Why do you use Gentoo

[blubbi]

I aggree, Fedora Core, Suse, Redhat is a really pain. I like PCLINUXOS and GENTOO.

Why I used Gentoo... and why i'll be installing it again this weeks
[*]Because I've tried FC6, Debian, SuSe, and Ubuntu and they all are a big pain in the ass to install stuff on. Ya apt-get, yum, blah blah blah is great, but as soon as you need something that's not in a repository or in the "newest" release you are screwed.
[*]Because whenever i update i automatically install a new kernel that erases my old config file, edits my menu.lst and f*****g screws me over the next time i reboot. (Ya i'm tired of that BS...Debian, Fedora...)
[*]Because the forums at other sites are absolute complete shit. I'm serious, take a look at the Debian forums and you will find about 90% noob questions that a gentoo user would know after just installation.
[*]Because I don't want crap on my system that I don't use/need/want/require. FC6 has the vaguest install options I've ever seen. "Development tools", "Desktop environments"... I mean come on, lets get real, you gotta be more freaking specific than that.
[*]Because the documentation/forums own! seriously if i need a question answered i usually go here first because chances are someone here *actually* knows

You forgott *buntu!
It's pain in the a** too! Especially for experienced users

[GENTOOJAKE]

cuase windows sucks and you should be banned for 2 years for saying that

[Evincar]

Because I wanted to try Linux (Windows user for over 10 years!)...and I first installed Mandriva.

Sure, very easy installation, but once it was done, I was basically left in the woods with NFI of what to do, how to configure anything or how to solve any problem. Hell, actually I didn't have a clue of how it worked. I could never make my wifi work and I never had the foggiest idea of what was failing because all I got was "can not connect" (ALA Windows!)

With Gentoo, I ran into like 10 or 15 mistakes in the installation, but, in the end you can solve them because you know what you are doing and what the system is doing. And, most importantly, I learnt quite a bit of how a linux system is.

And I love the "choose what you want and what you don't" philosophy. Of course, I still have to learn like half of the stuff about USE flags and linux in general, but once you know what it is, you can decide wether your programs should support it or it is an unnecessary waste of MB.

And, furthermore, once you run regedit (insert evil laugh here) you realize that everything in Gentoo is easier .

[DrAgOnTuX]

Hi there,
what are your gentoo machines mainly used for
Don't let any detail open

[amar_]

Desktop~surfing,music,chat and all similar things .Also I have apache+mysql+php running for some tesings and stuff

[wuzzerd]

Everything, especially since i poured coffee into the laptop.

Browsing.
E-Mail
Gaming
Letter Writing
etc...

[d2_racing]

I use Gentoo to learn how to use Linux the right way.

In fact, I have to work to make thing appends:)

Like the installation of ATI+AIGLX+Beryl for exemple.

[Brainfart]

everything except for a couple games...

[timeBandit]

All-around desktop: email, web, banking, digital imaging, playing music, software development, watching DVDs, home office, remote office, keeping my Unix skills sharp, remote support of relatives' PCs, a few games and whatever I think of next.

[think4urs11]

attached the above 6 posts

[tcx]

I don't really know what to say.
I can't find anything new to tell you people.

• The community is excellent. Lots of people from other distros come here to find what they want about linux and the useful details.
• The portage framework has 2 or 3 flaws that I can remind of, All of the rest is perfect.
• The USE flags
• The rc scripts system is great.
• The community (again). Just had to repeat this, thanks to all you guys.

I have tried many distros and OS's and I still try them to see and find what I really like. This one is the one that match my likings.
NetBSD is very interesting and Archlinux is the best precompiled linux distro.
The best linux distro is this one and the best software installation framework is Portage.

The flaws in Portage that I can remember now:

• written in Python - in C could be faster.
• the shell scripts in portage HAS to be the bash - if it could be the korn shell it would be a lot faster.
  change /bin/bash to /bin/sh or to a wrapper and rewrite ALL the scripts (!!!)
• is always installs newer kernel source trees when I "emerge -DNva" - this behaviour shouldn't be the default

I have Gentoo ~x86 on my laptop, ~ppc on my G4 mac mini and ~amd64 on my desktop.
All of them work flawlessly.
Why should I complaint or change distro?
I can't complaint and I won't change.

