Gentoo desktop?

[Ian Petersen]

On Jan 10, 2008 4:42 PM, Dave Germiquet <davegermiquet-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Additionally its great if you can use Distcc with gentoo, thats how i
> learned how to use distcc.
>
> (A cluster compiled program)

It _is_ pretty cool that distcc and ccache integrate with the Gentoo
package manager, but, in fairness, I think they're just crutches to
ease the pain of building things from source.  If you install binary
packages instead of source packages then you don't need distcc at all
and you get a much more significant speedup.

If you happen to have a collection machines on which you'd like to run
Gentoo, I think it would be cool to have a "build host" that compiles
all the source packages (using distcc on the rest of the machines) and
stores the resulting binary packages in a network-accessible place.
The rest of the machines can then install the binary packages without
having to compile everything all over again.  This only works if
you're willing to use the same compiler settings and USE flags
everywhere.

By the way, another nice feature of Gentoo is that it's easy to create
a minimal system.  I've never used real Debian (only Ubuntu), so maybe
it's just as easy there, but on Gentoo, you have to choose everything,
so you can choose small system services or, if you're feeling
non-standard, you can choose not to install a cron daemon or a system
logger, or whatever.  You could probably do the same thing with
Ubuntu, but in the Gentoo case, you start with nothing and build up
whereas Ubuntu starts with a heck of a lot and you'd have to whittle
down.  I think it'd be easier to build a small system by starting with
nothing than by starting with a big system.

Ian

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