With my limited exposure to linux when I was a kid, I didn't understand why I needed to or what those `configure; make; make install` commands did. It was until very later when I knew what compiling was or that make is actually a tool to run arbitrary commands.

oh gods, the many many hours I "wasted" recompiling my gentoo installation trying to squeeze more performance out of my gaming machine and prove to all my gaming naysaying friends that linux is no good for gaming. This was back in the VoodooFX days...

fond memories prior to having a wife.

I never got there. My poor amdv4 couldn't even finish compiling the kernel without overheating. But I learned a lot about reducing kernel size.

My first mentor in Linux was a sysadmin at the hometown ISP, and my initiation was compiling Gentoo from Stage 1 (the "hard mode" install) on a dual socket P3 700mHz system. I've never done it ever again, but that foundational experience helped me immensely.

Oh that was the holy grail. I also never got there… had to settle for the lower levels of Gentoo purity.

I did it. Worst part was compiling KDE in an Athlon XP. Took days.

For me at least, the longest part was compiling OpenOffice.

Went on a weekend trip. Started the OOO compilation, allowed it to also install some dependencies like Blackdown (?) Java.

Decided, hey, might was well time it, for fun.

I came back 2 days later, it had just finished. The compilation took almost 2 full days :-)

I did it with a 300 MHz Celeron. You heard me.

I did multiple times on a 900-something mhz Athlon. Back when compile everything was the only option.

> For me, it was printing out the Gentoo "hard mode" installation guide where you compiled _everything_ from scratch, including the kernel.

There was another way to install Gentoo?

Yes, there were 3 stages, I think. Stage 3 was with some binaries throw in there. Stage 1 required recompiling the compiler at some point.

Oh shit, I remember the stages now, not much about them though. Did you really install Gentoo if you didn't compile the compiler you used to compile the rest of the system from the ground up though?

I'm not sure if this is possible anymore, but for a while, there was a way to copy over the compiled base system from the disk instead of compiling it all from scratch. Running your first emerge -vaDu world might end up recompiling everything anyway, depending on the age of the ISO, but you didn't have to do any compiling to get a base system deployed.

i was going to comment. I think even genkernel is compiled, not that i touch the stuff.