[Ilugc] Debian installation
- From: prabhu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Prabhu Ramachandran)
- Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 15:05:05 +0530
"SR" == Sridhar R <Sridhar> writes:
SR> Prabhu Ramachandran said:
>> Hmm, so you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.
>> Debian has such good package management that
>> folks are scared to compile their own packages for fear that
>> their packages won't be as good. They
SR> But the packages are compiled with i386
SR> optimizations. Why should I go for old compiler optimizations
SR> when I have modern hardware. Gentoo[1] excels in this aspect.
True, but then again you could just as well rebuild your Debian source
packages. Its fairly easy to do for each individual package. Agreed,
you can't do 'make world' or some equivalent to build everything in
one go. *bsd and gentoo are good for that.
I also am not sure if compiling for i386 vs. i686 really makes that
much of a difference? I'd like to see some numerical evidence and not
subjective views. I am not talking of libraries like ATLAS, which are
hand tuned for specific architectures. In this case Debian does have
arch specific packages.
Besides, if anyone talks of absolute speed, gcc, kde and gnome in the
same breath they are practicing some form of double standards. ;-)
[snip]
>> case where the reverse is true. Its not like Debian
>> policy forces you not to install packages from source.
SR> But Gentoo is lot more convinient if you like
SR> compiling the source .. and it also has binary packages though
SR> not recommended.
SR> The strong point against debian is it still compiles
SR> i386 binaries even if you want to use them with modern
SR> hardware. Gentoo is fast. I have Gentoo 2004.0 CDs with me.
I'll ask again. How fast is "fast"? What significant difference does
it make to compile it for your architecture? Numbers please. What
are your benchmarks? How does it make any difference to someone who
does not use GNOME/KDE?
Besides the whole thread has digressed. Being a fairly long time
user, I aware of some of Debian's shortcomings. My only point was it
is unfair to wrongly characterize users based on what distro they use!
cheers,
prabhu
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