[ILUG] Suggestions for best 64 bit Linux distro?

[nadir at compsoc.nuigalway.ie]

Quoting Vishal Vatsa <vishal at cs.may.ie>:

> On Wed 22 Jun 2005 16:46, nadir at compsoc.nuigalway.ie wrote:
> > you seem to be obsessed wiht fun-roll-loops, I think done properly you can
> > make your system faster, but yes maybe only 10  or so, Im no fan of
> > overclocking or anything myself, I use gentoo for the following reasons.
> >
> > 1. Portage rules, the ebuilds often provide packages which just work, they
> > are pre configured, tweaked, patched, I have found with debian and ubuntu
> > and especially rpm based distros, that the package management gives u the
> > package, plus all the pain of sorting out conflicts etc, portage works,
> and
> > damn well. Also the USE flag sustem is miles ahead of anything else out
> > there, the ability to configure specific support for applications without
> > having to wade through configure and make files is awesome. Time to emerge
> > world is fine , leave it go over night, problem solved.
> Leaving the performance boost issue alone (I don't want to argue about it,
> it
> is different from system to system).  Also I am not a big fan of RPM based
> systems also (too much personal trauma in my early years).
>
> I used Gentoo for about 1.5 years on my home system and always used debian
> in
> work. So from personal experience I can say that your point about portage
> and
> USE flags being miles ahead are not fine, yes the portage system is good, so
> is dpkg. I don't remember the last time I had to wade through make files for
> my debian desktop.
>
> I guess you have nice bit of hardware if you can emerge world over night.
> The
> main problem I had with portage was the number of times I had to go in and
> edit an ebuild file to make stuff work. I have never fiddled with an deb
> file
> ever, unless I am making my own debs.

wow, Ive really never had to edit an ebuild, i can only think of one time off
hand, unless like you are saying, I was making my own, or heavily modifying one
for other purposes, bu ok, fair enough.

> > 2. Documentation, I have yet to see better documentation, better wiki and
> > better forums.
> Yes the Gentoo community are nice and help full, mostly muppet free.
> > 3. Community, yes I like them, there are less lamers who try to beat down
> > other distros.
> Yes they do, I remember a hole thing about how Debian was losing users to
> Gentoo.

Yes I know the thread, but it was in direct response to Debian users admitting
they had a problem on their own forums, most of the conversation was civilised
:)

>
> > Quoting Colm Buckley <colm at tuatha.org>:
> > > On 22 Jun 2005, at 16:18, Vishal Vatsa wrote:
> > > > Also most people don't want to spend like a couple of days of
> > > > setting up the system for 10-20% boost. Its just not worth the
> > > > compile time if don't have the latest and greatest CPU. And if you
> > > > do then do you really care about 10% boost?
> > >
> > > 10-20% is *extremely* unlikely.  It might be plausible if you were
> > > running i386 code on a P4, but not when using funroll-loops etc
> > > against stock -O2 on x86-64.
> > >
> > > Also note that most of the recommended Gentoo optimisations such as
> > > funroll-all-loops are optimising CPU usage against disk and RAM
> > > usage.  On most modern systems, where the CPU is very fast and RAM
> > > and disk slower, this will lead to *decreased* system performance.
> > >
> > > You also have to set the time spent compiling against potential
> > > savings in runtime; most Gentoo packages seem to version-up every
> > > couple of days, so there's virtually no chance that the (theoretical)
> > > runtime gains will stack up against the time spent compiling.
> > >
> > >      Colm
> > >
> > > --
> > > Colm Buckley / colm at tuatha.org / +353 87 2469146
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Irish Linux Users' Group
> > > http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug/
>
> --
> Vishal Vatsa
> Dept. of Computer Sc.
> NUI Maynooth.
> Public Key:
> http://www.minds.nuim.ie/~wish/vishal.pub
>