Re: [tlug] Gentoo Binaries?

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

On Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 07:56:43PM +0900, tlug@example.com wrote:
> On Friday 28 December 2007 19:20:21 Niels Kobschaetzki wrote:
> > On Dec 27, 2007 6:56 PM, phillip tribble <phillip.tribble@example.com> wrote:
> > > Is it possible to have Gentoo only install binary packages instead of
> > > compiling?
> >
> > How about Sabayon (http://www.sabayonlinux.org/)?
> > It's a distribution based on gentoo, binary only.



> Perhaps you should try out FreeBSD...

Although FreeBSD has over 16,000 ports, with many available as packages,
a large number also require compiling from source.  Additionally, the
kernel and userland are a matched pair, rather than two separate
entities as they are in Linux.  So a system upgrade involves recompiling
the whole system, which can take over an hour on say, something with a 2
gig processor and a gig of RAM.  

Although Colin Percival and some others are doing a lot of work to make
upgrades more binary, it's still very limited.  For example, out of
STABLE, CURRENT and RELEASE, only RELEASE will work with it, and only if
you are using the GENERIC kernel.  (Although, like Linux, it becomes
less and less necessary to compile the kernel rather than using the
defaults.)

OpenBSD does more in the binary end, however, I've found that even for a
relatively basic desktop, I need to use their ports (source which gets
compiled)  as their package set is comparatively small. 

(FWIW, OpenBSD's Japanese support isn't very good. The only things
offered are kinput2 and Canna and they often don't work.  Even the
message in the package collection for it mentions this.)  :)



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Scott Robbins
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