What attracted you to Gentoo?

[groovin]

i used FreeBSD 4.x at work and thought ports pwn3d... was unhappy with RH on my workstation at home. i heard that gentoo had a ports like package manager and that you had lots of control over what was installed so i gave it a try. loved it. found that there was a great community behind gentoo so i decided to stay... even introduced my company to gentoo.

[zecora]

Why isn't there "all of above?"


That is what I would pick.

[torklingberg]

When I decided to swish to Linux, I had already tried Red Hat, but never got it to work properly with my (fairly standard) hardware.

I checked out Debian, but their servers were down at the time.

Suse were just trying to sell me something.

And then Gentoo was the only one left I knew about. Installing wasn't hard. Just do exactly as the handbook says. I have never had a reason to switch since. I really love that when something doesn't work, I can find out why. With Windows and more 'easy' Linuxes, you click around randomly on checkboxes you have no idea what they do.

[Aruviel]

A friend recommended it to me. I wasn't very impressed of Red Hat and Mandrake. They worked quite badly compared to Windows and I didn't understand at all how they worked.

I successfully installed Gentoo after numerous problems. And if I recall correctly, it was 1.4-r* that I started with. And I have been very happy with Gentoo since that. And especially after that when I learned to program a bit.

[cboyd]

Simply put, I switched to Gentoo because of Portage and because I could build a system using only what I needed.

Having no upgrade path with Fedora Core other than burning CD was ridiculous. Yum is a decent solution to RPM hell, but Fedora is built to update with CDs. Also, the PII 300 with 6GB of RAM laptop's harddrive was always near 95% full with only a handful of apps I added to it. Too much junk.

Thank goodness I have Gentoo. Now I'm always current, and the drive is only at 45% full, and I have everything I want on it and nothing I don't.

Plus, the bootup time on it I can count in seconds, not minutes as compared to Fedora Core.

Thanks Gentoo!

[marcus0263]

[FictionPimp]

It was hard for me to move to linux full time. Sure, I played and toyed with it. Used debian on servers etc. But I could just never get a nice stable desktop that did what I wanted. Then ubuntu came out. And it was close, but there was just too many little annoyances I had to work out. And all the while I would try to get gentoo working, but get sick of waiting for X or gnome to compile, or screw it up by making assumptions and not reading. So I would eventually get frustrated with the flavor of the month and put windows back on. Then I built my first AMD64 machine. I installed windows 64 and found it lacking. So I decided to try ubuntu 64. It sucked. So I heard gentoo had 64 bit support in the bag. But again, I got impatient or I failed to follow directions. So I thought maybe it was just because it didn't have a gui for me to use while I installed. So I used knoppix to install, but again, I failed.

Finally, I became frustrated, but determined. So I took all my windows CD's and knoppix, ubuntu, etc and put them in the trunk of my car. And I decided I was going to get gentoo to work, no matter what or I wasn't going to have a computer. So armed with only the gentoo live CD I did my install. And it worked. Now I did find AMD64 support just as lacking (its getting better, but still lacking) So I re-did all my work with x86 gentoo (still not sure if I have the best CFLAGS for AMD64 in x86, but its good enough for me, and fast enough that I'm not worried about it). Now I have a great system that seems to be much more damage resistant then debian/ubuntu ever was for me, and I actually know what most everything does that is installed. I'm finding myself spending more time tweaking things to get them how I like it instead of just getting annoyed that the system doesn't do what I want. I find myself applying my programing knowledge to fixing minor issues such working on ebuilds for software I want but isn't in portage or the bug tracker. And I find myself writing tools to automate my administration, and even applying what I've learned to my servers. I have to say that my knowledge of linux has increased a lot in the last month. Not because I watch a bunch of crap scroll across the screen when I emerge (it never helped me when I compiled apps in debian either). But because I actually care about what I install and how I configure things (mainly because I dont want to wait on a new app to compile so I do more research before installing). I actually want to keep my system clean and research dependencies, if I have a choice between 2 good apps, I look at if one may have more dependencies already on my system then the other (for example graveman vs gnomebaker).

