[ale] Trustix Secure Linux

[Jeff Hubbs]

James Sumners wrote:
> I was going to save my opinion of Gentoo, but your last sentence sums
> it up. How on earth can the requirement of a distcc farm for speedy
> (relatively) updates be easy to maintain? Rebuilding every package
> whenever it is updated is ridiculous.
>   
If you only want to receive binaries when you add or update software,
then Gentoo is not for you, plain and simple.  And, distcc is far from a
requirement; AMD, Intel, and a great many mobo makers would be happy to
get you into that sub-two-minute kernel compile zone.  However, if I
want to do an install on my bulletproof Intergraph dual P/133 all-SCSI
with w/96MB RAM, I really prefer to use distcc or build the system on a
faster box.  If it seems ridiculous to you, I'd suggest you look at the
larger picture.  The Gentoo team primarily manages only source code and
the Portage system.  The thousands of ways any piece of source code can
be compiled (per arch, with this support and/or that support, with this
gcc option or that gcc option, and so forth) is a concern that's pushed
out to the implementors, to either obsess (rice?) over or set-and-forget
at their leisure.  This way, the Gentoo team's pipeline is mostly clear
of binary-level issues, leaving them more time to develop and test
packages and get their dependencies correct.

[Note:  sheer popularity drove the Gentoo team to produce binary
packages for huge  things such as Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice. 
That may be the best way to get Flash going.  Until just recently,
OpenOffice was available only as a binary for AMD64 (it is now available
in testing).]
> Now, I agree. It might be time for Debian (and others) to add i686
> binaries. Sure, i386 is all that is needed for mass compatibility, but
> those machines are not the most common any more. Indeed, the fact that
> Arch packages are i686 binaries is one of the reasons why I am trying
> that distribution out on my desktop. But I still don't see a reason
> for the ricer OS (funroll-loops.org). I've tried it out twice. Lasted
> maybe a week both times. It is a colossal waste of time.
>   
I'm sorry that you had a problem.  However, this "colossal waste of
time" has thousands of machine-days under its belt in my household and
has done a mighty fine job of powering the consulting work I've done for
several clients including the Centers for Disease Control.  It was the
first or very nearly the first 64-bit distro available for AMD64
machines.  I can put it on anything in the house, down to a 16MB-RAM
P/90, and nothing gripes at me about not having enough RAM to run the
installer.

It doesn't solve every problem and there are some areas about which I'm
frustrated with it, but it sure does work.  I'm not a distro-weenie; I
just want machines to be flexible, reliable, and predictable, and Gentoo
does that and gets out of my way.