On Apr 8, 2005 7:14 AM, AJ Spagnoletti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > If you do not need useflags, you do not need gentoo. If you do not need > > gentoo, you are wasting your time with it. Plus, corporate users want a > > stable base with years of support contracts, nothing gentoo is suited for. > > With what I do on my computer I do not *need* useflags however when I > was looking into linux (sadly I was a windows user for a long time) I > wanted something that would not only get me away from windows but also > provide me with a bit of a challenge. I picked gentoo because I wanted > things like USE flags and the ability to customize my system to my > standards. Its just as much a want for things like USE flags as it is > a Need for them.
Hear hear! My point was really NOT that the concept of USE flags is unimportant. It's that the values that are set for each flag is not overly important for the average user. Like most things in life probably 90% of the Gentoo boxes out there use some common small set of flags. Software compiles. We users are happy. For the other 10% that want to use something else, Gentoo gives them the choice to do so. I think that the active people here are mostly those like me asking for help and those hotrod builders who give the help. I'm quite sure that if I built hot rods I'd like to get the most performance I could. I'm also quite sure that as I sit here this morning and type this response that the USE flags this program was compiled with make very little difference to my experience of using this machine. I think it's GREAT that Gentoo has USE flags and that smart hotrod builders can make use of them. I also think it's GREAT that people like me really don't have to pay attention to them very much to get a machine built, running and stable. I'm far more impressed by the ability to search for an app in portage and have it on my machines in a few minutes (I.e. - no dependency hell) vs. the values that USE flags have been set to when the program was built. But then again, I'm the stupid guy who asks for help, and a happy Gentoo user for over two years who has probably changed his flags once in the last 12 months. (nptl) Cheers, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
