First thing to do after an install.

[Shibblet]

I have a friend who uses Sabayon, and just raves about it. And instead of pestering him relentlessly, I like to figure things out on my own.

From what I understand, after the installation, the best way to get performance out of Sabayon, is to update the make.conf file. Now, I know what hardware I have, I just don't know all of the flags to put into the make.conf file. Nor do I know how to manually edit the xorg.conf file.

Where do I find a list of flags, or processor specific make.conf, and video card specific xorg.conf information?

Secondly, he tells me that you don't get the best performance unless you recompile the kernel? Is this true?

[Stupot]

The entire point of changing your make.conf file is so that when you compile everything, it will be (somewhat) customized for your system, stripping out extra things that doesn't work with your hardware. In order to full take advantage of this, everything on your system must be compiled by your system. That said, the performance gain (while debatable) is typically around 10%. You will spend a lot of time compiling your packages, so whether that 10% is worth all the compiling or not is up to you.

Sabayon also has a binary package management system, where you leave your make.conf file alone and you don't have to compile every package. You lose the performance advantage of a customized compiled system, but it's much easier to maintain and install packages.

That said, if you still want to go about editing your make.conf file, you should read the portage handbook and attempt to familiarize yourself with gentoo concepts in general.

[Shibblet]

If that is the case, optimizing the make.conf file is absolutely necessary. So that would lead me to my next question... does Sulphur download and compile source?

If it does, that would mean after an install the first thing to setup would be the make.conf, before you compile anything.

[wolfden]

entropy, sulfur, equo all binary so no compiling or config file useage

[Shibblet]

So, Sabayon stands pretty well on its own without having to compile everything like Gentoo.

It also seems to perform better out of the box than Ubuntu does. And it doesn't seem "necessary" to recompile everything to be system specific.

But I am looking for the best performance I can get, and I think that means compiling the kernel and using portage for the packages.

Do you benefit much from a compiled kernel, and compiling all of your apps? I think I read it's anywhere from a 2-10% increase.

[wolfden]

You can find information about "ricing" gentoo with google, course you are on your own for support and not allowed to file bugs.

I myself am not concerned so much about speed, but about controlling and building the system the way I want it to be. That is more important to me than speed.

[Shibblet]

You can find information about "ricing" gentoo with google, course you are on your own for support and not allowed to file bugs.

I myself am not concerned so much about speed, but about controlling and building the system the way I want it to be. That is more important to me than speed.

Nah, don't want to paint the car to make it faster... thanks. But I do want to know the benefits of compiling your own kernel.

Is it one of those subjects that no one truly knows the answer to?

(off subject) You know, kind of like "Why is Windows 7 better than Vista?" No one really knows the answer....

[wolfden]

Compiling your own kernel is usually done to make it leaner. We all have seen the threads of how small is your kernel and can still boot. Compiling your own kernel can also be done for extra options you may need. You can also choose on some things to have it built into the kernel or install package and have the package manager maintain it.

Compiling your own kernel is a preference to you on how you want to run your system.