How Did You Get Here?

[jonathan183]

Started with SuSE Linux, tried Arch Linux and used that for a while instead of SuSE.
Installed Gentoo (think around 2008 - don't have the 32 bit original install anymore) and then LFS as a challenge
Tried Crux, Slackware, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Debian and Devuan. Also had Funtoo for a while ...

Dropped Arch after they moved to systemd. Dropped Crux when they switched to 64 bit support only (still had 32 bit machines at the time). Did not really use Ubuntu much, and did not like the Slackware package install approach

Still have Gentoo and Linux Mint installed. Gentoo is my day-to-day distro. Mint is for supporting others including remotely.

Like the flexibility to install what I want and keep what I don't want off my system.

[linux_os2]

Like Pietinger I worked for a company that used OS/2 , also there were several mainframes running from OS390 to ZOS.
The moment I heard about linux I installed redhat on the laptop that I had from the company. Also I needed a 3270 emulator so there was x3270.
Later I switched to suse then ubuntu (still is running on the laptop of my wife). Around 2018 started gentoo. Recently also installed LFS.
What I like most of gentoo is the community that is so friendly helping the newcomers. Thank you a lot everybody!!!.

[pandoraxero]

Anyone mentioning a successful LFS install - I envy you.
I have tried to get LFS installed before, but it's just too dense. There's too much there.
I may try LFS again one day... but that day is NOT today.

[eccerr0r]

Redhat 9 stopped being supported.

Tried Fedora, meh. Still a reinstall.

Tried Gentoo, saw it was source based, mostly automated, customizeable, and it was already on my machine due to trial, so stuck with it.

I don't think I'd like LFS because of the lack of update automation.

[flysideways]

I don't remember how I found Gentoo, but it was on the 2.2 kernel and I had bought a serial modem specifically for Gentoo to end my winmodem struggle. My use of Gentoo back then was more look see than serious. After I finally got a cable modem, I started using Gentoo regularly.

The rolling release aspect of Gentoo was and remains very compelling. I played with various binary distros, but tired of forced re-installs.

[CptClyde]

I had tried and failed to get mandrake and caldera in the late 90s on my parent's i386 I think it was. I actually bought the 8 cd boxed set of Mandrake of the shelf in my local computer store. What a nerd lol but would you believe I had a girlfriend? I was 18 or so.
But for some reason I managed to get Slackware installed and booting (maybe that's why I had a girl friend, chicks dig "The Man"). Had some fun with that for a couple years (I use the term 'fun" very loosely here). Then I heard of this new distro that could download and compile your source packages for you automatically. I had to witness this strange voodoo for my self. I also liked Larry the cow. I grew up and was still living on a dairy farm so I guess it seemed natural? I ordered the stage 3 tarball install dvd online and had it mailed to me. I had very limited dial-up still in those days. Hilarious to think back about how things have changed.

I later went back to Slackware for a few years, then FreeBSD for a decade, now back to Gentoo for personal use and looking at incorporating into development and production servers at work. So happy to see Gentoo still going strong after all these years.

[Kresni]

It was mainly because the need to jump through a lot of hoops to compile stuff on different systems. I would want that mostly because downloaded binaries for a program would have much more stuff than I would actually need, and more often than not they would be quite old. It becomes necessary to maintain those programs together with their build time dependencies without interfering the system's normal package manager.

That was a huge pain to do. It becomes even worse when you need some newer version of some library that is shipped with your system. I guess these aren't very big issues for people that does not tinker around with software, but when you want to do that it becomes very complex. I thought Gentoo could make this way easier for me, that's why I started using it.

I also noticed that it becomes harder to look for help on the internet if you are downloading a heavily modified version of some program, which is often what distributions like Ubuntu does. I would often find myself in a situation that a solution I found somewhere would not work on my system simply because extra modifications were made to the base system. As I did not made those changes myself, it become harder to debug stuff. Not only would I deal with the program itself but the weird modifications that were made on top of my operating system. Gentoo did not solve all these problems for me but it made it easier, and also fun =)

[mv]

After a bulk of cumbersome re-installs of SuSE, I was looking for a rolling-release distribution which would never require me to re-install again. At least at this time with regular major glibc and libc++ upgrades, the only reasonable option for rolling release was a source-based distro, that is, Gentoo, if you want to keep all the advantages of a distribution.

