> Most of the things that are not in the package repositories for your distro is going to give you a hard time (6h install time might be reserved for extreme c

> Most of the things that are not in the package repositories for your distro is going to give you a hard time (6h install time might be reserved for extreme cases tough, if you are a seasoned linux veteran). Honestly, how often does that really come up? This is one of those horror stories that I always hear people (particularly BSD users) telling, but I've never had problems of this sort[1]. I run a distribution which doesn't use deb/rpm packages, and I compile things from source all the time. The vast majority of the time spent is the sheer compilation process, not debugging any local problems. The only times I've had issues with binaries are with sloppily compiled executables - and it's not worth complaining about those, because there are a hundred different ways that sloppy code can be incompatible with two different systems running the same distro. A static > Btw, I suppose the problem is the same between the different BSDs. Yes, and frankly, if you have a piece of code that is architected to work on at least one Linux distribution and at least one BSD or OS X, I have a hard time imagining that it would fail on other Linux distributions as well. If it's not "cross-NIX", then it's probably something that only makes sense in the context of your distribution anyway (say, a patch for your package .manager) or a small, one-off that is easily modified. [1] Problems, sure, but not problems arising from distro variation.