[Sussex] Online with Ubuntu

[Geoffrey Teale]

On Tue, 2005-02-08 at 00:53 +0000, John D. wrote:
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> p.s. Gentoo stage 3 + GRP (lazy packages :D ) from inserting disc to  
> connection running 40 minutes. all that, and portage. Brilliant!

Gentoo has come a long way... once upon a time, what is now called a
"stage 1" build took several days.  Of course, back then we compared it
to "Linux from scratch" and saw that it was good.

Gentoo has become a much more general purpose distro these days, mostly
on the strength of it's package management system.

Personally I'd say if you know the effect of the compiler flags you are
setting (there's a very good article in this months Linux Journal for
those of you who really don't understand how greater an impact those
flags have) then a stage 1 built Gentoo box can be faster that any
off-the-shelf distro.  That said if you're doing stage 3 builds, or
you're not really sure what the compiler flags do then that whole aspect
of Gentoo is pretty much pointless.  

My advice, if you really care that much about performance then bite the
bullet and use a stage 1 build.  If you're just looking for an
up-to-the-minute, stripped down distro that lets you configure things
your way (another of Gentoo's strengths) then Arch might be a better
bet.

If you're looking for an easy life then Ubuntu rocks.. :-)

Oh, and if you've been using Linux since 1993 (and you haven't really
noticed any progress since then) then I'm guessing you're already a
dedicated Debian zealot and I'll leave you alone.
 
-- 
Geoffrey Teale <gteale at cmedltd.com>
Cmed Technology