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Chris Winters wrote:
>
>
> I think the Gentoo folks have gotten the hint about that and provide for
> binary packages if you want them:
>
> From: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/philosophy.xml
>
> At around the time Gentoo was born, the thing that got in
> the way was the lack of an easy way to build packages from
> source, to a user's specifications. Currently, we've done
> that very well, but what we haven't done very well is support
> pre-built packages, even though Portage has supported building
> binary packages almost since its inception. So we are doing
> that now.
No, there _might_ be binary packages if you want them. The truth is,
there very rarely are. Like, there are about 5.
> I haven't found the compiling much of an irritation and use Gentoo not
> because of the micro-optimizations (which get lost in the noise, IMO) but
> because it's got a fairly sane upgrade mechanism and customizing it only
> rarely makes me feel like stabbing myself in the eyes -- unlike the
> previous distribution I used up until a few years ago, Red Hat.
I wouldn't find the micro-compiling as annoying if the make.conf had a
bunch of simple examples. "If you want a workstation, use this
make.conf". As it is, you periodically realize you left some crucial
USE flag out and have to recompile everything. Apparently, because I
didn't have X (or is it x11?) in my USE flags, sudo decides to disable
DISPLAY when I run it. Ah, right, ok.
> But I think that all packaging systems suck in their own way. We just get
> used to them.
I've got too much hate to get used to them, but at least debian usually
stays out of my way. I believe that the vast majority of the software
hate I suffer through while using Debian is unrelated to Debian itself,
and is instead either endemic to linux (which maybe Debian could
mitigate, and often does, but isn't necessarily Debian's fault) or is
the crappy software I'm using.
(I'm now installing debian with Gentoo; fortunately debootstrap is
available in Gentoo's package dirs. :)
--
First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything
illegal with my computer, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was
too much smut on the Internet anyway, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty
stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the encryption users. But I could never
figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for me. And by that time there was no one left
to speak up.
-- Alara Rogers, Aleph Press
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Luke Kanies | http://abstractive.org | http://www.bladelogic.com
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