Warp wrote:
>   This is obviously based on the design of Gentoo, where indeed the entire
> software management (and the even the installation of the OS itself) is
> based on source code packages which are compiled for the computer in
> question (the basic idea being that when the software is compiled for
> that computer, it's more optimized specifically for it).
>   Also this is nowadays a design feature almost exclusive to Gentoo, and
> quickly losing popularity (because the advantage of a per-computer based
> optimized compilation gives nowadays less and less speed benefits over
> more generic binary distributions).

	That used to be what attracted people to Gentoo. The actual Gentoo
users stopped advocating this "benefit" more or less years ago (perhaps
that's why its popularity dropped?).

	I installed Gentoo in 2003. Gentoo was not even 2 years old. And even
then people were seriously questioning the speedup due to optimization.

	The real benefits of Gentoo are/were:

1) Awesome package management (for its time - the best source based one
even now).

2) Because you did everything from scratch, it somewhat was good for
people who wanted some minimalism. When I installed Mandrake, the
default install put more stuff that I needed, and I wasn't knowledgeable
enough to know what to get rid of. With Gentoo, since everything was
built up from nothing, I (more or less) only had what I needed.

3) The process of step 2 teaches you a lot about Linux. Not as much as
LFS, but still a lot. I'm sure I could have used some other friendlier
distro all this time and never learned those things.

4) Great customizability - this is part of point 1. Whenever you install
a package, you can specify precisely what features you want installed.
This can reduce quite a lot of dependencies, and a lot of clutter.

5) Awesome docs (for its time).

	None of these has much to do with optimization, and I'm sure all of
these are the reasons people stick to Gentoo.

	Of course, I can list quite a lot of downsides. Gentoo today is simply
not as good as the Gentoo of 2003. Their repositories used to be
bleeding edge. Now they lack lots of good, stable software that's been
out for years.

-- 
Isn't it counterproductive to have incandescent bulbs in a fridge?


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