On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 04:06:34PM +0100, Heiko Baums wrote: > Am Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:16:46 -0200 > schrieb André Ramaciotti da Silva <andre.ramaciotti@xxxxxxxxx>: > > > I know, I know, they always come back. :P > > My Arch installation is still in my HD, just in case. > > > > About disk usage, don't forget that arch keeps a cache of downloaded > > packages. So I don't think Gentoo is in disadvantage here. My > > installation uses 1GB less than Arch (both have basically the same > > packages). It may not sound like a lot, thinking of the size most HD > > have nowadays, but it's a 20% improvement. > > But you can delete the cached packages in Arch (pacman -Sc or pacman > -Scc). ;-) If this is useful is a different question. > And you can delete the sources in Gentoo. Both distros are pretty OK here. > > I don't think compiling takes that much. If you're in a hurry, then > > yes, it'll seem like forever. I installed in a weekend, basically the > > same time I took to install Arch (because I install some packages, > > then I remember of others, then others...). But it wasn't 48h > > compiling, it was way, way less. > > On my old i686 1,3 GHz CPU with 1 GB RAM it took me a week to compile > and install the complete Gentoo system inkl. Xorg, KDE, OpenOffice etc. > while I only need 1 or 2 days for Arch. And KDE alone took me 1 day and > OpenOffice 12 hours. I did this several years until I had enough of > this waste of time and found Arch Linux. > > Even if compiling only takes 48 hours. Installing it on Arch takes only > a few seconds or maximum a few minutes. And compiling uses more > ressources and thus more energy. Indeed, if I used KDE, I wouldn't use Gentoo. OTOH, Gentoo offers binary packages of OpenOffice, Firefox and some other apps. However, from what emerge tells me, firefox sources are one third the size of firefox-bin. As Brazil isn't famous for its ultra-fast broadband, I can imagine certain cases that compiling is faster. I agree with most of what you wrote, and I don't have the slightest idea of how maintaining a Gentoo system in the long run is. I'm just trying it and I like it so far, but keep in mind I've been using it for only one week. This wasn't the first time I thought of trying Gentoo, so I installed it to see how it is or I would be always thinking about it. When I get tired of compiling, I'll go back to Arch with a better idea of its strengths. :)