[mark_alec]

[*]the shell scripts in portage HAS to be the bash - if it could be the korn shell it would be a lot faster.
change /bin/bash to /bin/sh or to a wrapper and rewrite ALL the scripts (!!!)

Work is currently underway to have baselayout-2 not depend on bash: http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_142464.xml

[tcx]

That is great news. I really didn't know that.
But that's only half of what I was mentioning i my post.
In the boot process, even the fastest computers can have bottlenecks (with I/O - IRQ - whatever) and thus make the boot speed not limited by the shell running the scripts. That isn't ,obviously, the case with Roy Marples' sparc64 running Gentoo/FreeBSD.
With the use of more recent and much, in all, faster computers, that change in the boot scripts is going to help a lot.

When I wrote my post I was mentioning these shell scripts:

Code: Select all

$ file /usr/lib/portage/bin/*|grep shell
/usr/lib/portage/bin/dobin:                           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/doconfd:                         Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/dodir:                           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/dodoc:                           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/doenvd:                          Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/doexe:                           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/dohard:                          Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/doinfo:                          Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/doinitd:                         Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/doins:                           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/dolib:                           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/dolib.a:                         Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/dolib.so:                        Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/doman:                           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/domo:                            Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/dosbin:                          Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/dosed:                           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/dosym:                           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/ebuild.sh:                       Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/ecompress:                       Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/ecompressdir:                    Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/emake:                           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/emerge-webrsync:                 Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/env-update.sh:                   Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/etc-update:                      Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/find-requires:                   Bourne shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/fixdbentries:                    Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/fowners:                         Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/fperms:                          Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/md5check.sh:                     Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/misc-functions.sh:               Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newbin:                          Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newconfd:                        Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newdoc:                          Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newenvd:                         Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newexe:                          Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newinitd:                        Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newins:                          Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newlib.a:                        Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newlib.so:                       Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newman:                          Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/newsbin:                         Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/portage_gpg_update.sh:           Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/prepall:                         Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/prepalldocs:                     Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/prepallinfo:                     Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/prepallman:                      Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/prepallstrip:                    Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/prepinfo:                        Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/preplib:                         Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/prepman:                         Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/prepstrip:                       Bourne-Again shell script text executable
/usr/lib/portage/bin/quickpkg:                        Bourne-Again shell script text executable

They are called many times when emerging and, as mentioned by Tavis Ormandy in this script,

ksh massively out performs bash.

Well, it does. I made a few rough tests using most of the shells available in portage and ksh is the fastest shell for scripts in which you call external programs many times.
As a very basic example:
The mentioned script without the shell changing part took 46 seconds running with ksh and 2 minutes with bash, for the same binary file of course.
As I recall, bash was the shell that performed worst in this case.

Trying to stay on topic, I really love Gentoo and use as my only OS in my laptop and my home server.
I am just trying to make it better by showing my point of view.
I don't know how much of the bash-like parts of the mentioned above scripts would have to be changed to make it a "pure" /bin/sh script.
My idea is, ksh is a superset of shell as is bash. If the scripts could be reduced to a minimum subset, the emerging process would speed a lot by using the fastest shell available.
Please, take this just as a thought not as criticism.

Thanks marc_alec for the referring Roy Marples' work and Roy Marples for the obvious speedup coming somewhere in the next versions of baselayout.

[eVilS_gIrL]

I use gentoo because I like this program!

[szensz-siempre]

I became interested in Linux because I was tired of having my OS options monopolized by MS. Initially I ran SUSE and at that time Redhat on my PC at home. I continued to use windoze at work though because I found that through playing around I continually ended up trashing my system at home, and I would not risk my data. I then received a Eurocom T210C laptop as a gift and was unable to get an install of SUSE or any other distro working as I had no inbuilt CD drive, and most distros wouldn't boot off the usb DVD drive I was using. But gentoo worked using a flash disk install.

The reasons I have stuck with Gentoo over the years are:
- I can maintain an always up-to-date system
- I can depend on a knowledgeable support network that won't (hopefully) flame me for asking questions they consider stupid (we were all there at some time)
- I can configure and personalize my PC as I want it.
- Despite not knowing too much, I can still get more done on my system than I would using an "easier" distro because of the indepth documentation provided.

