[arch-general] Frustrating Dependencies

[André Ramaciotti da Silva]

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 at gmail.com>:
> 
> > 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. :)