Note that the re-installs previously usually not only replaced one set of bugs by another set of bugs, they also required a lot of manual work if you patched out some bugs.
Also, some packages were just vanished after a re-install for no apparent reason. Unfortunately, the latter still happens with Gentoo: that packages are just removed from the repository without a real need for that removal. But at least you get informed about it and can keep the tar files and copy the ebuilds to your overlay.

[tiffany]

I started mid-90's with RedHat and then we compiled most software. After a few years of distro-hopping I ended up in Debian. It was a whole new world to me. First the massive repositories with automatic dependency handling and second the small scripts for maintaining the system.

But then DVD came and we started the first rips. Soon the new codecs came to our life and I had to compile mplayer and others to support them. So I decided to do the move and let the USE flags do the "dirty" thing for me.

Now apart from the native installation I use Gentoo also on WSL2 and it performs excellent.

[eccerr0r]

The rolling release wasn't initially a reason why I stuck with Gentoo... it turned out to be a side effect.

Usually when it comes time to upgrade and reinstall the whole system, it's worth trying another distribution at that point. It's why Redhat got dropped from my hard drive as it was experimentation time.

Well, with a rolling release, I never had another reinstall situation, and hence never had a need to change distributions. At least so far... far longer than any other distribution or OS I've ever run.

[wjb]

I started in early 2000's with Mandrake. It had a GUI control panel where you could set up h/w, sort of. It didn't really work, and involved visits to websites where you'd be offered mystical incantations to apply to various /etc/ files which'd work for a while before coming apart again. Very very annoying.

And then, Linux Format mag did a feature on installing Gentoo. I read it several times over and thought - if I have a go at this, I'd actually understand how it all works. And so it has been. OK, maybe not so much the 'all' as 'mostly' but that's done me for the last 18yrs.

[pandoraxero]

Linux Format mag

You know, I've heard nothing of Linux Mags for a good long time. Seems this one in particular is still around... and apparently available in physical format, too.
And, honestly, It's the Physical format that surprises me the most. Most magazines have switched to (almost) entirely online distribution.
Of course, that could also be a simple artifact of the fact I'm in the US, and, well... distribution nationwide in and large country is difficult even in the best of times.

[enhaced]

It is a simple question, really. What brought you to Gentoo Linux?

I needed a lightweight distro for an old laptop back in 2022, back then I used Arch (btw) on my main machine, but I liked Gentoo so much after installing it on the Laptop I decided to stick with it "for a while" and now here I am, 1 year later happily compiling my packages at 5 AM

[wayfly]

Last year,I use Ubuntu, Although it’s friendly for me. Suddenly I want to compile my system by myself. So I decided try to use gentoo. (Please forgive my English is not so well)

[genialePrutser]

I didn't follow the rules of the arch linux forum (I made a second account for my work PC), got IP banned (instead of just banning my second account), asked to be unbanned via e-mail, didn't get a reply and started looking for a replacement.

Arch linux and gentoo are the only distributions I found that have information on bcache and btrfs on their wiki's, so here I am.

[cornplayz256]

i first got introduced in gentoo when browsing in distrowatch and seeing the distro there in the popular distro list. when i tried installing it for the first time, it was a pain to install kernel when i was in the kernel part on the handbook until i realized i can just install gentoo-kernel-bin.

[NeglectedRudderPug]

I've used many distros in my time since I started my journey into the depths of Linux in 2003, generally each distro has had their ups and downs, their pros and cons and such. As to be expected.

For the last year or so, I had been using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my desktop, with Fedora Kinoite on my laptop. Two very different distros. I'm a firm believer in using the distro which best suites your needs; that is don't stick to a distro simply out of fanboying or because you know it best. Use it because it does the job you need done best and most efficiently.

