Re: divx avi's

["Scott C. Linnenbringer" <sl@panix.com>]

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 10:20:11 -0500 (CDT), Jack Browning
<spaminacan@charter.net> wrote: 

> It's really not a bad concept, and, in theory, it should work. The
> devil is in the details, though. The code base for Linux just isn't
> standardized enough to run everything through a compiler and expect
> the end result to work together. And, some guys who write Linux apps
> seem to revel in being contrarian: Jorge Schilling and the author(s)
> of util-linux come immediately to mind. I suppose that's what gives
> Linux its, um, charm.

Gentoo's a terrible concept, and it doesn't have anything to do with
Linux, it has to do with not being logical.

I don't like to bash on operating systems, but Gentoo seems to be
overhyped. For some reason, people believe that their software will run
more efficiently compiled for their specific architecture, even software
that is waiting for user input 99% of the time. And considering there
really isn't much efficiency to be gained compiling for an i686, or a
Pentium 4, instead of either an i386 or i486, since processors are now
concentrating on speed these days, it's even more worthless to optimize.

And I especially don't like to reference benchmarks, even more so than
bashing on operating systems, but if you ever look at any of those
source v. binary-based distributions, many times you'll see Gentoo
lacking in comparison to others, far from Gentoo blowing everyone else
out of the water.

So to conclude, if you want an optimized system, you should do it right.
Eliminate hardware bottlenecks (i.e., use hardware with good open-source
driver support), recompile and concentrate on the core like glibc and
the kernel, and understand and manage your system in the best possible
way you can. This is completely distribution-independent.

> The thing I like about Slack is that its packages are built from shell
> scripts. That makes custom configuration pretty transparent. When a
> new release comes out, I recompile some key packages for my arch at
> -O3 and things really fly. Best of both worlds.

I do this with Debian, too, and many also do this with Red Hat and every
other operating system with a concept of distributing the source of
packages. I can use apt to pull the source of any package I wish to
recompile, it automatically unpacks/patches it, and I can dive in and
customize it to my specifications. Finally, I can use a few
Debian-specific tools to build it into a package, and voila, I can
install it.

Not specific to Slackware at all. ;)

> BTW, I built an LFS system once, too. Doing it is a good way to learn
> some low-level system skills, and the LFS doc is valuable in its own
> right.

That's probably true. It's a good way to learn what is what in a GNU
system, and a lot of the nature of how an operating system works.

-- 
scott c. linnenbringer    |  sl@panix.com
http://www.panix.com/~sl  | sl@moslug.org
jabber: sl@theoretic.com  |  irc: Jawoota

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