[nzlug] Redhat 7.1 - why do people still use this??

[Craig Box]

>
> Please note that I'm to some extent playing devils advocate here, although
> I do lean towards my original suggestion... I will always prefer to
> hand-craft an internet facing server, and deliver (as far as possible - we
> all make mistakes) only what is needed, and not what a package manager
> thinks is a good idea.
>
> Sorry if I'm hijacking the thread a bit...
>

In a similar vein, I'm going to ignore all your other good points here and
focus on just one I don't agree with :)

I use vendor compiled kernels and vendor packaged software (where $vendor =
your distro-maker) because, in the most part (yes #wlug, I am making a "most
people" argument here) I trust the vendor to be better at knowing what is
best than I am.  In some cases, they're the upstream author.  In other
cases, they screw up royally.  YMMV, etc.  Sure, you might squeeze out a
little better performance, but what if you forget to enable something really
important?  (Note from compiling kernels 7 years ago: if you don't enable
CONFIG_PACKET and CONFIG_FILTER, you can't run dhcpd).

A safer approach is to take your distro-configured source as a base, and
disable stuff you know you don't want. This is probably what you were
suggesting, but as pointed out (albeit in very hard to read lower-case text)
once you're compiling from source, you're not really running that distro any
more.  Whether that's good or bad, up to you.

2c.

Craig