Gentoo rocks!

wjholden · l33t Joined: 01 Mar 2004 Posts: 818 Location: Honolulu, HI

I just posted a support question, but otherwise this is my first post on f.g.o. in years. It's awesome to be back!
When I last used Gentoo, back in '06ish, Gentoo Chat was full of "Goodbye Gentoo" threads. Now I immediately see two or three other "I'm back" threads. Amazing! Things must have improved considerably since I last used this flexible, powerful distro.

Initial thoughts, for those interested:
* back in 05 or so people were talking about graphical installers. I remember VidaLinux from Mexico stirred some excitement for a brief time. Appears all interest in a graphical Gentoo installer has disappeared.
* Arch Linux is serious competition for Gentoo among "I know my command line but refuse to wear a pocket protector"-type geeks. Arch is actually pretty sweet and easy to use if you're familiar with Linux. The big thing that immediately distinguishes Gentoo is not Portage but the documentation and help available; inconsistently maintained wiki pages don't compare to the official Gentoo Handbook.
* Gentoo's major appeal to veterans is you can actually make things work. This might sound crazy to the poor soul trying ot make this sound card squeak. Other distros engineer a product they think you want, so if you want something slightly/significantly different you're screwed. You're screwed with Gentoo, also, but at least you have the tools and openness to figure it out yourself if you really want to.
* What's with all the negative PR? For that matter, where's the positive PR? I'm surprised I haven't seen back-to-back articles about Gentoo hackers putting portage into the Android Market? If it's happening it isn't making /. like it used to. Do you (we?) still get interesting bug reports about users? What happened to funroll-loops and RealOTW?

Yamakuzure · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:15 am Post subject:

welcome back!

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I *do* know that I easily aggravate people due to my condensed writing. Rule of thumb: If I wrote anything that can be understood in two different ways, and one way offends you, then I meant the other!

likewhoa · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 1:17 pm Post subject:

Larry The Cow knew you would eventually come back...

cryptosteve · l33t Joined: 04 Jan 2004 Posts: 913 Location: Buchholz/GER

They all come back ..

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- born to create drama -
cryptosteve - gpg: 0x9B6C7E15

nbittech · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 10:51 am Post subject:

Come back, I just got here (using Gentoo for about three months now), and I don't plan on leaving. Sure beats the AUR or listening to the neighborhood Ubuntu/Mint fanboy. Gentoo is cool to the average geek now, everybody's using it.
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Was it cat-5 or cat-6? Well I dunno, but I do know that I need a new LCD screen on my laptop now.

invasivenorman · n00b Joined: 06 Feb 2012 Posts: 28 Location: ::1

evilwm & mrxvt & tcsh. Yeah, it's kinda nice when stuff just works.

bigbangnet · Apprentice Joined: 11 Jun 2007 Posts: 174