Re: Are we losing users to Gentoo?
On Nov 21, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Now, if we were to have precompiled binaries for say ten different
> varieties of i386 (and I think that's enough to make anyone happy),
> the 6GB currently holding 386 packages would be 60, for a net increase
> of 54GB.
>
> We'd need perhaps three different m68k varieties (two more than now),
> one more Sparc, one more alpha, no more powerpc IIUC, no more arm, one
> more mips, one more HPPA (or two?), no more ia64 or s390. So that's
> nine more varities of 386 to consider, and maybe six for the other
> architectures. So the total would be fifteen more copies of every
> package, and it's 6GB per copy, so the total storage requirement is
> about 90GB.
Bah, don't forget that you'd want multiple PPC (603e, 604e, G3, G4,
790...) You could get away with 3 m68k (68020+MMU/030, 040, 060),
although you might want more (040 w soft-FPU emulation for the LC040).
Of course, this would also entail separate CD images for each possible
permutation. ("What do you mean, I have to install these crizappy
i386 packages and then upgrade; I want ones optimized for my six-way
Athlon MP setup out of the box! And don't give me Athlon XP packages,
it's *just not the same*; the timings on this one instruction give a
.0002% speedup, which dang-it I NEED!")
Not to mention build daemons for each possible permutation; some could
conceivably be hosted on existing boxes, but they'd need extra RAM or
disk space to keep up (and more people to keep an eye on them).
Oh, by the way, hurd-i386 and the *BSDs will want all of these
optimizations too. Better double your estimate :-)
Chris, glad he picked up a 120GB drive the other day so he can build
custom CDs for all of these wacked-out optimizations.
--
Chris Lawrence <cnlawren@phy.olemiss.edu> - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/
Computer Systems Manager, Physics and Astronomy, Univ. of Mississippi
125B Lewis Hall - 662-915-5765
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