Gentoo's attitude, vs Arch

Message

pauldotknopf · Post by **pauldotknopf** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 7:31 am

I've been a little depressed on how argumentative and insulting the Arch community can be.

Honest question, how does the Gentoo community compare?

Naib · Post by **Naib** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 9:07 am

It contains humans so it can suffer the same issues.
However because each Gentoo install is completely unique as oppose to a binary distro the mentality of tinkering helps keep the forums and irc pleasant.

Every now and again a topic will arise that polarises the community(ffmpeg Vs libav was interesting)

krinn · Post by **krinn** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 9:40 am

i would say, don't go in Off The Wall, it's very special ; a bit of craziness and skill (it's only when trolling become an art you can talk about skill).

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 10:03 am

pauldotknopf,

Welcome to Gentoo

You will find a lot of help here. The old hands pitch the help just out of your reach, so you have to learn too. Keep that in mind.
Gentoo is a toolkit you use to design and make your own distro. Gentoo is the portage package manager and the gentoo repository. Everything else is upstream.
That structure makes every Gentoo install unique.

In turn, that shapes the style oh help that its possible to provide. There are common problems with common workarounds. There are also issues that will be unique to your install because nobody else has ever done it that way. Even with stable Gentoo.

e.g. libreoffice on Gentoo has over 250,000 ways to be configured. Some are more common than others. They can't all be tested.

Different user skill levels are tolerated well. If you post a problem, you may well be told to RTFM but the help will also point to the relevant section of the friendly manual.
It saves posting it all here. It can take a while for the helpers and helpee to find the right level to work at.
Then, the forums are in English, thats not everyones first or even second language.

As Naib says, there are some political topics here too but politics is discouraged in help topics.
We have a long running thread about systemd, now well into its 3rd part.
There is no need to read or post in topics like that if you don't want to.

Like every community, we have our share of what the Americans call 'assholes'.
They are usually called out and eventually discouraged from participating if they fail to learn.

Website · Post by **Zucca** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 10:28 am

In my experience Gentoo community is more friendly against newcomers.
I guess Arch forums mods are fed up with help vampires. I've seen too many topics binned there because some newcomer asked a question without enough details. Instead of binning the topic it would be more appropiate to just ask more details.
I don't know the current status. It's been quite long since I've used Arch or posted their forums.

mrbassie · Post by **mrbassie** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 4:44 pm

Very friendly in my experience (although I only interact through the forums).

Pretty much the worst you can expect is to be asked to provide more information or, if you did provide enough but no'one knows how to help, you might not get a reply.

I've never seen a new user not get a welcome.

In terms of discussion, I can recall one or two people getting a bit out of hand with eachother on one occasion but overall everyone is at the very least civil 99% of the time.

Off the wall however...that's where all the banter happens so a reasonably thick skin might be advisable in there.

1clue · Post by **1clue** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 5:14 pm

I installed Arch on exactly one box. I got my forum login, and after browsing there awhile I abandoned the whole thing. I still have my account, but have never posted.

Arch has some of the best Linux documentation available. I use it for any boxes I maintain. However their forum is so sanitized I'm afraid to post. Rather than put up with that I use distros where people can post questions without worrying about some sort of reprimand.

Maxxx · Post by **Maxxx** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 6:05 pm

This forum helped me a lot, otherwise I would not have been able to install gentoo on my own and I would not have learned so many things.
I've never seen users arguing.

jonathan183 · Post by **jonathan183** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 7:58 pm

I last posted on the Arch forums in 2015, tbh if I were still using Arch I would still use the forums. Systemd put me off Arch and caused issues for a system which had otherwise had very few problems for years.
I think provided you ask reasonable questions and show you have tried to sort things out first then either forum is friendly ... things may have changed.

szatox · Post by **szatox** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 8:00 pm

pauldotknopf wrote:I've been a little depressed on how argumentative and insulting the Arch community can be.

Honest question, how does the Gentoo community compare?

