Why do you use Gentoo

Message

sonicbhoc · Post by **sonicbhoc** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 3:03 pm

Corona688 wrote: The from-source thing has more uses than the obvious. Gentoo's almost a distro-building kit. Set things up, then make your own trees, and maintain bits here and there when needed...

My main reason for using it, and the main reason I will be building a custom distro for Family Day Enterprises based on it. Well, either this or PCLinuxOS.

gisbert · Post by **gisbert** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 2:41 pm

It's great

CPUFreak91 · Post by **CPUFreak91** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 4:23 pm

I use it because it's fast, I can configure and customize the heck out of it, and because it gives the user the power to do almost whatever he wants but making it simpler to do than LFS

thomas.g · Post by **thomas.g** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 5:39 pm

My name is Thomas Geraets, and I use gentoo because I would like to make new friends.
And I think that's a cool way to do that!

freedumb · Post by **freedumb** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:44 am

I use gentoo because it's the most "freebsd like" linux distro I have ever tried.

Dlareh · Post by **Dlareh** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:14 am

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/philosophy.xml sums things up pretty well.

cubist · Post by **cubist** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 10:54 pm

Hi, I'm brand new to the forum.

I use Gentoo because its easily customisable, looks nice, simple, I love it. Its on my laptop!

fmckee · Post by **fmckee** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 5:29 am

Though the preference is meta-distribution.

I've been using Gentoo as my primary desktop and server platform since about 2001. In addition to echoing many of the comments here (such as the strong community, portage etc.), I view Gentoo as The Ultimate Linux Toolbox. Gentoo's frameworks and tools in the areas of package and service management are top notch.

In a nutshell, Gentoo provides for me what other distros (free or commercial) have been unable to do: provide a no compromise Linux experience.

As an avid reader of these forums I've always worked my way through any hiccups. Even non-Gentoo ones.

I enjoy the (mostly) weekly newsletter both in frequency and content. Gentoo documentation both on and off-site are also top notch.

I just completed the gcc-4.1.1 migration on my primary system -- while I was using it! Sure, it took nearly five days to do, but that was largely machine time and there are over 1000 packages installed. As always, at the end of each maintenance cycle I'm rewarded with a rock-solid, well-performing system that does exactly what I want it to do.

Gentoo is a purely free Linux distro that does not seem as mired in politics as some others are. Since Gentoo is controlled by a non-profit foundation with no inherent commercial interests, it will only go away if the community that uses and supports it goes elsewhere. In other words, Gentoo is in no danger of being acquired or enter into any questionable cross-licensing deals (such as the one announced today). For me, that represents true software assurance.

It is for all these reasons and more, that I have and will continue recommending Gentoo to my IT colleagues.

Let me conclude by saying (my first forum post in all these years!): Thank You All!!!

warrens · Post by **warrens** » Sat Nov 04, 2006 2:26 am

I use Gentoo because it is simply the best Linux available.

acid7711 · Post by **acid7711** » Sat Nov 04, 2006 7:16 am

Plain and simple, everything just works, and works how I'd expect it to. All others are just more advantages

I love the community. If I have a problem 99.5% of the time someone's already had it and fixed it. 5 minutes after a search, I'm off and the problems been solved. The other .25% of the time I'll get a response that solves my problem.

I've tried damn near every other distro. I ALWAYS come back. I feel at home in Gentoo. It's the only distro where I feel at ease with my system and how things are setup and working.

sonicbhoc · Post by **sonicbhoc** » Sat Nov 04, 2006 10:17 pm

I never really thought of this but... I just noticed it today. When I need to fix something, it's easy to figure out what's wrong. Even if you can't fix it yourself, you can always get the exact error message from a log and post it somewhere to ask for help.

