<div dir="ltr">That does clarify things. Thank you :) <br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 12:02 AM, Eric F Crist <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ecrist@secure-computing.net">ecrist@secure-computing.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d">On Sep 30, 2008, at 11:30 PM, Nick Scholtes wrote:<br>
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Hi Eric,<br>
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Maybe I misunderstood the whole "rebuild" thing. You said:<br>
<Many applications can be built natively on Linux with little, or no, modification. In most cases, there is no reason to 'rebuild' an application.><br>
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Could you explain this more? Maybe this is what I was thinking of.<br>
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Nick,<br>
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Many, maybe most, applications are offered as pre-compiled binaries. For the vast majority of people, these pre-compiled binaries will work fine. That being said, there are applications written for Solaris, FreeBSD, other, that are written closely enough for generic *nix, that they can follow the same ol' ./configure && make && make install routine, with little or no modification. The fact of the matter is that more applications than not are written and already compiled against the Linux kernel. Re-compiling will give you very little benefit.<br>
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Some fringe cases where the extra work may pay off involve special hardware. Whether it is simply old hardware (low RAM/slow proc) or embedded systems, or specialty hardware (Gx Macs, alpha, etc). If you're running x86 or x64 on modern hardware, don't waste your time compiling, if there's a binary available.<br>
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Last, the biggest benefit of pre-compiled packages is the fact that they're packages. This includes a mechanism to install the necessary dependencies and configuration files. Source, typically, only compiles the binaries. Here, again, you're best off using the packages/RPMs/ports/etc.<br>
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HTH<br>
---<br><font color="#888888">
Eric Crist<br>
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</font></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art: <a href="http://www.coroflot.com/bellsoffreedom">http://www.coroflot.com/bellsoffreedom</a><br>
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