[H-GEN] Linux distributions

[Paul Gear]

On 08/28/2012 12:43 PM, Michael Campbell wrote:
> ...
> People who only play with binary distributions would balk at compiling 
> software but with Gentoo it was very easy and removed limitations to 
> applications only available in your distribution.  Might even 
> encourage more people to start hacking away at coding!

I've been doing Linux since 1994. [1]  I don't balk at compiling 
software; i did several years of C & C++ programming back in the day.  I 
just don't like wasting time doing it when most of the time there are no 
options of significance, and it gains me nothing.  Most of my clients 
don't pay me to compile stuff, they pay me to make Linux work.

> How hard is it to compile source code in disto's like Ubuntu?  Do they 
> require the installation of bulk packages?

You can install a meta-package "build-essential" which gives you enough 
to get started with basic things.  You can "apt-get source packagename" 
to pull down the source for "packagename" (i think this can also pull 
down the binaries of any extra libraries that are required to build - 
can anyone else confirm?), and from there most of it is all 
automagically handled in debian/build and friends.

Debian and its derivatives have pretty good tools for getting at the 
source, but most of the time you don't need it and it doesn't try to get 
in your way.  Debian has a whole farm of build servers to compile stuff 
for us so that we don't have to.

Paul

[1] <name drop>I worked out a little while back that i started using 
Linux about 3-4 months before Maddog Hall.</name drop>

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