Why did you choose Gentoo?

Message

Snugglycat · Post by **Snugglycat** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 8:47 pm

I chose Gentoo because I wanted a combination of FreeBSD's ports with the hardware support offered by the Linux kernel. I stayed because Gentoo just works.

superjaded · Post by **superjaded** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 8:49 pm

Well, the only linux distro I've ever really liked, before gentoo of course, was Slackware. Until FreeBSD I had thought package systems were pretty much pointless and were more hassle than they were worth. When I had RedHat installed on my system for a while I didn't even "take advantage" of rpm and went the same route I went with slackware -- installing things from source manually.

Of course, installing stuff manually always leads to confusion and breakage in the system if you don't pay enough attention to your machine and keep things clean yourself. So I don't think I've ever had a given installation of a distro for more than a few months before I felt the need to reinstall.

For some reason I had decided to try out FreeBSD (probably because one of my friends is a real BSD nut and thinks linux sucks

) and I really fell in love with the ports system.

Something that always tweaked me about BSD on a whole was that I seemed to have to run things through a linux compatibility layer. The biggest example was flash; I had to run Mozilla (this was before Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox) in the compatibility layer JUST because there was no opensource flash plugin at the time.

There were a few other things that kind of annoyed me, but overall I was really satisfied with it and thought it was a good OS that met my needs, more or less.

Then i had started hearing about gentoo. I think I essentially wrote it off as a BSD wannabe until I actually got around to trying it (around 1.2 LiveCD, I think?). Even though there was NO installer at all; it was easily the smoothest installation procedure I've ever had, save perhaps Slackware's (this is even including Mandrake -_-).

While it has been about two years since I've used FreeBSD on any of my home machines, portage really does blow ports away from a customizability/tweakability point of view.

ed0n · Post by **ed0n** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 8:56 pm

I deceided to try it for no reason. I just wanted to mess with my box

, and I saw that it rox , and that's the reason why I use it today.

Jefklak · Post by **Jefklak** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 9:01 pm

ed0n wrote:I deceided to try it for no reason. I just wanted to mess with my box , and I saw that it rox , and that's the reason why I use it today.

Generally same here.
> Would like to learn a lot about linux (mess with it)
> Would like to boycott good ol' Bill
> Would like to get some more up-to-date shit than Redhat

Ateo · Post by **Ateo** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 9:05 pm

I've always used linux as a server (SUSE,RedHat,Mandrake) but never as a workstation. So I was only ever used to command line and none of the fancy eye candy that can now be installed on linux.

About a year ago, after continuous bitching of how shitty M$ was, a friend of mine (new to the linux world but VERY eager to learn) began experimenting with different linux distros because he too was sick of M$. He then ran across Gentoo and stongly suggested I give it a try. I did and haven't looked back since. Not only did Gentoo become my local server but it also became my workstation.

Gentoo, because it's that good...

2k.. · Post by **2k..** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 9:29 pm

Portage
Speed
Latest applications
Customisable
Great community feel
Because it's fun

that pretty much sums it up for me

bleakcabal · Post by **bleakcabal** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 3:21 am

In order of the most important to the least important

1: The cool logo
2: Larry the cow
3: To appear "l33+" before my friends

That's the honest truth, to my friends of course I say it's because I can customize the system to meet my needs, because installing it is a learning experience and because I like to compile every program with my custom optimizations...

anonazyet · Post by **anonazyet** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 3:21 am

Package management
Forums

myuser · Post by **myuser** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 3:49 am

Portage, I like the idea of compiling software from scratch.

My SUSE install was going that way anyway. Day by day another application would be compiled from scratch, with no management beyond that of a few text files, and in many cases not even that.

Gentoo just made sense for me, I needed some central store of files and some package management (as well as any tweaked sources).

srlinuxx · Post by **srlinuxx** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 3:50 am

I used to be a os slut. I loved mandrake, but just couldn't be faithful. I was always dashing off to try some strange nix. I figured Gentoo would be another one night stand I'd give a go, never expecting it to be the best nix I'd had.

I guess it's true what they say. Once you go gentoo, you never go back.

petrjanda · Post by **petrjanda** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 4:41 am

Bored with windows and other linux distributions that give you everything out of box so when you actually install it, you wont learn anything.

Hypnos · Post by **Hypnos** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 5:09 am

It's so easy to get it Just the Way You Want It.

It's infuriating to accomplish the same on a binary-based distro, and way too much work to do it from scratch -- Linux is a tool and hobby, but not my life.

bullfrog · Post by **bullfrog** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 5:27 am

I got bored with Windows, so I decided to install Linux. I tried Mandrake first and ran that for about half a year. Then I just got fed up with the dependency hell and tried Gentoo off a friend's recommendation. I haven't looked back since then. I love the speed, portage, customizability, the community. Now, when I use Win2k at work or XP at school, it pisses me off because things never do what I want.

Yesterday, I decided to move my storage drive from old ntfs to ext3. Well, partition magic screwed up the partitions and I lost my Windows partition. (saved all my data though) I said screw it, and as of yesterday, I am 100% Windows free.

cgrote · Post by **cgrote** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 5:45 am

2k.. wrote:Portage
Speed
Latest applications
Customisable
Great community feel
Because it's fun

that pretty much sums it up for me

Ditto for me. I've used a few other distro's over the years (Slackware, RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE) and even dabbled in some other OS's (FreeBSD, OpenBSD), but for a Desktop system that still handily silences the boasts of my Windows friends: nothing beats the fact that you can easily bootstrap your system from scratch (stage1) with Gentoo

And thanks to portage, keeping everything up to date is a snap, without the bloat of pre-built binaries (ala RPM).

