Why GCC 4?

[Alan McKinnon]

Hi all,

I've wondered about this for a while. How come Ubuntu is compiled with 
gcc 4? Is there a specific technical advantage to doing this?

The only things I can think of is that ggc 3.x has a deserved 
reputation for compiling slowly (ask any gentoo user...). The other 
thing might be simply that it's the latest version.

I can see the sense in still compiling the kernel with 3.3 (heck, the 
kernel docs still recommend 2.95.3), but I can;t come up with a good 
reason to use it for the rest of the distro.

I googled a bit for an answer and didn't get too far, and the expense 
of my dial-up connection doesn't make it easy to go a-hunting i.e. a 
link would be fine, I don't necessarily want o start a long thread on 
the list :-)

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five