What should be my next linux (or other OS) journey?

[diablo465]

I started using Linux exclusively two years ago. here is the track.

Ubuntu, Lubuntu (3 month)-> Centos, Scientific Linux (1 year) -> Debian (5 month)-> Slackware (3 month) -> gentoo (6 month)

Ubuntu is not my preference because it is too aggressive in update and common to have unexpected errors.

Centos and debian are great because they are stable as rocks. But they do not offer chance to explore linux a bit deeper.

My gentoo journey was quite miserable for most of the time I would say. Within six months, I have experienced major updates to gnome 3, systemd and kernels, gone through installation without wizard, and understood how emerge works. Under the help from this forum (gentoo forum is the most popular linux forum, yeah), together with the knowledge gained, I feel more confident in handling future problems in Gentoo.

But now I feel a bit bored. As in the last two years, it was common for me hiding in the office/home solving many linux problems. The uncertain problems (in terms of making linux and its related software work) are becoming less and less. I feel that I should try something else again (this doesn't mean I drop gentoo completely. I still have the previous systems installed and work with them frequently).

Many people mentioned give linux from scratch a go. But I feel it may not be necessary to go down that bit, though. I know that there are still many other things I need to learn about Gentoo, but still want to try something more.

There must be many people who have gone through my stage. what is your choice for the next (in terms of learning how Linux works)? 1. staying in Gentoo for more knowledge and maintenance over time? 2. try something else like arch? or 3. go to LFS? 4. try Freebsd, the original portage?

[PaulBredbury]

[Marlo]

Hi,

You have the free choice. Here are 290 distros and please try them all.
But I bet, you come back to Gentoo.

Ma
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[NeddySeagoon]

diablo465,

Gentoo is a set of tools you use to make your own distro. Linux doesn't get any better.
You chose Gnome3, not Gentoo. Gentoo gave you systemd because the $UPSTREAM Gnome devs decided to make Gnome depend on it.

Where you go from here depends on what you want to learn.
Trying other desktops that do not depend on systemd is an option.

Anyway, Gentoo is about choice ... thats the hard bit. You choose.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[ulenrich]

I think the most you learn from comparisons:
Give Bsd or openSolaris a try!

Arch is just Gentoo - portage + ugly scripts. You can learn bash while keep staying with Gentoo.

[HungGarTiger]

I would say give Arch a try, going back to distros like Ubuntu, Debian or even Slackware would probably just frustrate you more than anything.
They are too constricting in terms of choice, as I'm sure you know having ended up with Gentoo. They only distro/s that is going to offer you anything like the amount of choice you get here is going to be Arch or LFS but, I would advise focusing on learning BASH while compounding the knowledge you have of Linux with Arch. Before moving onto LFS.

I am currently on Arch and thinking of moving over to Gentoo, hence I've come here to spend some time with the community and do some reading on the forums before making the next step. There are even a few on Arch that have built their systems completely from source.

[Jaglover]

[666threesixes666]

i suggest setting up a virtual machine so you can leave your gentoo installed..... then i second trying out bsd, then linux from scratch in virtual machines.

[Goverp]

[diablo465]

Thanks everyone for your input. Here are some other points I would like to discuss further.

it seems as if most of people here are very experienced in Gentoo (e.g., by the number of the posts in the forum), and in fact have been residing in Gentoo community, before a wide roaming around many distributions.

On the contrary, there are still many people who decided to stay in other distribution communities, among which Arch, and freebsd are very popular.

Why do you think they prefer their distributions to Gentoo? I am not intended to trigger a distribution war but just trying to think from their perspective (why, say Arch and freebsd, outweigh gentoo?). It may be hard for some of you to point out due to the strong preference for Gentoo. Please don't just point out some comparison sites as I want to know this from your experience.