Not to drag on any longer, I just want to say thank you. Gentoo has changed the way I look at linux, and now I havn't even bothered to bring my windows CD's in the house. And I dont think I ever will.

[chratnox]

When I moved to linux on my server I tried different approaches, already tried Debian (both Sarge and Woody) but wasn't satisfied with it. For example, to be able to compile something against openssl, you have to have the SSL headers, which in this case, are a separate package. Took me about a day of searching. Then I ran into gentoo because a friend at my internship recommended it to me, he was running it with fvwm and such.. And it looked rather interesting. It took me quite a while to install gentoo (P3 600, 384M ram, 7200/ATA66 hdd) and had been running for months. When I had a few pennies to spend I bought a new mobo, hdd, cpu and all so now I have gentoo running as server on a P4 2.6GHz, 2048M ram, a 36G WD Raptor and not to forget, 2 voodoo 2's in SLI. Why? No idea, I needed to dump them somewhere Anyway, since that moment the installation/managing has been painless, mainly because of learning how to use /etc/portage/package.* .

Back to the point, I love compiling packages with specific use flags because it keeps my system clean. Where I had a 6G install of debian, it's only 1.5G with gentoo. Managing the system is really a piece of cake, thus I'd recommend it to anybody who's willing to go to linux.

[anello]

Portage is amazing! But the main factor is that I can do whatever the fuck I want with gentoo, first of all regarding optimization and secondly that portage is written in python/bash ... and thirdly the community behind gentoo is huge compared to most other distributions, so you can get an answer to almost everything if you are looking hard enough.

[cokey]

a friend who is an AIX, Solaris and Dynix expert uses it at home and i though "if it's good enough for him then it's good enough for me!"
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[Sir No]

Well, all of my computers are multiboot (and I mean that! - not dual-boot Lin/Win). But my main desktop everywhere is Gentoo. I've chosen it, or maybe rather I've stayed with it because of the learning factor and hands-on approach. Another reason is that in Gentoo I really can make everything work, it's just a matter of reading/tweaking.

My first real Linux was Debian at work, where I installed it on the Sun hardware. A lot of learning, cursing, trying, etc. But it made me brave enough to try something else. From what I recall, I always wanted to do a Linux From Scratch installation, but I never had enough time. Then I've tried PCLinuxOS (and I still prefer it over Knoppix), Debian/i586, Ubuntu and finally Gentoo. And that was it! I've started with 2004.0, and since then I've installed it several times, every installation being successful and better than the previous. Finally I've screwed everything (or maybe I only thought so), reinstalled it the last time - and it just sits there and works. Now I have a habit of being a bit conservative (read: more careful) with updates.

So my machines have:
#1 (desktop@home, Athlon 64):
- WinME => gaming
- WinXP 32-bit => for Canon printer
- WinXP/x64 => free beta, for seeing what it can do
- Gentoo/amd64 => my main desktop
#2 (desktop@work, Athlon Thunderbird):
- WinXP 32-bit => compatibility with my work environment
- Gentoo/x32 => my main desktop
- Gentoo/x32 => a trial ground
#3 (laptop, Turion 64):
- WinXP 32-bit => it came with it, so I kept it anyway
- Ubuntu 5.04 => just a stop for installing Gentoo
- Gentoo/x32 => my main desktop
- Gentoo/amd64 => my trial ground

Gentoo is addictive, that's all I can say. And I still learn something with every update
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[momesana]

I first used Suse (as a reaaaaaaaaal newbie) and then Debian. What I hated about Debian were the out of date packages and the complexity of its package-management when it comes to mixing stable, testing and unstable packages together. All in all, I can say "I hated them all!!!". Then I read about larry the cow and how he felt exactly the way I did. Gentoo seemed so modern and dynamic. "Why not?", I said to myself. Try it out and delete it from your hard disk the day after (because I didn't know about the installation-process). After 3 Days of installation I was f*!"$? sure that I didn't feel like wiping it from my disk and the difficult installation procedure had already taught me most of the things I needed to know in order to administer gentoo. So I settled down in gentoo-land eversince and never touchend another distro (and probably never will except at work)!!!

