Re: pros/cons of installing from source
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Greg Folkert wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-05-03 at 13:59 +0100, yag wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> I would like to know whether installing from source rather than
>> from the repositories has any advantage in terms of performance or
>> something else. I didn't notice any difference when comparing
>> mplayer's behavior, although compiling it myself gave me the choice
>> of fine tuning the available codecs as well as installing the very
>> latest version, for instance.
>
> This is not Gentoo. Gentoo's vision of "maximum performance" is a great
> effort, but in reality is far from optimal.
>
> For every report of "Woot! Compiling from source kicks butt. Why didn't
> I do this earlier", I can find 1 that disagrees with you and 1 that says
> "maybe it is worth it for max performance, but WOW, 196 hours to get a
> workable complete system, I'm not so sure"
>
> The statistics I find important are the massive amount of testing some
> have done (I leave that upto the reader to find, should you need help
> finding it, please ask the list to help find it). These people have done
> installs of LFS/Gentoo and other source distributions and "highly
> optimized" the compilation process. Following multiple "best guides" to
> compile by. In the end, it really depends on WHAT you want to
> accomplish.
>
> Given that most of the things that "typically matter" like word
> processing and surfing the internet and listening to music... playing
> cards, etc. I would hazard to say that:
>
> No it is not worth the time and effort to "install from source"
>
> The reason I say this, is even if you get 1%-5% improvement in
> performance, are you really going to see (really and truly "feel") it?
> The answer is: no.
>
> Now, if you are doing nothing but ripping DVD or encoding MPEG files or
> doing full CGI animation renderings which sometimes take WEEKS to finish
> the sequence, then even 1% improvement may in fact be worth it. But then
> again, recompiling everything takes a very high amount of time and then
> you are just competing for processor time from the "rendering". In
> business terms it would be cheaper to just ad a few more machines.
>
> One last point, if compiling from source is so great, why does Gentoo
> supply pre-compiled binaries for about 95% of the available packages
> that can be emerge'd on any one system? The answer is: Because compiling
> take a very long time and people are impatient. They want Gentoo for the
> "elitism" aspect of Gentoo, but none of the waiting.
>
> So, in summary, there are a few situations where compiling from source
> is desirable. But in general, you will not notice the difference. The
> only thing you will have done is add to the eventual heat death of the
> universe.
Exactly the point I was trying to make, but you said much better than I
did. Greg, you really are an eloquent GNU/Linux guru. Kudos.
Joe
- --
Registerd Linux user #443289 at http://counter.li.org/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFGOhmliXBCVWpc5J4RAr94AJ9PYd8Eig0V4o1QTUuBnNqdpkkHiwCggleY
qmMP/JvgPF42vSe5n1nyLQ4=
=P3as
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Reply to: