What ever happened to the total computer newbies who tried Debian (part I | part II)? Mike, Diane, Mary & Carla are still doing very well, although much has changed since the first articles were written. They no longer use Libranet. They no longer use Gnome & believe it or not, Windows has now been installed. Read along to find out what happened.
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Member since:2005-08-29
I am sorry but I still think the concept of distributing the source instead of the compiled app is just plain stupid. If one machine can compile it for 40'000 users and everyone else benefits from it why the hell would you want to leave your machine on for the night? It costs money, requires more energy (hence damages the environment). It is just inefficient and absurd for anyone who is not a programmer to get all those sources just to compile and then delete them.
As for computers doing things in the background:
- on a laptop it eats your battery
- responsiveness disminishes (yes, even on linux having a gcc task using 100% in the background doesn't make gimp that usable).
- leaving your computer on could just to compile once again the whole OS is going to reduce its life in the end (disks mostly).
Member since:2005-08-11
Howdy all
I am sorry but I still think the concept of distributing the source instead of the compiled app is just plain stupid.
Why not just use pre-compiled apps? Gentoo does support this (there are caveats though).
The main reason that gentoo normally has to compile things is that you may have set your system up with non-standard USE (compiler) flags (in which lies it`s flexability), these may create binary incompatablity with certain binary files your trying to install.
And before you ask, solving binary in/compatablity is a bit harder then just checking version numbers 
Your only looking at one aspect of it all, if everything was as simple as 1 way to do something we`d all be in flying cars and living in peace.
Member since:
2006-01-02
I don't get what the issue is with long upgrades on gentoo? You do them overnight, and they never get in your way. You can even do them as you are working, and they don't get in your way.
The advantage of gentoo is that their updates/installs invariably work as expected. The quality of gentoo packages is second to none on any distro I've tried. I just can't imagine going back to a binary based distribution. They always feel like they're held together with sellotape.
Time is irrelevant when the computer does things in the background and doesn't get in your way while it does it.