I can't do that in windows or even in certain distros of Linux (but then again I never really tried because they would always force the GUI on you and after a while I forgot that the command line was where it's at

). A vague error message does not help when you're trying to debug programs, and Windows's excuse for an error message report tool doesn't show you anything of use whatsoever.

cubist · Post by **cubist** » Sat Nov 04, 2006 10:32 pm

I use Gentoo on my laptop simply for fun. I mean, my laptop is quite old and hates windows XP so I put Gentoo on it and its as happy as a peach

PhoeniXII · Post by **PhoeniXII** » Sun Nov 05, 2006 5:04 pm

i like it cuzz it get's me what i want, in a way that i want.
with the use flags everything is configurable.
and it's easier then the "Linux From Scratch" way that i used to do.

Junglist · Post by **Junglist** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 8:22 pm

jmbsvicetto wrote:

No need to reinstall

oops.

PRoGRaMMeRQ · Post by **PRoGRaMMeRQ** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 3:14 pm

-Custom compile-time options
-very mature packaging system (though it could use some improvement)
-Highly customizable
-nothing works unless I make it work (I like to know how things work)
-its FUN

Kakason · Post by **Kakason** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:50 am

Hmm..

- Wanted to get away from the gaming scene so I switched from Windows to Gentoo
- Wasted heaps of time on Windows just sitting there waiting for an msn convo looking at the screen
(on Gentoo I customize my desktop and stuff so I actually learn something while waiting for convo)
- Wanted to be more serious in programming =] and windows had alot of distractions (games)

And thats about it =]

pgreenwood · Post by **pgreenwood** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 5:10 pm

ChrisWhite wrote:post your reason here. Detailed or not.

The purpose of this is to [hopefully] act upon listed items and do you people good. This is also to make me feel lovey dovey. Thank you.

sticky -- mark_alec

I started with Debian about 2000. Its been good and I still use it, but, Gentoo's documentation is spectacular! I installed my first Gentoo system earlier this year. I've used the Live-CD and the Minimal-CD.

Install the Minimal version over ssh from another computer, cutting and pasting from your browser to your ssh terminal and learn as you go.

Apewall · Post by **Apewall** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 5:49 am

I've tried a few other distros but Gentoo was my first(I wanted immediate freedom), and still preferred, for a few good reasons.

* Complete Control
* Ground level installation
* Lightweight
* Best linux community support
* -PORTAGE-

grooveman · Post by **grooveman** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 2:37 pm

I recognize I'm not stating anything that someone hasn't already said, but for the record:

I use gentoo because:

-Portage rocks. It is stable, elegant and it is very up-to-date. I *hated* relying upon someone at RH or Debian to make a package for my system. I grew tired of the dependency nightmares, and being berrated for using "unstable" packages because I had the *nerve* to want to run a package released in this decade. If I compiled from source, then the rest of the system didn't acknowledge the presence of the new package... ugh! Portage is updated frequently, it has excellent dependency detection, and allows you to compile from source and in many instances even install binary packages.

-Nothing is on my system unless I deliberately put it there (or it is pulled as a dep, which is basically the same thing).

-The community is strong and considerate; Knowledgeable. A good balance of helping eachother out and RTFM.

-MS is evil.

-It is free.

-Everything is compiled from source (unless you explicitly choose not to). You get to build your system to your hardware, instead of neutering your archetecture and relying upon backward compatibilty with a decrepid 386 chip.

-It is flashy. I think it is one of the snazziest distros out there. Very "hip" developers and users in the gentoo community. It doesn't feel old and clunky like the BSD's and some other distros. Little things like fb, colors in vim, dircolors, bash being nicely configured by default save a lot of time on customization, and make scripting/coding/getting around the filesystem a joy.

-Did I mention that portage is awesome?

G

iopi · Post by **iopi** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:45 am

Gentoo is amazing--I'm hooked.

I use it because of the incredible community support, flexibility, overall feel, and general enjoyment I get out of using it =}}.

Portage owns too >: D

SHAZcat07 · Post by **SHAZcat07** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:59 am

The freedom of being able make your own environment, with the comfortability of knowing that I can always change it around, fix packages up, put new ones together, having the ease of grabbing new updated packages with the tap of a few keys, heh, theirs to many reasons Gentoo is so fun.

compres · Post by **compres** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 5:09 pm

Plain and simple: Performance.