I think that the developers are doing a great job,and hope that they can put differences aside and maintain gentoo as a cutting edge, dependable, and innovative distrobution; in the same spirit that kept me coming back no matter what other distro I tried.

[grodzix]

I've been using FreeBSD + Win2k for quite a long time. Win2k only because there are lots of thing I use which I can't get under FreeBSD. To be hones, I don't like switching between OS-es at all, doesn't work for me. Under Gentoo I've got everything I got under FreeBSD (well, it's a little bit different) + I don't have to use Window$ anymore to play games or use Skype! Brilliant solution xD

[Kollin]

I like tweaking and gentoo is the best on that field

[lomom]

because i love it!

[deprave]

Well, mostly for the reasons omp and codergeek42 posted:

• Community
• Customiziation
• Works as expected, mostly
• USE features / package dependencies control
• Portage's extensive repository of packages
• Very good and thorough documentation
• I feel at home

And another that hasn't been stressed yet:

• The system is / can be always up to date
• No need to reinstall

I use gentoo for the same reasons above, to add to the "no need to reinstall" reason: Its this high "stability" that keeps me on gentoo, my precious data is always safe, Im not talking about the same "stability" as one might use to describe something like OpenBSD, but I am talking about the power that gentoo gives so that its nearly impossible to truely break a system and loose all of your important data and settings, No matter what happens to gentoo it can always be fixed.

[Dinchamion]

Let's see...

(1) when I hear "linux" what I like the most is that I can customize my system from top to bottom, and every single detail i in my hands. Granted, sometimes it's a pain in the ass, but at the end, I don't just have a functional system but I have the joy of success and achievement too.
(2) coming from the 1st reason, Gentoo was the first advanced linux I used (I had Mandriva, FC and Ubuntu before that), and I liked it. Good documentation, I learned a LOT from trying and experimenting.
(3) open source. I like the idea of freedom and choice.

These are my 3 main reason. I'd have listed community too, but, although I'm sure it's great, it'd be a bit premature.

[jtheory]

At first just to learn about Linux. But now that it finally works I somehow cannot get off it :)

[VincenzoVega]

I love in-depth (tech) discussions (not necessarily participating in them) (not really a reason to actually use Gentoo ?)
Portage and it's alternatives are futuristic in terms of configurability (USE-flags + all Gentoo configuration files ftw)
The incredible and well-maintained Portage tree (almost all I need is there)
The focus on self-maintance / self-configuration
The community (the Ubuntu-commity just sickens me (using Gentoo for the first time made me a Gentoo-noob, not a mindless maggot)

<deleted rant>

[asturm]

A long time ago I tried SuSE 7.2, then 8.0, 8.2, finally 9.0. It never kept my attention much longer than a week - let alone thinking of an everyday-use migration. Too bloated, a bit slow, somehow unsatisfying... and maybe I wasn't quite old or experienced enough to accept giving up Windows and programs I was used to at that time... of course, there wasn't Amarok but a rather ugly looking and unstable xmms. Growing interest for Linux (as a subject, interestingly) during my programming school, involving a geekish teacher who introduced us to the principles of a shiny, new Linux-distribution called "Gentoo", finally brought me there.

Reasons why Gentoo caught my interest at first:
- high-level customization
- geekness of having one's own, against the system's architecture compiled linux-distribution
- being forced to learn linux-insides beginning with the install-process (other than being stuck e.g. to yast and otherwise GUIfied)

A few reasons why I love Gentoo NOW:
- high-level customization
- portage and its huge amount of packages, perfect amd64-support
- comfort of emerge
- wonderful support by community and gentoowiki
- it's amazingly stable, considering various hardware-changes I made since last year (single to dualcore, mainboard, agp/ATI to pcie/Nvidia)

[rgk]

My list is similar to everyone else's but I will still post it.

- Customization
- Freedom and Trust (social contract ect...)
- The Community
- The docs
- Use flags
- Portage in all possible ways is the best
- Being able to learn how everything works.
- Larry the cow...

[attenpeter]

1) Source based. Gets the absofsckinglutely maximum power out of my system.
2) Minimal. (Almost) no bloat, except I want it.
3) Package mangement. Powerful and convenient.

Thanks, gentoo