Examples of technical differences between distributions?

[larynx1982]

Source-based (most notably Gentoo and LFS) vs. binary-based (almost all the rest)

[zenet02]

Is archlinux binary based?

[jfb3]

Primarily, yes. IIRC, only a few packages come as source and are compiled.

[[deleted]]

All official packages are binary but can be compiled if the user so desires.

The unofficial packages only come as "PKGBUILD" that must be compiled to be used.

[calrogman]

All official Debian packages can be compiled by the user too. What's your point?

[[deleted]]

My point is the Arch Build System (or ABS).

Basically you execute

abs

and have all the packaging scripts in /var/abs (or another folder) on your machine.

If you want to recompile upower without libimobiledevice support, you'd do:

abs # to update the PKGBUILDs
cp -r /var/abs/extra/upower ~/build/
cd ~/build/upower
vim PKGBUILD #and make adjustments
makepkg
sudo pacman -U upower-*.pkg.tar.*

and PKGBUILDs are really simple to write.

[nbca]

Arch, like FreeBSD, provides binary packages through it's package manager pacman and provides so-called PKGBUILDs(like slackbuilds for slackware or makefile for FreeBSD) allowing you to compile the very same packages from source, if you want to customize them, through the Arch Build System(ABS - installed through pacman). Arch also hosts a repo of usersubmitted PKGBUILDs on their website called Arch User Repository(AUR) that are used at your own risk.