Lately Tumbleweed had me feeling a little restricted, I wanted to do things which sort of went against what the bistro recommends or wants you to do. They're also making the same push as Fedora towards the whole immutable thing. Don't get me wrong, immutable certainly has its advantages, and is brilliant for my laptop where I just need it to work and don't have time to fix it if it breaks, it gets powered up fairly rarely (probably less than once a month), so when it does, I need to be able to update it quickly without it breaking itself, on this front immutable is perfect.

On the other hand, with my desktop I can take my time to configure things properly. I like to have full control over the system in every aspect, and change anything I can (within reason ofc). There have been a few times with Tumbleweed for example, where I wanted to patch the kernel (to fix known bugs), but doing so on Tumbleweed is not encouraged and there is extremely limited information on how to do so in the "correct" way. That also applied to other applications and programs where I wanted to patch things.

This meant that for me at least, Tumbleweed was no longer efficient and no longer suited my needs and so, it went. And in its place? Gentoo!

So, I guess I just wanted more control. Since switching to Gentoo it really is like breathing fresh air. It is a genuine joy to configure, setup and use. I've loved every minute of it so far, I feel like I've taken a step back to how Linux used to be as I remember it years ago. It has actually boosted my old love for Linux in general, and I remember why I started using Linux all those years ago.

That, and it has a retro phpBB forum! I haven't seen one of these in years, nostalgic!

[spica]

I believe that regular emerge -avuDU @world on a single host ensures that the binaries are finely tuned to work seamlessly with one another. This might be due to the presence of meticulously crafted ebuild recipes, which force Portage to recompile when necessary. In contrast, in binary-oriented distributions, libraries are typically built at various points in time, and this lack of synchronization can result in insufficient cohesion, leading to unforeseen application crashes.
My apprehension about software potentially and unexpectedly crashing during an important work is the reason I choose to stick with Gentoo.

[tastySorbet]

I heard about Gentoo through YouTube videos and that apparently it was more challenging than Arch to install. I failed and succeeded installing Arch and Gentoo many times. So I guess for me initially it was the challenge. Now it's because I'd like a computer that feels truly like mine.

I had somehow accidentally changed something in my system on Arch to cause it to go into a kernel panic. I'm used to booting into a Live Environment to fix my system because I've been playing around with Gentoo on a different computer and configuring the kernel. So I decided to install Gentoo on a separate SSD and move my .config files over from my Arch install. So now I'm mainly on Gentoo, and hope to stay on Gentoo.

I decided to take it nice and slow this time, really experimenting with what I can do and thoroughly learning what I can do. It's been much nicer and a lot of fun! I have even more control compared to Arch, and I actually know what my system can and can't do. Also the Gentoo logo is oddly pleasing to look at, so that's a plus.

[usr99]

I heard that compiling optimized code could improve performance, I gave up few years ago, then I managed to do my first successful install this year

[figueroa]

Long and complicated answer possible, so this is the simple one.

1. 1984, Unix terminal user (DOS terminal client, dial-up, eventually LAN) at work.
2. Later in 1984, Commodore 64 at home.
3. Late 1993 or 1994 Slackware, downloaded, primarily for improved access to Unix servers via ARPANET
4a. Migrated through many Linux, mostly boxed sets or ordered CDs, mostly Slackware, Red Hat, Debian, and Mandrake.
4b. Concurrently using DOS, Windows, OS/2, and CP/M.
5. By 1999, primarily using Linux on desktop, laptop, and servers.
6. 2004 decision to seek more flexible DYI Linux home -- found Gentoo in DistroWatch. Haven't looked back.

Just happy to be here.

[skellr]

I like the way Portage works. Better than the way FreeBSD Ports work.

Ports inspired a few package managers but Gentoo really did something with it above the rest.

[s0ulslack1]

Microsoft

[vad12]

I'm sorry in advance for the length, and I don't want to take away from the topic, but I figured this thread is the best place to share my story of Gentoo and introduce myself. I also know nobody that knows much about computers where I live, so maybe 1 or 2 of you here probably will understand the struggles and triumphs I went through to get back to the Handbook.....

