Gentoo users == a bunch of closed-minded elitists?

Message

dreas · Post by **dreas** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 1:24 pm

No no no, that did not originally came out of my mouth, of course!

Being a gentoo (2 boxes) and an arch (1 box) linux user right now, I'm frequently reading on the arch linux forums as well. First I found only a few posts of new arch user bashing gentoo. But meanwhile that seems to be the common opinion on the arch linux forums.

Taken from the archlinux forum (pretty much the most negative and immature post there):

...
in their minds gentoo = l33t and there is no argument you can give them that will tell them otherwise.

they consider themselves some sort of l33t bunch they do.

newsflash a dead fish could install and run gentoo. there is nothing to really learn except a few more things on the commandline.

their build system is a bunch of hooey, they forse you to swallow a bunch of crap settings, etc
...

...
feh what a bunch of rpm rejects the gentoo lot are. pttui ! i spit on their piss ant distro.
...

Please don't act immature and start a flame war on either this or their forum. It pisses me off too, but that'd do no good to anyone.

I personally think completely different. In my eyes the people on this forum are the best bunch I've come across so far. Helpful, almost ever friendly, but well, you all know that. So how comes other people think quite the opposite? Are we really acting like elitists? Or are they just full of envy? I bet the latter holds the truth.

ralph · Post by **ralph** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 1:32 pm

I don't think this kind of attitude is confined to the arch linux forums. I've seen a lot of people write a lot of bs about gentoo and gentoo users on the web.
Why? I don't know.
But then why should we care? If some people like to make an ass of themselves, let them.

Arker · Post by **Arker** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 1:50 pm

I can't speak for anyone else on this board of course, but I can be a bit of a closed-minded elitist. I'm not sure it has anything to do with using Gentoo, although that can't be proven.

~djc

dreas · Post by **dreas** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 1:53 pm

ralph wrote:I don't think this kind of attitude is confined to the arch linux forums. I've seen a lot of people write a lot of bs about gentoo and gentoo users on the web.

Yeah, but have a look. It's like they all gather there.

malloc · Post by **malloc** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 2:10 pm

Please excuse my ignorance but i tried to ask around the linux/*bsd community i know and nobody seemed to be able to answer me this.
What is arch linux??

bleakcabal · Post by **bleakcabal** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 2:15 pm

At first Gentoo was not popular and people only talked good about us since we were the underdog. But since Gentoo started being real popular we're getting trashed.

Altough a lot of this might have to do with the fact that some of newer gentoo user are brats that post on slashdot, osnews, and all other linux forums with stupid comments saying gentoo is so much better than anything else and etc.

I have seen a post on a forum where someone had a problem compiling X game and his only reply was someone telling : Install Gentoo ! Because with gentoo ... < etc etc etc >

Which does not help said person, does not convert said person to Gentoo and makes Gentoo looks bad to everyone who reads that post.

Oid · Post by **Oid** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 2:21 pm

I am most definately an elitist.... but that has nothing to do with what os i run... I like gentoo, i run it, if someone else likes ...Whatever they feel like running, so be it, most certainly not my place to say anything....

shm · Post by **shm** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 2:42 pm

Yeah, this attitude is not just there in ArchLinux users, but prevelent among a cross section of Linux users. On the other hand, with as many detractors, there are even more supporters of Gentoo.

Oid · Post by **Oid** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 2:59 pm

My question is, have they tried gentoo themselves, and if not, how can they pass judgement on it?

Viha · Post by **Viha** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 3:36 pm

Oid wrote:My question is, have they tried gentoo themselves, and if not, how can they pass judgement on it?

Human nature?

shm · Post by **shm** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 4:05 pm

Oid wrote:My question is, have they tried gentoo themselves, and if not, how can they pass judgement on it?

some have

m0sk · Post by **m0sk** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 4:55 pm

Yeah, I've seen this kind of BS on other forums. Basically their rant goes something like this:

- Ow man, Gentoo users are a bunch of elitists
- (... rant on ... make "funny" comments on how long it takes to compile stuff ...)
- Man, even a fool can install Gentoo, you don't have to know anything, portage does everything for you, it's way too easy.

Huh, elitism?

Dalius · Post by **Dalius** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 5:13 pm

Way too easy? Oh no, please, don't make it easy, make it hard as hell!

pranyi · Post by **pranyi** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 5:53 pm

I have never understood: what is so bad about elitism?

I am proud of it.

yak8998 · Post by **yak8998** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 5:54 pm

I'm also a gentoo/arch user, and I think I've realized part of the problem. Arch sort of uses gentoo as its role model. Pacman is a slightly different version of portage (this being the main "feature" of the distro).
A lot of people draw comparisons between arch and gentoo, I guess arch users don't want to be compared...

(PS arch is a pretty good distro though, pacman isn't bad for being in such early stages, and arch is so streamlined)

Ateo · Post by **Ateo** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 7:26 pm

We're elitists because we really like how gentoo works? We're elitists because we think gentoo is a superior distro? Hmm. mmmkay. I guess I'm an elitist linux user. *shrug*. I guess this is where I should care what other linux users think of me or gentoo users in general....