[evoweiss]

Hi all,

Just chiming in. I've been a happy gentoo user since 2002 (the community is no small part of that). In fact, it's installed on the same machine that I brought over from the U.S. to where I am living now. It's also happily residing on a file server I have for my work. For my office desktop I installed Kubuntu as I wanted be up and running quickly, though I regret doing so from time to time. Alternatives that I haven't tried, though might one day, are Funtoo and FreeBSD. The main thing stopping me from the latter is that the latest version of some of the tools I use for my work (R) are not available on FreeBSD, though I suspect I could just compile it by hand.

I have to say, Gentoo has been the least troublesome of the Linux distributions I've worked with. True it takes a little more work to install and you have to be ready to tweak a script here and there, but the documentation is pretty good and the rolling releases lead to a lot more stability than the massive upgrades you get from other systems. Moreover, I am, overall, a minimalist. I like starting from a clean, uncluttered system, installing what I like, and not wondering whether I can or cannot delete some pre-installed bloat. Now if only there was a minimalist windows manager/desktop that suited me, i.e. did not require a lot of configuration on my part, I would be very happy!

Best,

Alex

[HungGarTiger]

Diablo, maybe I can help answer your post as a person that has never used Gentoo.

I found my way to Arch for one reason, I found other distros too constrictdictive in terms of choice. When I started with Ubuntu for example, I wanted to change the look and feel of GDM. I was told this was not possible as of Ubuntu 9.x or w/e. I didn't realise I had the choice until I moved to Debian and discovered SLiM. Apparently the Ubuntu community weren't aware of this either as it was never mentioned.

I migrated to Linux because of the promise of flexability and control, when I arrived I found I had almost a little choice with Ubuntu as I did with Windows. When I moved to Debian I found I had more choice and I enjoyed it more. Eventually I craved even more choice and I found Arch, now even Arch doesn't provide the support I need for the choices I want to make. Systemd for 1 example, a choice is yours to make in Arch but they don't promise to support your choice - figuring that out is something you must do one your own. The pros and cons of that approach can and have been discussed at length already.

I came to look at Gentoo because I wanted more choice, not less. And as someone that has already adopted that philosophy, I dare to say that you will find most if not all other distros very claustrophobic. Best to move onto *BSD like others have suggested or find some other area that will complement your Linux knowledge i.e. BASH. I would recommend BASH as I believe it is more useful and complementary to your current knowledge, but others will disagree as is their right.

Either way, Gentoo is about choice and as such every opinion is valid in the forums. I look forward to reading them as much as you will as we can both learn from them

[nlsa8z6zoz7lyih3ap]

[asturm]

[i92guboj]

I am a Gentoo user since more than a decade ago, though I didn't engage in these forums until a bit later.

I have used FreeBSD and Arch as well, so I can share my 2 cents regarding that, now that you asked. Of course, my motivations might very well differ from other people's.

FreeBSD is a system that just works as expected, there's little room for surprise. It's quite stable. I say that if you ever find yourself enjoying news about technology in OSNEWS, Phoronix, LKML or any other on-line magazine, then FreeBSD is not for you (well, no BSD is for you). Nothing ever happens there. Never. Otherwise, it's an excellent OS. It certainly delivers what it promises.

It's closer to UNIX, and the ports system is also closer to the packages build system. That has both good things and downsides. Gentoo's portage on the other side has reached a point where it's very easy to do all kind of crazy things with your packages without having to deal with the specifics for each package.

Arch has the best of both worlds. It's by all means a binary distro. But it gives straight tools to build your own when you feel like doing so. I kind of like it, and their community and on-line docs, while not being as comprehensive like those from Gentoo, are still very good, and are usually in good shape (something that's not-so-common these days).

It's hard to look into another direction one you get the hang of Gentoo however. There's no other distro that can allow the level of customization that Gentoo gives to you. That is, unless you enjoy doing lots of hacking. Believe it or not, I use Gentoo because I am lazy.

And as a devel platform it simply has no match.

[666threesixes666]

i am also a cent user. i use cent on a VPS in vegas. i do not support cent. i wish gentoo would come to some agreement to where a vps could easily insert releases, then sync + merge world to make everything up to date. lazy is a bad reason, lazy fuels ubuntu usage here... lazy and demand quality is why i run gentoo only on local boxes overlays usually have anything i cant find, and if i cant find it there ill go around the packaging system and compile by hand.