These days people spend hundreds of dollars for a 10% increase in performance when they buy hardware. Without spending a penny I can get more than that by using Gentoo.

Considering this, people who say that 10% increase of performance is not worth it showld explain to me why does an Athlon FX cost 1000usd and an X2 costs 500usd, when their difference in performance can be even less than the 10% they state. They (the people who claim this) are stating a contradiction or just telling their opinion.

vrai · Post by **vrai** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 8:41 pm

Inertia - I've used it for a few years and standardised all my Linux machines on Gentoo. I'm not happy with the distro, while Gentoo was undoubtably the best a few years ago it's degraded in quality while others have adopted much of what's good about it; but I don't want to have to maintain multiple distros and I can't be bothered to reinstall five machines.

My original reasons for adoption were...

A good package system with dependency handling that actually works
A good balance between maintaining stablity (of portage and the packages) and the necessary drive to improve and update.
Excellent documentation

Prior to Gentoo I used SuSE, which I was happy to pay for. But the packing system was terrible, it was easier to install tarballs by hand. Faced with that I found portage to be a breath of fresh air.

Unfortunately the constant tinkering with the package tree has made portage something to be feared rather than feted. Some of my machines haven't been updated in months, because I know that when I do they'll break. In the past I've spend days (or even weeks) figuring out what the problem is and bodging them back together. But an increase in the number of machine and an increasing exasperation with how the distro is being maintained means that the next time I lose a machine it'll be coming back up sans Gentoo. Which is sad because Gentoo should be as awesome as it always was. All the rubbish about "performance" aside (unless you're on esoteric hardware the optimisations make little difference) the portage system and the freedom of choice it gives you is unbeatable, the support scripts are fantastic and the documentation is best available.

But until the days return where I can run "sudo emerge --update world" and come back to a machine that's fully functional the distro cannot be recommended to anyone with a life. An upgrade should not result in fifteen blockages, four removed ebuilds and a total loss of some vital piece of functionality.

The documentation though ... not matter what distro I use I'll always go to the Gentoo docs first.

Jesterhead · Post by **Jesterhead** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 8:57 pm

Well, with the dynamics in the FLOSS-world you cant guarantee that a "fluid" tree can always be stable everytime in every possible configuration.

Gentoo power (and this why i use it) is the flexibility, the wide range of avaliable software, and i am to 90% responsible for the quality of the software i emerge.
(the other 10% are mostly upstream-devs ^^).

Only my opinion

compres · Post by **compres** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 5:09 am

vrai wrote: All the rubbish about "performance" aside (unless you're on esoteric hardware the optimisations make little difference) ...

Quite a rude way of calling my point and hardware: rubbish and esoteric.

What I have is a Pentium 3 M with 512KB of cache and 256MB of SD ram on a laptop. The increase in performance I have experienced in comparison with Ubuntu, Kubuntu and SUSE are way more than the 10% some people assume, becouse of many reasons.

- The memory footprint of the aplications like VLC and Firefox I use on gentoo, are microscopic in comparison to the distros I just mentioned. So much so I have yet to exceed the 256MBs of ram and get to the swap memory after close to a month of using gentoo. The result is my systems is an order of magnitude faster since it rarely reads the hard drive.

- Battery time is up for the same reasons.

- Boot time is close to a third of the time it took me to boot kubuntu on a custom kernel.

- I can play video files with VLC that I could not on k/ubuntu or suse, I am guessing the CFLAGS are doing their job here.

Well I won't say more, I hope you can get the picture already. Performance is important for some people, and one of them is me. I don't think you are right when you call rubbish my reason for using gentoo or esoteric my hardware.

Do you even know what esoteric means?

Why do you use Gentoo

Re: Why do you use Gentoo

Gentoo is the Ultimate Linux Toolbox

Re: Why do you use Gentoo