[NTLUG:Discuss] Anyone here use Gentoo?

[Iostream@comcast.net]

Gentoo is great for performance as it can compile every package with
optimizations for your platform, not just the kernel... There is no question
that compiling with the CPU specific optimizations can be a big performance
improvement, especially with Athlon.  Unfortunately P4 does not have many of
these improvements yet. I would expect compiler optimizations for P4 to come
some time soon.
As for application support, just because someone says they support X
distribution, doesnt mean they wont work anywhere else.  The only problem with
this is when glibc changes introduce a binary incompatibility from the supported
platform, etc.  If people would start certifying their applications to the LSB
instead of a specific distribution, we would not have most of those problems. 
All in all, Gentoo is a strong distribution.  It does however require a bit more
work for installation, and is not as easy to understand for entry level users.

Justin
> JR Newsletters wrote:
> 
> > I'm just curious. After being on RedHat for a number of years, I tried 
> > Gentoo on both my main home machine and my laptop, and was really 
> > stunned as to how much better the performance was on my two machines.  
> > And as a side effect, I've noticed that some programs, that claim that 
> > they only run on RedHat, seem to work with no problems on my Gentoo 
> > box.  And quite frankly, I haven't missed RPM at all.
> >
> > So I was curious if anyone else here is running Gentoo as I've seen no 
> > mention of it on this list.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > https://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> 
> I ran gentoo a while ago on one of my boxes and was very impressed by 
> the performance, the only downside with the distro that I saw was how 
> long it took to get up and running due to the fact that it had to 
> compile everything. I know that they have made great strides in 
> releasing binary packages of some of the larger and more popular 
> installs (XFree, Gnome, etc.). But I'll have to admit that I was playing 
> with it on a very old laptop (AMD K6-266).
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
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