, from five minutes to a very long time.

The documentation is excellent, however, so really RTFM. The forums are also a great resource, but the search feature tends to be hit-or-miss.

I think I''ll stick with Gentoo from here on myself. My next project is to build a LFS system for my mediaplayer, but I think Gentoo will remain my toy OS for quite a while.

LFS 5 came out. I compiled LFS 4... but eventually switched back to Debian. All in all - my LFS system is faster. But its alot nicer to say "apt-get install xfree86" than to compile it from scratch. (And hope you do it right!)

But if you need any pointers,etc on LFS from scratch with odd things.. lemme know. The only project I never got completed uner LFS was winex. ;-) Then I realized that I didn''t need it anyway.

Scout


All polynomials are funny - some to a higher degree.
Furthermore, polynomials of degree zero are constantly funny.

Why would you want to do a LFS, when you can do the same thing with Gentoo without having to download and compile everything yourself?