Short version: I got a laptop in 2004 with low specs and decided to try to install Gentoo on it. It worked, then the laptop broke the next day. 1 year later, I no longer had home internet access. 13 years later, I was able to get internet again. 3 years later, I installed Gentoo on 2 old desktop computers. The Handbook totally brought me back.

Full version: It was a Toshiba Portege clocking at 400MHz. There was no way I was going to install Windows XP on it. I was just starting college and I had a little bit of cash, so I bought a battery and a port replicator so I can use it for class. I read somewhere about Gentoo being lightweight, so I tried that for Linux. I had a programming class teaching us to program on Linux too, so I figured why not.

I went through the Handbook and got Gentoo installed without any problems. I felt pretty happy about that achievement. I got home from class, left the laptop on the couch and went to the bathroom. I came out and saw my cousin come home. He looked exhausted, then went and hopped into the couch and bodyslammed my laptop at the same time. The laptop had a busted lcd and hard drive now.

I got no support from my mom to get a new laptop so I was back with Windoze XP and the desktop. Then we had no internet anymore and college was no longer affordable. Then came the years of looking for a decent place to hire me without a car, along with a lot of moving. Then came the years of obtaining a reliable enough car while working, along with more moving. I used Ubuntu during those years mainly because it helped me manage to get into neighbors' wifi connections quickly enough (until WPA2 ), so I stuck with it. I installed Ubuntu on any ancient laptop or desktop I managed to get my hands on. Ubuntu still felt lacking though because there were often moments where you find yourself with a semi-broken system while figuring out how to make a certain driver or software work, and have to reinstall Ubuntu, or leave as-is for general purpose.

I finally I got the chance to have home internet in 2017, but Gentoo wasn't on my mind and Ubuntu stable enough on one of my laptops. In 2019, my apartment was totally underwater, including a Compaq Deskpro I was using as a short monitor stand on the floor (seriously!). After a couple months, the pandemic hit, and I was still cleaning after the flood. By summer 2020, I decided to see what will happen if I turn on this Deskpro, and to my surprise, it turned on and the hard drive was intact! I have a PowerMac G4 that has been stored for a long time and not hit by water. I decided to install some commercial OSes on both computers and do various "face-off" things

I had my bit of fun with that then fell deep into some Apple OS stuff, and that made me really want to get Linux running on both now. The PPC platform immediately made me think Gentoo and I remembered the Handbook, and now I have Gentoo running on the Mac! I went and did the same on the Deskpro without a hitch. I knew about the compile times for 32-bit machines but I don't really care lol. Just from installing Gentoo, I learned a ton about both computers!

A year later, I received a newer laptop that was supposedly broken but worked fine when I tried it, so I immediately installed Gentoo on it. And I learned more about computer hardware! I also got a dock for it, so it's been like I'm back at that good ol' Portege day (lol). I also read about distcc and set that up, so now I'm cross-compiling for my old machines with this x64 laptop, which makes installs way faster. I've also made a personal update to a linux driver to get a certain device to work as a mouse (trying to make a USB version of this now). Getting back into doing some C programming is pretty nice.

I've done so much cool stuff with Gentoo over the last couple of years that I don't think I would ever have done on Ubuntu. And I don't even have X11 installed yet Anyways, I have some wiki articles I want to add/update once I get the chance, and I hope that all I have been learning about Linux and programming helps me finally land me a job that can help me pay the bills better and be able to save and allows me to have a vacation.

Oh yeah, my apartment went underwater again this year..... All my computers were saved, but I also picked up some Pentium III servers that were gonna be tossed. Some of them use dual-processors. These would be cool to add to my network to make a cluster of distcc servers Ah, so many possibilities with Gentoo I should probably move soon too, though.....

[nurali]

I heard that Gentoo is hard to install(one year ago)
So I installed it to prove that I can handle
Then I found that Gentoo has a beautiful logo(I have never seen such beautiful logo on any distro)
So I started to use it as my daily system,then I fell in love with it