Art Vandalay · Post by **Art Vandalay** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 8:04 am

well i first used linux in 97 with slackware...being a linux newbie i realised it wasnt the most user friendly distro for a beginner, so then i switched to redhat 4 which was all the rage back then...then i stuck with redhat through 5,6,7,8 and finally redhat 9.

i was pretty content with redhat and it's rpm system, but one real irritation was that i couldnt upgrade from one version of redhat to a new one (say from 8 to 9) without screwing up my system,breaking a whole lot of packages and i'd end up having to reinstall the whole lot. as i became more dependant on my linux box and moved away from windows it became a real irritation to reinstall and re-do my settings, especially with kde evolving in complexity.

in redhat version 8 and 9 it became a pain in the arse to install new rpm's for particular packages...so i'd have a mish mash of rpms designed for 7.2, 8, 9 and so on, making it impossible to install a package cleanly becuase of dependancy hell. also, redhat's ambivelance towards kde and the desktop in general really started to tick me off.

hence my initial appeal of gentoo was that there is no versioning...ie it constantly evolves without having to reinstall new versions etc. and as with portage, it just works! not to mention saving me time looking for obscure rpms etc. if i need a package, i emerge it and that's it, peace of mind! onto work!

it's funny though, i was planning to switch to suse until i read about a post somewhere raving on about gentoo so i thought id try this first before going to suse...but here i still am 7 months later

mem7 · Post by **mem7** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 12:51 am

Over about a two year span I tried many distros. But they just ether didn't offer what I was looking for, or flat out just didn't work (Red Hat and Mandrake). I heard of Gentoo from a friend. A few months later, when I felt like giving another distro a try I remembered what he said about Gentoo. So I downloaded the x86 installation disc image. And I've never even thought of turning back scene. Sure I had a lot of problems in the beginning, but the forums provided more then enough to get me going.

yodermk · Post by **yodermk** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 4:16 am

Had been using Red Hat since 4.1 and was a tad bit annoyed at some of its policies -- KDE changes, no MP3 and such, not including some packages that I though should be there (everyting from sdl-ttf to wxpython). Also liked the idea of compiling things from source with the proper optimization and USE flags/dependencies.

I'm definitely hooked. We're using Fedora and now OpenNA at work. They are OK but nowhere near as fun as Gentoo.

turtlendog · Post by **turtlendog** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 4:45 am

I started off with RH7.2 and pretty much stayed with 'em, though I did Mandrake, Debian, and Gentoo installations just for play. When Red Hat decided to discontinue support for the desktop user, I got kind of pissed off (payed for up2date) and I had to go somewhere so I put my wife on Mandrake and installed Gentoo for myself.

So now I'm with Gentoo and kind of like it. It seems marginally faster, these forums are great, and it's fun to play arround with. It's a young distro that makes an interesting desktop system.

I can't say that I would install it on a production server, or for a customer. I don't consider it nearly stable enough during the update process.

I'll definately do a Suse install, just because I feel like I need to be familiar with it now that Novell bought them, but might keep Gentoo as my desktop distro.

One thing I miss is the ability to run up2date in the middle of the night with a cron job and know for certain that my system won't be broken in the morning.

gyratedotorg · Post by **gyratedotorg** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 5:59 am

i was bored. after using freebsd exclusively for a few years, i wanted to finally give linux a try. not to sound like a troll, but so far, i think i still like freebsd better. ill keep playing with this though.

zie · Post by **zie** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 7:11 am

I moved from mandrake and I liked it because it is not as buggy... but it changed a little bit lately

sapphirecat · Post by **sapphirecat** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 7:07 pm

I've traveled OSes largely because of package management. RPM wasn't as good as ports/pkg_add which wasn't as good as Portage. So as long as nobody comes up with something better than Portage, Gentoo is here to stay...

d0wn_under · Post by **d0wn_under** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 10:28 pm

Having tried a few distros years before and given up a friend recomended gentoo, I tried it and loved it. the "all in once palce"'ness of it, a forum, a docs section, a bugs section and the newsletter makes it by far the easiest distro to get started on.

I was forced to use debian at work because of the stability but I rebelled so much they allowed me to switch to SUSE. Now that I can compare side to side I still prefer gentoo.

The other really big attraction is portage. So easy to use, even when it goes wrong

WilliamHeuts · Post by **WilliamHeuts** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 1:04 am

I choose Gentoo because of the excellent documentation and active forum.
As a total linux-noob it was quite the challenge. But I managed with the help of the installdocs and O'Reilly's "Running Linux" for background information.

I wouldn't pick another distro for my desktop-system. Hell, I would even try to setup a server with it If I had the choice.

Malakai · Post by **Malakai** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 1:58 am

I used mandrake and redhat for about a year, but could never get it working as i wanted it too.

Plus, even after a year I still had little idea of how everythign worked, what the different filesystem tree's (/etc /usr, ect) were really for. All I really knew was redhat/mandrake specific stuff and how to do some basic cmd line things like ls and mkdir.

Then, I stumbled upon this message board about 2 and a half years ago. Took ages to get my first install working, but it actually worked, perfectly, once I manually set up my XF86Config and got a nice new kernel working. I could update everything on my computer, and install software, without searching google for hours for obscure dependencies with RPM's.

Been using it since then

Malakai · Post by **Malakai** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 2:15 am

WilliamHeuts wrote:I choose Gentoo because of the excellent documentation and active forum.
As a total linux-noob it was quite the challenge. But I managed with the help of the installdocs and O'Reilly's "Running Linux" for background information.

I wouldn't pick another distro for my desktop-system. Hell, I would even try to setup a server with it If I had the choice.

That's pretty interesting. I bought Running Linux 4th Edition about 7 months ago. Helped out a lot with command line and system background type stuff

Why did you choose Gentoo?

Wandering

It's all in software management.