[jonathan183]

My experience: Installing LFS is a learning experience but without a package manager would be difficult to maintain (either do it in a VM or on a spare machine). I installed it a while back but stalled at the package manager stage - I decided guix was probably the way for me to go on this but it was not at a stage where I could use it at the time. It's on my to do list ... but still longer term at the moment.

I have run Arch and Gentoo for a few years now, I found Arch easier to run most of the time - it's more bleeding edge than Gentoo but actually broke less for me than Gentoo did. One of the things I don't like at the moment is the move to systemd, but I guess I could install openrc on it.

I have run Mint Debian Edition for a while as well which worked well until Gnome 3 came along. Mint works well for people who know little about Linux, if you stick with the repos it just worked - but for me things soon started getting complicated when I tried comiling a few things myself. I tried Ubuntu quite a while ago but preferred Mint to Ubuntu.

I only briefly tried slackware - the idea of building packages as root caused me some concerns. I know there are ways round it but they felt like that.

I ran Funtoo for a couple of years as well ... it's probably what I'd use if Gentoo decided to make it really difficult to avoid systemd. I think I dropped Funtoo after leaving updates too long and things just going wrong in a major way during an update. At the time Funtoo seemed much more experimental than Gentoo - which was good until I left an update too long.

I ran Crux for a few years as well, which I quite liked also, the package management was a bit flakey compared with portage ... my main reason for stopping using Crux was when they switched to 64 bit only. I have 32 bit and 64 bit machines and prefer a distro which supports both.

I prefer rolling release to fixed release distros, prefer cli rather than gui system administration, prefer to use a WM rather than a DE, and prefer flexibility and able to make changes that I want rather than ease of use. I prefer things which are simple to understand and I know what is going on (or at least I think I do) rather than everything working automagically. These things will influence my experience of different distros.

I'd build LFS in a VM but trying another distro like Arch, Slackware or Funtoo I'd do on a partition rather than in a VM.
I have found forum and wiki information for both Gentoo and Arch very useful. LFS documentation is good but did not find forums quite so useful.
As I said at the beginning of the post ... it's my experience.

[666threesixes666]

i think we should have some fixed releases going on for vps to insert. i also prefer rolling, though id avoid arch like the plague because they are systemd only. arch has a GREAT wiki system.

there are several methods for virtualization, i suggest kvm/qemu, and aqemu frontend. virtualbox is second on the list of visualization methods. kvm/qemu is bare metal virtualization and gives guests access to hardware. all the vps systems i have interacted with are kvm/qemu. lfs is a great learning experience.

post count means NOTHING. id prefer my post count hidden to be honest. i see it as encouraging meaningless posts to gain undue respect in the community.

my final advice, kvm/qemu a gentoo vm, and get more involved inserting / testing ebuilds in a consequence free environment. setup a consequence free environment so you can destroy the universe and if you destroy the box in the process its not a problem. virtualization makes it easier to implement changes on real machines, and to know where some potential snags will crop up.

i personally run 2 partitions so i can wipe the gentoo and still keep my avalanche of media, and keep 100% of the machine speed.


when i was at your point, i started to learn the wiki system so i could smooth rough edges over and reduce problems and ultimately forum posts.

[yagami]

hum... here is a couple of tips :

* If things are boring with conservative upgrades, try to increase the upgrade rate a little.

* If problems are becoming boring, try 1337 CFLAGS ... that always makes things interesting and non boring !

* If nothing of the above ... try instead of fixing bugs and problems, bugreporting and bugfixing and development.

Instead of being in the office late fixing problems, be on the office developing cool stuff for gentoo

In spite of all the above , i feel you ... i am a compulsive distro hopper... been searching years and years for something better than gentoo.

[yagami]

[diablo465]

[diablo465]

[diablo465]

[Anon-E-moose]

[yagami]