[buug] Gentoo, Bluecurve and Linux too!

[Jeremy Brand, B.S.]

> On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 10:42:47AM -0500, Brian Sobolak wrote:
>
> > 1.  Has anyone taken Gentoo Linux for a spin?  I know a lot of people
> > on this list are big Debian fans, but Gentoo looks appealing as well.
>
> Thus spake Aaron T Porter:
> 	Gentoo probably speaks to your FreeBSD roots then. It definately
> looks like a nice setup, though I guess I just don't see the point in
> compiling everything locally if you're not actually doing it by hand.

This was explained to me by a Gentoo user.  Basically, he liked it because
all binaries on the system are for the exact processor (IE, i686, etc) as
opposed to the very common distro compiles of i386 or i586.  This was a
poor argument, because I asked him how much faster his machine ran and he
could not come up with any numbers.

Not that I agree it's worth the time...  I'm not sure if the time saved by
having a i686 copiled /bin/rm command (and friends) is worth the time it
takes to build an entire system.

I think Gentoo appeals to the geeky-new-to-linux crowd, because other
distros have become so easy to use.  Think back 10 years, and this comment
makes sense.  Remember how nearly every day was a new kernel day, and
every day was a chance that maybe one more piece of hardward worked in
your computer.  Ahh... the memories.

However, as most of us have come to pass, we just want to get all that
repetitive crap out of the way and for the most part are willing to trust
someone else's compile for the bulk of our OS and there is no way most of
us have the time to re-compile a whole system!

Jeremy