Well, there are some hardcore distributions that favor compiling most packages locally(Gentoo comes to mind), but they generally wouldn't get brought up in a thread talking about beginner recommendations. Generally, compiling from source is only necessary if you're interested in helping to beta test new versions of software or you want to run something your distro doesn't have a native package for, and even then, you can often find pre-compiled binary packages for most major distributions from the application's website. Yes, compiling newer versions yourself is one option if you go with a distribution that puts stability over being up-to-date such as Debian Testing, Ubuntu LTS, and other LTS editions and need a newer version of certain software than is provided by the distro, but there are other options(such as backports or switching to Debian testing or the STS version of a distro that has both LTS and STS releases. -Jeffery _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list