We lick each others asses every day and we love it

Seriously now.... The old wisdom says you can't be your own judge. You've probably heard this one before, so you know that me (a stranger to you) expressing my feelings towards myself would result on a completely useless answer.
If it's useless, then what's the point of asking? Just stick around and see for yourself.
Unless you're actually testing us for something not related to the question you asked. Well, nice try then. I guess you succeeded. Please be kind enough to share the results once you're done with processing your data.

I've never seen users arguing.

Let me help you: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1 ... stemd.html
Mind that this is the 3rd part already. I think the mods here split it after every 30 pages of bitching with 20 posts per page, and there were like 3 or 4 of those running in parallel.... IMO it's a truly stunning volume of arguing regarding just one simple matter.

1clue · Post by **1clue** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 8:43 pm

szatox wrote:Let me help you: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1 ... stemd.html
Mind that this is the 3rd part already. I think the mods here split it after every 30 pages of bitching with 20 posts per page, and there were like 3 or 4 of those running in parallel.... IMO it's a truly stunning volume of arguing regarding just one simple matter.

Great. Now one of the guys from those threads who wants the top score is going to migrate that slugfest over here. Thanks.

Fitzcarraldo · Post by **Fitzcarraldo** » Thu Dec 14, 2017 8:58 pm

szatox wrote:
pauldotknopf wrote:I've never seen users arguing.
Let me help you: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1 ... stemd.html
Mind that this is the 3rd part already. I think the mods here split it after every 30 pages of bitching with 20 posts per page, and there were like 3 or 4 of those running in parallel.... IMO it's a truly stunning volume of arguing regarding just one simple matter.

Yes, but they are not real bun fights, though.

desultory · Post by **desultory** » Fri Dec 15, 2017 4:37 am

szatox wrote:We lick each others asses every day and we love it

Not in the support forums.

1clue wrote:Great. Now one of the guys from those threads who wants the top score is going to migrate that slugfest over here. Thanks.

People who can split things are watching, and you can [topic=28820]flag[/topic] it if things get derailed.

davidm · Post by **davidm** » Sun Dec 17, 2017 11:36 pm

I've used arch for many years and still have a box which uses it. Not to bad mouth Arch or the community but just stating my opinion:

I feel the Gentoo community is much friendlier in general and also considerably more user centric than Arch. Not to say that the Arch community is hostile and that they ignore users. Not at all. Just that Gentoo is considerably better in these aspects in my opinion. Ironically Gentoo also seems more friendly to "Noob" users only putting in a small to moderate effort. The Arch community seems to expect a lot more from users and if you aren't putting in at least a moderate amount of effort you will probably get called out (rightly or wrongly I leave that to you to decide) for it in some way. The Gentoo community OTOH only seems to do this when a user is putting in a ridiculously small amount of effort into learning the distro or helping themselves. e.g. not reading the news items presented by Portage after a developer specifically told them they should in five different replies specifically to them, etc.

As far as user centric I think that can be seen in the choice Gentoo still offers user. For instance myself I have been running systemd on Gentoo for many years. Most Gentoo users do not run systemd but I have had zero problems with running it myself and the support is very good. OTOH the Arch developers got together many years ago and basically told the users that "we are switching to systemd and that is all there is to it". You didn't really get much choice.

Also philosophically there are other differences between the communities. I already spoke of the differences in the attitude towards users vs developers but there are also differences in the forums. I feel the Arch forum is significantly more heavily moderated than the Gentoo forums. Sometimes moderation happens for a difference of opinion -- usually with the topic being sent to a special area. Gentoo forums OTOH seems to welcome the controversy and the mods rarely intervene unless it is clearly warranted.

Again, I'm not bad mouthing Arch or the community. Just stating the truth. To me Arch and the community are still great. It is my #2 distro after Gentoo.

paxsars · Post by **paxsars** » Sun Mar 11, 2018 11:15 pm

I believe as long as you're willing to put in as much effort as possible to learning and fixing your own mistakes you will be accepted in any community. Gentoo is pretty much the end of the line when it comes joining the Linux world, the end being Linux from scratch.

tuggbuss · Post by **tuggbuss** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 4:21 pm

I'm active in both forums/communities.

