On 29 May 2011 15:24, Bernardo Barros <bernardobarros2(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If you want to
build a lot of stuff yourself, Arch Linux and Gentoo crosses
my mind.
With ArchLinux you don't have to build anything if you don't want to.
Do not spread misinformation!
The default is to install (generic optimized) binary packages.
I have to build lots of stuff in Arch because a lot of stuff just
doesn't come pre-built. That said, the Arch User Repository combined
with the yaourt package manager script makes it easy to build many
many pckages from source.
Arch caveats:
- Stuff breaks. I recently had to revert gedit to pre v3 so that I
could continue using it with Supercollider - this involved using a
custom 'downgrade' script which isn't officially supported. I now have
gedit pinned so that it won't be upgraded. Same thing happened with
Wine breakage just the other day - all this because Arch packages
always follow the upstream, broken or not - tough luck if you want to
stick with Gnome 2 while Gnome 3 gets its bugs ironed out...
- Package management (pacman) is very good but generally involves
using the command line. There are graphical front-ends but they are
unofficial.
- It takes a while to get up and running - an Arch install comes
without an X-server or Alsa
Having said that - Arch is extremely lightweight because there's
nothing there that you don't add yourself, the support (wiki/forums)
is excellent and you'll learn a lot about your operating system.