Gentoo performance benchmarked

[Giles Orr]

2009/10/31 Rajinder Yadav <devguy.ca-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>:
> Jason Carson wrote:
>> "Gentoo did out-perform Ubuntu in almost every test, and sometimes by a
>> fair margin. It does appear that optimizing for a specific CPU can yield a
>> decent performance increase...The question is whether the amount of time
>> it takes is worth the benefit, and that’s a personal choice."
>
> I gave up on Slackware Linux because I didn't want to tinker around with my
> Linux box, I want to use my Linux box as a tool to get other things done. I
> would think many more are in this camp. I perceive Gentoo far more of an
> annoyance than Slackware, but I might be wrong. I would also think far more
> people care about easy of use Vs customized performance boost.
>
> Personally I love Ubuntu and Debian because it makes my Linux life simple
> and easy. There have been a few things I've built from source, but for the
> most part I don't usually need to build from source.
>
> If you start thinking in terms of cost/value, and what your time is really
> worth, then the choice is obvious, go with Ubuntu or Debain.

I'm in the same "camp" as you, ie. I think Debian is easiest to work
with and constitutes the best use of my time - but it's worth
remembering that we're all on this mailing list because we adhere to a
different set of values than the majority of the population.  Most of
the world (either by choice or inertia) think that Windows is the
answer when you look at the cost/value equation.  So Linux users are
outliers on the graph of computer users.  And Gentoo users are
outliers on the graph of Linux users.  But what constitutes "cost" and
what constitutes "value" is actually a very personal question: I've
always had a fascination and respect for Gentoo, and for Jason it
offers a lot of value.  For me, patches and upgrades take too long on
Gentoo, but for him it's an acceptable cost - in part because he gets
Portage, arguably one of the best package management systems available
for Linux.  (Apologies to Jason for possibly putting words in his
mouth.)  It's the right answer for him: and personally, I'm glad to
have people using a wide variety of distros on this list.

>> I've been using Gentoo for several years now. I was initially drawn to it
>> because I thought it would outperform other distributions but for what I
>> use it for the optimizations make little, probably not even noticeable,
>> differences but I stuck with Gentoo because I like Portage (The package
>> management system).

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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