Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Measuring The Benefits Of The Gentoo Approach

Posted by timothy on from the not-necessarily-what-you'd-think dept.

An anonymous reader writes "We're constantly hearing how the source based nature of the Gentoo distro makes better use of your hardware, but no-one seems to have really tested it. What kind of gains are involved over distros which use binary packaging? The article is here."

4 of 467 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Misses the point by ecchi_0 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Finally, what's with measuring compile times? How is that a fair way of measuring performance? Hey, look, my distcc + ccache + lots of CPUs system with gcc3.2 can compile stuff faster than your single CPU gcc2 system... It's like comparing chalk and oranges

    Except in this case they all had the same hardware on each machine...

  2. Re:Misses the point by scotch · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Why the hell would you introduce a distributed computing tool in a discussion about evaluating the performance of a single machine/OS? Pure obfuscation. Typical gentoo-missing-the-point behavior. Either compiling the kernel is a fair measure of the speed of the system or it isn't. distcc doesn't play into it. Here's a fun analogy. You want to see which is faster a porche 911 or a chevy corvette. So some thoughtful guys put together a series of tests, one of which is a 1000 mile race. Then along comes user keesh (202812) who says "Bad test, I wouldn't drive 1000 miles, I would take the train."

    A hearty helping of wtf is in order. Some of your other points are ok, though ;).

    --
    XML causes global warming.
  3. Unfair test by periscope · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There seems to be little attention given to the fundamental unfairness of this test presented.

    The distributions were running with different software versions initially and although this was corrected there seems to have been little consideration given to the minor tweaks given to each different installation used. Which services were running on each system? Were the kernel settings identical in use? Were the machines experiencing differences in performance due to the X setup causing X to add different loads?

    etc.

    Fundamentally this test was probably not complete enough to suggest anything in particular. Perhaps it would have been better to boot a single machine three times and perform the sequence of events exactly the same each time as this would have also ruled out some other potential factors.

    Jon.

    --
    http://www.jonmasters.org/
  4. Enough Already... by khyronmaetel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok, I'm a gentoo user. I'll admit a sizable percentage of our ranks dont know what they're talking about, i'll even admit that most distro "speed" is in the users head. But most of you are missing the point. Many gentoo users (including myself) installed gentoo as an ongoing learning experience. Sure, there's really no difference between the "l337ness" of typing emerge foobar and typing rpm -ivh foobar. But those of us who have taken the time to understand the portage system have learned a great deal. As an aspiring programmer, this was my distro of choice because it enabled me to learn about gcc. Also, i like the idea of (although most install standard packages) being able to beta test bleeding edge applications. While there are a lot of phoney gentoo users who are under the impression that theyre furthering the opensource movement by emerging packages, gentoo's backbone a highly active community of volunteers who are really interested in Open Source. Basically, all i'm trying to say is that any idiot can probably get gentoo installed and working, but the real point is to understand the OS that you've built, and i've found that gentoo helps me and others do this better than package based distros.