[arch-general] Frustrating Dependencies

[André Ramaciotti da Silva]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 01:36:15PM -0200, André Ramaciotti da Silva wrote:
> 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. :)

Just in case I left some of you wondering, yes, I'm back. I predicted it
myself and I guess most of you also did.

USE flags are nice, when they're playing along with you. When they're not,
and you mixed packages from the stable and the unstable branch, then you
have a problem.

Though I resist to learn this, KISS is always better.

It's good to be back :).