OK - I changed the subject..... On Apr 7, 2005 2:15 PM, Richard Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Mark Knecht wrote: > > > I have one difference of opinion from many Gentoo developers about > >the value of Gentoo. I don't think USE flags and individual > >configuration is all that important to me. I want the box to work, and > > > > > > Ah, but the USE flags are very integral to making the box work > flawlessly. You probably just haven't run into the situation yet where > the USE flags saved your system.
Hey - I didn't say 'unimportant'. I said 'not all that important to me'. Big difference in my mind. Actually I have had a couple of cases where specific USE flags caused problems for me and Gentoo handled fixing that up nicely. Changed my flags. Rebuilt like you. Everything was quite happy. This is important when playing with stuff off in the corners, and maybe in some cases even with standard stuff. However, look at it a different way, if you would. Just choose a really basic set of USE flags. Something safe. Enable things that are known to be quite stable. Stay away from everything else. (Heck - isn't that pretty much what's in the install documents anyway?) Give that set of flags to a newbie. They build their machine. It works. They don't need to change things. End of story. It's not until later that I think USE flags matter much, if they matter at all. To some users I contend that they may never matter. When a new user gets to the point where it does matter that user will start making changes. I contend that many people, say an office worker who doesn't administer his machine, could use default USE flags pretty much forever and it would probably be just fine. For those folks Gentoo would be no different than any other distro except it would be much easier to add most new applications. Gentoo devs and software jocks abhore this sort of setup, I think, but none the less it works and works well. Not everyone needs to push the boundaries of performance to find Gentoo useful. But again, that's just my view. Cheers, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
