Comments on Random thoughts by Ceki Gülcü: Does Gentoo make sense?

Two hours? I remember FOUR DAYS compiling OpenOffi...

2008-06-29T00:22:00.000+02:00

Two hours? I remember FOUR DAYS compiling OpenOffice.org 1.1 on FreeBSD ... and it still didn't work afterwards, and I had to use a Linux binary under compat ;-)

The main problem with packaged binaries is the dif...

2008-06-28T16:24:00.000+02:00

The main problem with packaged binaries is the difficulty in creating the package. This difficulty too often results in errors in the resulting package, particularly as regards dependencies.

The real answer lies in improving the package development process, not in regressing to putting the load on the end user by requiring compilation.

Any of the common distributions today simply doesn...

2008-06-28T07:40:00.000+02:00

Any of the common distributions today simply doesn't have the kinds of issues you seem to think they do. If you want a package, and install it through package management, it will install; if there are dependencies, they will install too. And it takes a only a couple of minutes instead of a couple of hours or more.

Sorry to say, you really are wasting your time with gentoo. (I

I disagree. There is also a package manager which ...

2008-06-28T06:35:00.000+02:00

I disagree. There is also a package manager which resolves dependencies for you in most Linux distributions. And I think there are also redundancies / conflicts in Gentoo, in exactly the same way as they exist in other distros.

I don't say that Gentoo does not make sense. It damn does. But as a professional administrator, I don't have time for building the packages everytime there is an

Fun post! One advantage of source-based distros th...

2008-06-28T01:55:00.000+02:00

Fun post! One advantage of source-based distros that is more or less relevant, depending on your feelings, is that you're really taking advantage of the fact that things are open source. To most people that never makes a difference, but it does to nearly every Gentoo user.