I will never leave you!

[M]

This is not a love song, I just meant I will never leave Gentoo. That other kind of love )

I didn't browse forums for a long time. I remember posts before about Gentoo dying, politics, crisis, "problems" etc.
There are similar posts now, that is probably always "in", here is a one different, just a thank you post!

I use Gentoo for 15 years, not at job, not for projects (although I did use it for one larger project and it was total success and that was really just thanks to Gentoo) but for my personal machine.
I did actually installed from scratch Gentoo many many times, but at that time, for my "machine" I had 2 failures (you DO need to go through all that if you just started, you must fail! ) and finally success.
I now can probably find config files that old on my current install.

Files I have now, survived probably one more reinstall from scratch. But from then, whenever I get a new laptop, I just dump image (lets call it a stage5, there was a post about that long time ago), mount bind everything, tar, untar, update kernel with new devices, configure syslinux (yes, don't bother with grub, grub2 or lilo, you can thank me later) and continue with work. And it is like that since then. Everything is actually in perfect order. I do care about what I have installed, and I care about every little file on that system.

And for all those years, updates and new packages never stopped coming, very good news articles with, well, news. In my case I only needed to react once to those news I think. Usually I didn't have to, but even if I didn't cared at all, I was notified about every large change. And you could see that actually many people worked and discussed about that tiny news text you will be notified about.

Now I don't usually update so often as before, lets say, every 3,4 months, quarterly, there are some problems here and there, but after all these years, I don't think it is possible anymore that there will ever be something that will force me to reinstall my system, or some blocker etc. That is just not possible!

And after all these years I can call this system MY system. Yes, it is built with Gentoo, but it is mine! Precious! You cannot find the same, even similar. And that is something you can only get with Gentoo, if anyone ever ask you again why Gentoo

Thank you all!

Edit: Starring at the compile output is actually a good thing and it is not a waste of time! I learned a lot just watching compiler output that looked at that time like I am in matrix!
Now, I cannot say I am an expert for C but I can usually fix all kinds of compile problems, linking issues etc. just not asm, I don't understand anything there. I played with TinyCC recently, and I managed to "port" some project to compiler that weights around 1MB. That didn't fall from the sky, all that is thanks to Gentoo and I really mean that.

[mimosinnet]

A different love story here.

I crash into Gentoo with little computer knowledge and soon discovered what it meant 'bleeding edge'. I have many times tried to leave this addictive and tortuous love. I have been with Mint, Ubuntu, Debian..., Name it. I must confess that long emerge times and system breakouts excused a stimulating romance with Arch Linux till I discovered I had to carry Systemd with me. I ended up building a binhost..., well..., three: Intel/desktop, AMD/desktop, AMD/server (not to mention Linux Containers). I now keep installing my own Gentoo Linux distribution based on i3wm on all available computers, being laptops, desktops or servers. I could continue with the story of how I end up building web pages with Perl after an argument with the departmental web designer that worked with PHP and Drupal . This is a Social Psychologist without a Social Life .

Summarising: No, I have not been able to run away from the shameful feeling of adventure, knowledge and command Gentoo offers me.


I have really really enjoyed your post! Thanks!
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