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Gentoo linux distribution works that way. It has automatic package management system (Portage) similar to apt-get or rpm (and even more similar to ports in *BSD
by ajuc 11y ago
Gentoo linux distribution works that way. It has automatic package management system (Portage) similar to apt-get or rpm (and even more similar to ports in *BSD). The source meta-packages (specyfying the compiler flags, patches etc) are maintained by the community.
You configure a system-wide flags specifying your cpu, optimization level, the features you want to enable and disable (many libraries and apps have flags to compile support for some features or not), etc. There were also app-specific flags IIRC.
When you install a package it downloads sources and the meta-package from portage, then it is compiled on your machine with your flags added for your specific processor with only the features you enabled. It was supposed to be much faster than "bloated ubuntu", but I suspect now it was mostly placebo :)
On the other hand installing Open Office on my Celeron 2000 laptop with 256 MB RAM took 10 hours, and if I wanted to enable some feature that turned out to be useful after all - I would need to wait another 10 hours.
I used it for 2 years when I was on university but then it was too much to wait for hours when I needed sth.
- ycombobreaker 11y ago> It was supposed to be much faster than "bloated ubuntu", but I suspect now it was mostly placebo Gentoo predates Ubuntu by several years. I remember reading some "gentoo ricer" threads bike-shedding over ultimately inconsequential optimization flags. But don't underestimate the simple benefit of `-march` and similar. At a time when binary distributions were pushing x86 binaries which ran on i386, compiling for a newer architecture could give a substantial increase in registers available, instructions available, and instruction scheduling quality. In aggregate, this definitely can improve performance. Since then, I believe Debian moved to an i686 base which narrows the gap.