I guess it's our job to keep gentoo elite. =)

Oh. BTW. I never learned the internal details of a working linux system until I installed Gentoo. The other distros keep you nice and stupid just like Windows does. Gentoo forced me to actually learn the linux environment.

shm · Post by **shm** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 8:50 pm

-Amoeba- wrote:Oh. BTW. I never learned the internal details of a working linux system until I installed Gentoo. The other distros keep you nice and stupid just like Windows does. Gentoo forced me to actually learn the linux environment.

I don't think there is anything inherient about Gentoo exposing any internals compared to other distros; gentoo is probably easier to use than many others. GUI configuration and installation tools would be nice though.

For actual usage however, I think Gentoo is as easy to use as any other distro. Many are much harder (Slackware)

shift · Post by **shift** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 9:07 pm

ralph wrote:I don't think this kind of attitude is confined to the arch linux forums. I've seen a lot of people write a lot of bs about gentoo and gentoo users on the web.
Why? I don't know.

Jealousy maybe?

m0sk wrote:- Man, even a fool can install Gentoo, you don't have to know anything, portage does everything for you, it's way too easy.

The pinnacle of product development is to make it as easy to use as possible for the end user, it doesn't mean that the product itself is unsophisticated, it simply means that the product is super-usable.

Just think about it, cars today are way easier (auto transmission, power steering, abs breaks, awd, cruise control, etc.) to drive than cars from 80 years ago, that doesn't mean the cars today are worse or uncomplex. In fact, today's cars are much more complex, but most of that is abstracted and hidden from the driver.

Ateo · Post by **Ateo** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 9:12 pm

shm wrote:
-Amoeba- wrote:Oh. BTW. I never learned the internal details of a working linux system until I installed Gentoo. The other distros keep you nice and stupid just like Windows does. Gentoo forced me to actually learn the linux environment.
I don't think there is anything inherient about Gentoo exposing any internals compared to other distros; gentoo is probably easier to use than many others. GUI configuration and installation tools would be nice though.

For actual usage however, I think Gentoo is as easy to use as any other distro. Many are much harder (Slackware)

Well, I don't see it the same way. I felt completely sheltered running other distros of linux. Either way, linux is linux.

regeya · Post by **regeya** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 9:50 pm

Just went looking on the Arch Linux forums, and there's a lot of 100% Certified Horseshit(R) on their forums about Gentoo (people who obviously did something wrong, and didn't bother to figure out what it was, but don't mind trash-talking anyway) and people who, of all things, trash-talk about the Gentoo Forums.

Apparently developers tear people new holes when they have problems with upgrades, people go around discouraging others from using Gentoo, saying it that it's for gurus, and most Gentoo users IRC as root. Others say that Gentoo is praised by people who are unable to install Debian

and have never been introduced to a good package format like RPM. Oh, and Gentoo users are snobby trash-talkers.

Pot calling the kettle black, don't you think?

I thought the same thing that someone else said: what's Arch Linux? If my ignorance makes me elitist, so be it.

EDIT: after reading the description, I have one thing to say: apparently, the Arch Linux people don't know about -march vs -mcpu.

There's no excuse for making an Intel i686-only binary distribution.

Ateo · Post by **Ateo** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 10:38 pm

Reason #1 that I would never try Arch Linux...

Fuck Intel.

Note: Political reasons not quality.

If saying that makes me an elitist... so be it.

taskara · Post by **taskara** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 12:32 am

just the title of this thread made me smile

lightvhawk0 · Post by **lightvhawk0** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 3:45 am

Strange, that they call us elitists. I'm not at all stuck up. I try to help as many people as possible when it comes to linux. I could care less between what distro they use.

njlg · Post by **njlg** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 5:11 am

Hm. Before I ever installed linux I would read what I could on the Internet. For some reason, I cannot remember why, but I thought there was some sort of elitist war between linux & bsd -- using arguments like "mine is better because..." and so on.

Later, when I choose Gentoo to jump into linux upon, I also felt like there were lots of Distro battles -- must the same as linux & bsd battles.

Now, I do not feel that way (of course, I do not read any more) -- but it seems like something that was inherit in linux/bsd: you find the best thing ever, and tell everyone else why you are better. =]

Glorandar · Post by **Glorandar** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 5:47 am

Elitism is the belief that an elite - or small body of expert persons - are the only people whose views on a matter are to be taken seriously. The views of the majority of people who do not belong to the elite are worthless because they are deemed ignorant or incompetent.

The term 'elitist' is often used rather vaguely as a criticism of political and cultural attitudes thought to encourage the exclusion of large numbers of people from decision-making.

This is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitism

Well, I guess we are the elite in one minor sense, after all we have installed Genoo and like it? Is this a bad thing?

Encouraging the exclusion of large numbers of people?

Feel free to come over and try Gentoo! If its not to your taste, that is fine. really... no, I honestly mean that.

Seriously though, everywhere I look, you have the successful and then the merely envious.

Gentoo users == a bunch of closed-minded elitists?

Gentoo users == a bunch of closed-minded elitists?

Elitism: one definition, does it apply to Gentoo?