[bluedevils]

Initially it was the geek factor of installing without a menu and by hand. I quickly was won over by portage. Compiling, installing and keeping my box uptodate is pretty much a fire and forget scenario. That's a good thing because I troubleshoot systems all day and don't want to think too much about it at home.

[geforce]

I've tried to setup a printer server on FreeBSD. I hated this OS.. I Threw the CDs somewhere in the room..


I still don't know where they are. If I can find them someday, I'll burn them sure.


A friend of mine downloaded and installed Gentoo 1.4 at this Time.. Looks good. I got the ISO and started to love gentoo.

Phil
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User #29433

[ixce]

Well the first time i used it was because the name and logo sounded cool.
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gentoo.

http://www.projectixce.net

[geniux]

Portage
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AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+ AM2
MSI K9N SLI Platinum, Enermax Liberty 500W
1GB RAM Crucial DDR2 667MHz, MSI nVidia 7600GS 256MB
400GB + 250GB Samsung SATAII HDD
Gentoo - BeyondSources 2.6.19-20

[vrln]

I used to run Debian Sid and I always found the desktop package selection too old (and not that actively maintained either). Gentoo also offered me a modern distribution which is more up to date than Debian Sid when it comes to desktop packages (Debian didn't have Xorg for example back then). Another major reason was the security support. I simply did not like the fact in Debian, that if you want modern, you lose support and it's branded "unstable" (eventhough it isn't really, in most cases).

After that I've just stuck with gentoo, and to be honest I find the entire system very elegant and nicely designed these days.
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[darkphader]

It was the girls!
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WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Grep

[kyPixel]

I originally tried t oget into it becuase I was just tired of windows.

I've never had any previous experiences with linux, I just wanted to get the best I possibly could, so I chose Gentoo...

Although my first couple attempts failed (around 20 or so) becuase the kernel didn't have support for most of my most important hardware I ended up using
redhat 8, then moved to mandrake 9. After I bought a new computer I decided to try it again, about a year after my previous failures, and I managed to get it working.

I still use it now, even though I break my system very often and usually have to reinstall.

All becuase it's so much better then the other distros Ive used.

[Zagloj]

The USE flags .
Well, my first Linux OS was Debian woody (recently I have installed Sarge in a laptop), and the installation was simple, but the packages very old, later I knew Slackware, it is one of my two fauvorite linux distributions, because the installation is very easy and easily customizable, the upgrades etc. are not very good, but is very stable, and all is better once you go to linuxpackages.net.

Finally, I knew gentoo, and now is my other fauvorite linux OS, I have installed it in my new amd64 machine, and works fine and only with the things that I use.

[Reikinio]

[mpagano]

The hype.

I bought in to the hype, installed it, and never looked back. No regrets.


Mike

[tomvollerthun]

I've run LFS for over three years which I spent looking for ways to fix my system after I tried updating some library.
So the "Hands-On-Approach" really is NOT what attracted me: It is more the "Hands-Off" that I liked ;)

Doesn't belittle you like most of the rpm and deb-based flavours do (well, I exclude deb-based again ;) but you don't have to do all the dirty stuff (read: versioning && dependencies) yourself. It became obvious to me that I wanted something else than LFS was when I spent a whole week trying to "just have a look" at gnome. Well those were the old days - I switched last winter and not one thought of regret.

cu, tom

Oh and, _yes_ the community _is_ great (although it's a bit frightening how much people seem to insist on this very point..)
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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Dijsktra
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Don't believe my "Guru" status!

[tomvollerthun]

Is there actually anyone _reading_ all this?
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Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Dijsktra
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Don't believe my "Guru" status!

[darkphader]