-Most [PackageManagementTool]s revolve around binary distributions of [Package]s. That is, they consult a repository of pre-compiled packages and install the package best suited to your system architecture. They may also offer source packages, allowing you to build the [Package] locally with whatever patches and optimization or configuration options you may have chosen. Other [PackageManagementTool]s are source based - they may not even provide binary [Package]s at all, but at least try really hard to avoid them. These download the sources for a [Package], apply any vendor-provided patches, then compile on the local machine. This process takes considerably longer, but some people swear it gives them much better performance. It does have the advantage that you can taylor the system very closely to your desires, but is not much fun on slow machines, particularly for the desktop where such mammoths as [GNOME], [KDE], [Mozilla], and [OpenOffice] are waiting to occupy your machine for hours on end.