Gentoo does not have that much derivative distros (there are some i know) as Arch Linux.

It's very common that a Manjaro/Parabola/Arch-Anywhere...and so on, users trying to solve issues asking on the Arch BBS. Not even have a clue how to do a Arch Linux install.

Gentoo is simpler in that perspective, not being binary distribution.

Iv'e been helped a lot through Arch BBS and Gentoo forums, and am a recovering help vampire

But i do agree that comments like "Please post your xxx.conf or do you think i can read your mind" and likewise (fairly common on the Arch BBS) is totally unnecessary and only puts people down.

On the other hand, there are questions like:

Subject: "HELP!!!!!!!"

Topic: "I can't get x to start, please help how to fix it."

P.Kosunen · Post by **P.Kosunen** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 4:42 pm

tuggbuss wrote:Gentoo does not have that much derivative distros (there are some i know) as Arch Linux.

Not as many, but i would say 27 including dead ones is plenty. Doubt many Chromium OS users will wander here though.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Distributi ... _on_Gentoo

tuggbuss · Post by **tuggbuss** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 9:03 pm

P.Kosunen wrote:
tuggbuss wrote:Gentoo does not have that much derivative distros (there are some i know) as Arch Linux.
Not as many, but i would say 27 including dead ones is plenty. Doubt many Chromium OS users will wander here though.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Distributi ... _on_Gentoo

That was a lot. I knew 2 (Calculate Linux and Sabayon)

Tony0945 · Post by **Tony0945** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 2:07 pm

Well, try this:

1. Find a bug
2. Fix the bug
3. Report the bug
4. Wait nearly two years.
5. Get a smart ass remark about "supposed use"
6. Forget ever filing a bug again.

https://bugs.gentoo.org/597324

Post by **John R. Graham** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 2:21 pm

I generally haven't found that to be the case. Take a look: 59 bugs an counting as of this writing. The majority of my bugs have gotten good responses, although it does tend to take some time.

- John

steveL · Post by **steveL** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 3:45 pm

tuggbuss wrote:That was a lot. I knew 2 (Calculate Linux and Sabayon)

Thanks for the reminder.
Calculate Linux is on the front-cover disk of this month's Linux User, along with Antix, a debian-based distro without the systemd cancer.

I would try it out on an old laptop (but it likely has systemdbust..)

As for the topic, I cannot comment on the relative difference. Only say that IME, the Gentoo user community, on the forums and IRC, is the most like how computing used to be, back in the 1980s, when everyone helping each other, ie being civil, was the norm, and asshat behaviour was frowned upon by wider society as well as us.

IOW: it rocks! :-)

I would have left Gentoo behind without a second thought many years ago, and on several occasions, were it not for the user community.
Best crowd in the world (if you're a geek ;)

This is down in main to the excellent moderation on these forums, imo. The ebuild "developers" could learn a helluva lot from them, and some of them do.

steveL · Post by **steveL** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 3:52 pm

krinn wrote:i would say, don't go in Off The Wall, it's very special ; a bit of craziness and skill (it's only when trolling become an art you can talk about skill).

If you're that skilled at trolling, chances are you're a real arsehole, IRL.

berferd · Post by **berferd** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 5:45 pm

Tony0945 wrote:Well, try this:

If you're lucky you'll just be ignored. If not you'll get a bunch of static about how you should've known to file a Github pull request. Made the decision to not become a proxy maintainer super easy.

Post by **asturm** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 5:51 pm

It's fine if you don't want to contribute.

berferd · Post by **berferd** » Sat Apr 14, 2018 5:52 pm

asturm wrote:It's fine if you don't want to contribute.

Thank you for giving me permission. I feel SO much better now.

Gentoo's attitude, vs Arch

Gentoo's attitude, vs Arch

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