On Sat, 9 Aug 2003, Edenyard wrote:
I've just read something on Daniel James' 'Linux User Bulletin' that's got me thinking. There was mention of Gentoo Linux and it said that Gentoo was 'self-building'. Does that mean that, when one installs Gentoo, all the packages get automatically compiled for the processor that's actually in the machine, rather than defaulting to a 386 or something? Does that also mean that it takes an absolute age to install? And is it really much of an improvement over, say, my favourite Slackware?
I've just installed Gentoo on one of my PC's at home. Yes it does take a while to install, especially if you're compiling Mozilla from source, However it is building for the processor in the machine so once built it shoul dbe faster than a normal distro. It all seems to work quite nicely. I had a bit of trouble getting my head around the way the init scripts work. I'm used to the Mandrake/Redhat way of doing things. On the whole I'm quite impressed.
Sorry if these are dumb questions, but to a Bear of Very Little Brain (TM), it's perplexing and interesting all at the same time - maybe a bit like a jar of honey whose lid won't come off.... (Oh dear - guess what I've been reading lately?)
Carrie by Steven King?