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davidm
Guru
Joined: 26 Apr 2009
Posts: 557
Location: US
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 Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2015 12:57 am Post subject: |
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Once you become fairly seasoned with portage it only takes one or two hours a month to maintain. That doesn't include sitting at the terminal and watching things compile as you don't need to do that. It's just manual intervention once a month or so.
If you never learn Portage very well you'll often have problems though and I can see where updating might feel like pulling teeth.
Where Gentoo is a time killer is in the fact that it makes it so easy (or better said, possible) to control *everything*. If you are a tinkering type like I am you will find yourself constantly switching to this filesystem, scheduler, etc. and back again. But I wouldn't call that a negative myself.  |
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gwr
Apprentice
Joined: 19 Nov 2014
Posts: 194
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| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2015 2:07 pm Post subject: Re: Is Gentoo practical? |
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| rockclimber88 wrote: | | hen portage messes up and dealing with problematic unstable releases etc |
Don't use unstable packages if you don't want instability.
| Quote: | | Most people would like to have an operating system that works. |
Gentoo has been more stable for me than any other OS.
| Quote: | | Why can't I have an OS that compiles software from source, has USE flags and all that great Gentoo stuff but also allows me to get stuff done without getting distracted fixing my computer every ten minutes? |
If you're fixing your install every ten minutes, have you considered not messing with it constantly? There's no reason to.
Gentoo is a distribution for professionals. There is a price to pay for it's flexibility and power, and you either put in the time to learn how it all works or switch to another distro. |
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logical_guy
Apprentice
Joined: 18 Sep 2007
Posts: 268
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2015 6:28 am Post subject: |
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I've been using Gentoo for about 8 years now and I can't imagine any other distro being my main OS. Very intuitive once you get the hang of it.
Some of the best things about Gentoo:
1. The install handbook is actually excellent. Easy to follow and by following it properly you can't really go wrong.
2. You have choices at every stage, from the bootloader (I don't use any) to kernel to init system (OpenRC for me) to desktop environment (i3).
3. Very easy to customise and manage your kernel manually.
4. USE flags give you awesome flexibility.
5. eselect - another killer tool which gives you amazing flexibility.
6. Awesome docs, responsive and helpful forum and IRC communities.
7. Many opportunities to contribute (bugzilla, ebuilds, docs, specific projects, etc.)
Some helpful tips:
1. Update regularly.
2. Always follow emerge --depclean with revdep-rebuild
3. Avoid overlays unless you have specific needs.
4. Stick to stable arch as far as possible and mark individual packages as unstable, as needed.
5. Research your global USE flags before you make any changes.
I've actually been tempted by Arch recently, but there are two things that kept me with Gentoo in the end: OpenRC and eselect  |
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madjestic
n00b
Joined: 10 Oct 2013
Posts: 52
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| Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2015 1:14 am Post subject: Re: Is Gentoo practical? |
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| It becomes practical as soon as things that you describe stop getting in the way. |
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blursmurf
n00b
Joined: 06 Jan 2003
Posts: 45
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| Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2015 4:10 pm Post subject: |
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| No one mentioned crossdev? |
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Yamakuzure
Advocate
Joined: 21 Jun 2006
Posts: 2284
Location: Adendorf, Germany
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| Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2015 4:59 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting. You did realize that a thread that lay dead for seven years just got resurrected?
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