Installation from sources or from precompiled ISO ?

leninelenine · n00b Joined: 20 Nov 2015 Posts: 2 Location: France

Hello,

I'm new on Gentoo community.

I would know if I compile Gentoo minimal CD on my computer, the computing performance will be better, than if I use the distributed binary minimal CD ISO for installation.

Thanks

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 8:04 pm Post subject:

leninelenine,

Welcome to Gentoo.

The Linux system you use to install Gentoo only provides the tools needed to accomplish the install.
None of its code goes into your install, so you can use any Linux you happen to have.
You may need one extra step. That's

leninelenine · n00b Joined: 20 Nov 2015 Posts: 2 Location: France

Thanks,
However, I have read that the interest of gentoo, is that you can compile your package yourself for more hardware compatibility.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2015 9:25 pm Post subject:

leninelenine,

That's correct. You will.

You download the stage3, ready built. You add your kernel, boot loader and a few other packages and reboot into your Gentoo.
At this time, your Gentoo has only what every Gentoo must have and few packages you must have but there is a choice.
Unlike a binary distro, the stage3 binary can be thought of an an 'empty system'.

e.g. lilo, grub, gub-legacy for your boot loader. With a UEFI system, you don't even need a boot loader.
You also choose your cron daemon and logger. You may choose not to have them too.

Once you reboot, you have a very basic Gentoo, that can do little more than compile other programs from source.
There is no GUI. If you want a GUI, you build it from source.

Gentoo gives you two things.
a) the packages you explicitly install
b) the things you need to build and run the packages you explicitly install.

This means you only get what you ask for.
Conversely, if you have not installed a package, you probably don't have it.

Getting back to your original question. The packages in the stage3 are only a small part of your install.
They do include all the packages you need to build other packages. This is called the 'tool chain'.
The tool chain from the stage3 will run on a wide range of systems, however, it will make code optimised to run on your system if you ask it to.
It does not need to be rebuilt to do this.

You can spend several hours of CPU time rebuilding it if you wish. It may save you a few seconds in build time but it will not change the binaries made by the tool chain, even one byte.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.