Grant Edwards wrote:
Whenever I see a write-up of Gentoo, it's describe as a system
similar to BSD "ports" where you build packages from source.
The main benefit claimed for this approach is that you get
better performance because all executables are optimized for
exactly the right instruction set.
Where did that bit of apocrypha come from, and why is it
parroted by so many people?
AFAICT, the "performance" benefit due to compiler optimization
is practically nil in real-world usage.
I get a bit of a performance boost in some corner cases, like encoding
videos with x264. But these small stand-alone programs can be compiled
from source with custom optimization options easily even in binary distros.
So all in all, I agree. Using Gentoo is nowadays not so much a matter
of performance optimization but of better control of how to build the
packages and the rolling release nature (I'm tired of major updates
every 6 months in the majority of binary distros.) I also like the USE
flags which let me chose how to build something and get rid of
dependencies I don't need. Administrative features like dispatch-conf
are also very useful.
A downside is that you'll need fast machines to comfortably build
packages. I wouldn't use it on my Pentium 3 800Mhz for example. That
would take ages to compile system/world with recent GCC versions. I
guess GCC was much faster in the 2.x versions back then?
