ReactOS Reviewed: The Next Windows?

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by VON_CAPO

I understood well what you are saying.

Let me explain you better my idea.
I should have done this from my first post, but you do not read minds , so, it is my fault.

My idea:
1- You have already a huge mess.
2- My best idea is to format the disks and start again.
3- If you decide to follow this path of action:
a) About the the arrays, try my solution: stick one disk to each array.
But if you need the combined capacity of two disk, the unique solution would be:
a.1) get new bigger disks to use them in separated arrays.
a.2) Get a third disk (ATA or SATA it is up to you) and use it as boot disk.
Try to use the others ones in a combined array as storage.
b) About the tweaking:
To tweak a OS is time consuming .
Switching to Ubuntu IMHO is the best choice.
I think you will resist this idea because you are used to Gentoo.
Let me tell you my experience with Ubuntu and the time required to finish a complete tweaked installation.
Get the Ubuntu 6.06 DVD version (yes, DVD, you will need it; it is like 3.4Gb) --> time: depends of your connection speed.
Burn the DVD --> 8 minutes
Create the partitions --> 5 minutes
Install Ubuntu and to set user and pass --> 35 minutes
Now the tricky part:

Create your Root password: in the console write "sudo passwd"
Put your Ubuntu DVD in the drive and the Package Manager will pop up.
Install from the DVD, using the Package Manager (some of this packages are not in the CD version)
- gcc
- build-essential
- libnl1-pre6
- libnm-util0
- dhcdbd (>= 1.10-Oubuntu2)

Enable all the repositories --> System-Administration-Synaptic Package Manager-Settings-Repositories

Go to the links of AUTOMATIX and read about how to install.
You will get a Linux system able to play all kind of media files, able to rip DVDs, music CDs, and so go on.
Also you will get NVIDIA driver, Acrobat Reader, Java, Real Player, Flash Player, and a lot of stuff more.
All this installed automatically (without any user configuration) in less than 2 hours.

EDIT:
Do not forget to create a FAT32 partition for file exchange.

Way ahead of ya! I already have reformatted and repartitioned long ago (forced to by the new RAID controller which is why all this will not work). I'm up and running again, but haven't had time to get Gentoo back up yet. Recompiling Gentoo properly with KDE will take a day or two (I compile to my exact hardware by hand to get the most speed possible). The reason I don't run a pre-compiled Linux OS like Ubuntu or Mandrake, or Redhat is that it is compiled for a generic system to support as many PC's as possible, which leads to over bloated code and reduced speed. Building you Linux box to your exact hardware, compiling just for your hardware leads to a completely optimized system that only works on your stuff.

This way you can compile in support for say, OpenOffice, but if you know you aren't going to use KDE for example, you have the option not to compile in support for KDE.

When building your kernel, you also remove all the bloat from there as well. You only compile in the kernel what 'your' system needs to run and function.

You can also build your own GCC flags, etc. Remove anything you will not need or want. An example of what my future compilation of Gentoo on my particular system will probably look something like this (though mine eventually gets larger to support compile caching, etc):
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O3 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"-fomit-frame-pointer is not used because I don't plan to do any debugging and removing this breaks debugging if I remember correctly.
I like an optimization level of 3 - it makes the code slightly larger, but in trade you get slightly faster processing with the risk of possibly breaking the code. Most source code will force an -O2 if they know -O3 won't work, so its really a non issue.

Per IBM:
Techniques used in optimization level 3

At optimization levels 3 and above, the compiler is more aggressive, making changes to program semantics that will improve performance even if there is some risk that these changes will produce different results. Here are some examples:

• In some cases, X*Y*Z will be calculated as X*(Y*Z) instead of (X*Y)*Z. This could produce a different result due to rounding.
• In some cases, the sign of a negative zero value will be lost. This could produce a different result if you multiply the value by infinity.

Getting the most out of optimization levels 2 and 3 provides some suggestions for mitigating this risk.
At optimization level 3, all of the techniques in optimization level 2 are used, plus the following:

• Unrolling deeper loops and improving loop scheduling.
• Increasing the scope of optimization.
• Performing optimizations with marginal or niche effectiveness, which might not help all programs.
• Performing optimizations that are expensive in compile time or space.
• Reordering some floating-point computations, which might produce precision differences or affect the generation of floating-point-related exceptions (equivalent to compiling with the -qnostrict option).
• Eliminating implicit memory usage limits (equivalent to compiling with the -qmaxmem=-1 option).
• Performing a subset of high-order transformations (equivalent to compiling with the -qhot=level=0 option).
• Increasing automatic inlining.
• Propagating constants and values through structure copies.
• Removing the "address taken" attribute if possible after other optimizations.
• Grouping loads, stores and other operations on contiguous aggregate members, in some cases using VMX vector register operations.

Anyway, building your own OS, though time consuming, is the best way to run Linux I think. You put in what you want, make things tailored specifically to your stuff and you end up with an OS that runs smooth.

[VON_CAPO]

I thought I was a geek trying to explain to a newie.

But you are one of those guys who loves "Linux from Scratch"!!!!!!!!

You are a fanatic without remedy.

I will be away from you.