[ILUG] Suggestions for best 64 bit Linux distro?

[nadir at compsoc.nuigalway.ie]

Quoting Paul Jakma <paul at clubi.ie>:

> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, nadir at compsoc.nuigalway.ie wrote:
>
> > The portage system is robust, as is the baselayout. Infact it
> > teaches the user more about linux than a debian install does.
>
> This is probably an attracting feature. Gentoo users feel they're
> learning more because they're exposed to more of the details. That's
> not an argument for advocating it as a general purpose OS though.
>
> That probably explains why the Gentoo forums are 'better' - they need
> to be more active simply because Gentoo sucks the user into tinkering
> with far too much evil stuff.

True , I have also been commenting however on the magnificent howto's on the
forums and the wiki, we have guides to all sorts of stuff, tinkering is usually
minimal because of these howto's, but all the knowledge is there if you want to
get stuck in.

>
> > 2. as far as Im aware apt can not easily handle different builds, like in
> > portage if I want to install mplayer with framebuffer support, mmx , mmx2,
> ,
> > sse, sse2,  but no opengl or X support. I can
> >
> > 3. USE="mmx,mmx2,ssse,sse2,-opengl,-X" emerge mplayer
>
> Eek!
>
> Why do I want to have specify which SIMD instruction sets an
> application should use? Eek Eek.
>

Beacuse ..... Oo Portage is a system that will allow for all sorts of builds on
different arch's, If you want to define it globally just put it in the make.conf
file. Each ebuild file states what use flags it supports, why compile sse
support for example if you are going to run on an arch that doesnt support it,
especially on seriouslt cut down boxes, like say mini mac for example, where you
would use -mno-altivec and -mabi=spe afaik.
also using a flag like 'nptlonly' will not compile pthread type code, reducing
compile time etc. blah blah, and so on, loads of examples why different flags
might be used.

> As for OpenGL, X, other libraries - well if just one application
> links to a shared library, then you might as well have others link
> to - it costs nothing.
>
> There is a problem in some software in gratuitiously using libraries
> that create significant amounts of state - the "panel applet which
> uses 20MB of data" syndrome - but typically there's *nothing* you can
> do about that with a compile time option. The application *must* use
> the library, so either it would need to be modified not to do so or
> (better) the library should be fixed to be less hungry.
>
> PS: Configure options are mostly evil imho.
>

dunno, I usually go through the configure, if im going to compile something
manually.
Say like an application that has qt support, qt libs are pretty big, what if we
dont want to have them on our machine at all, and just want an application that
supports sdl say, but not qt.

> > 4. Portage has lots of ebuilds ubuntu and debian miss, like I was
> > saying before, ut2004,doom3,celestia, etc
>
> These typically are not redistributable. How does Gentoo get away
> with this?
>

the ebuilds just wrap the software, in the case of americas army, it goes
online, and installs the latest verion, does everything, but in the case of
doom3, it installs the linux installer, and tells you to copy the pak files over

> > for every reason we mentioned in this discussion. I wont list them
> > all again
>
> If you can't answer a question, ignore it. Ye olde trusty debating
> technique.
>

seriously , I did answer that before :p

> regards,
> --
> Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
> Fortune:
> Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.
>