3 Apr
2005
3 Apr
'05
2:09 p.m.
Michael Scherer wrote:
I doubt that slackware will die.
I hope so. But it is fragile in the sense that it depends on one person
only. And security updates are getting very rare.
I think there is also binary package, like bsd have.
From the handbook: "Portage supports the installation of prebuilt
packages. Even though Gentoo does not provide prebuilt packages by
itself (except for the GRP snapshots) Portage can be made fully aware of
prebuilt packages."
So Gentoo does not do binaries, other people may.
Because you can choose the precise version of the
component you use for
your server.
That is possible with binary packages as well. Especially Slackware
makes that easy, as it does not check dependencies.
Right now, if you are using a binary package distro,
like Mandrakelinux,
Debian, or Fedora, you need to use the version of the package that the
vendor choosed for you.
Having a source based distro also mean you can have
the package as soon
as the source are avaliable ( and that you finish to compile ), that
may be interesting in order to gain some time when testing a product or
a server ( and it may be also easier to do than compiling by yourself,
since you can always forget a step ).
OK, but you can always compile a different version yourself. My question
is rather if it makes sense to ALWAYS compile from source.
-pu