Gentoo Forums

I successfully installed basic gentoo, but the more documentation I read, I became more unsure weather gentoo is suitable for me. For example: the amount of the use flag is kinda scarce me and I keep people saying that gentoo package compilation will take a lot of time.

My job is first responder, and the reason I choose gentoo is because a lot of time when I in night shift with no call there will be a lot of time to spend, so I choose gentoo as a new hobby.

I love computer and gentoo seen like a hobby that can learn a lot about computer, but I don’t have any coding background, so when I reading the document some time I feel gentoo might beyond my ability to understand.

Is there someone like me who don’t have any coding background but eventually become understand gentoo?

Definitely, you have already overcome one of the bigger hurdles just with the installation alone. Keep in mind that you may never even touch USE flags in many cases, and when you do need to enable them its very well documented and really easy once you do it a few times. You are correct with Gentoo having a learning curve, but if this is your hobby you will not regret learning the system and maybe even get into creating your own ebuilds eventually.

Hang in there, Gentoo is for everyone IMO and will unlock a whole world of tinkering if your willing to jump into the docs and forums when needed to ask for help. I honestly haven't come across a more helpful & knowledgeable community in my years using some sort of Linux distro.

OmamoriIchika,

Welcome to Gentoo.

I don't have a coding background either. I came here in 2003 looking for some help. I'm still here.
Not still waiting for an answer, as someone once said :)

There is a lot to learn. You will only learn it once, so don't let that put you off. Don't think of Gentoo as a distro. Its not. Its a toolkit you use to design and install you own distro.
Gentoo is the portage package manager and the ::gentoo repo. Everything else is upstream. Think of Gentoo as Linux from Scratch with a package manager.
As you are designing your own distro, you must make all the choices that binary distros make for you. That's a big part of the learning. Deciding what you want.
It also means that every Gentoo install is different. There are over 1,000,000 ways to build libreoffice on Gentoo and that's just a single package.

The compile times should not put you off. After the initial install, updates can be a background activity. You can still use your system while it updates.

Most of all, enjoy your Gentoo.

OmamoriIchika wrote:I successfully installed basic gentoo, but the more documentation I read, I became more unsure weather gentoo is suitable for me. For example: the amount of the use flag is kinda scarce me and I keep people saying that gentoo package compilation will take a lot of time.

My job is first responder, and the reason I choose gentoo is because a lot of time when I in night shift with no call there will be a lot of time to spend, so I choose gentoo as a new hobby.

I love computer and gentoo seen like a hobby that can learn a lot about computer, but I don’t have any coding background, so when I reading the document some time I feel gentoo might beyond my ability to understand.

Is there someone like me who don’t have any coding background but eventually become understand gentoo?

I have been using Gentoo for a few days. It reminds me of FreeBSD a lot. It's like the ports tree or even packaging things with aur in Arch.
The main difference with aur, you don't pass flags and on FreeBSD when installing ports, you have to choose your flags in a graphical way.
Gentoo requires you to specify them, in /etc/portage/package.use/ or whatever the defaults are. It took me awhile to figure out that was the best logistical way of managing my package tree.
Along the way I have learned /etc/portage/package.use/world is useful as well as package specific flags are as well.
It's not that hard once you realize you are swimming up stream, you can fight the current like a n00b or take the time, open your eyes and realize there is a method to the madness.

OmamoriIchika wrote:I successfully installed basic gentoo, but the more documentation I read, I became more unsure weather gentoo is suitable for me. For example: the amount of the use flag is kinda scarce me and I keep people saying that gentoo package compilation will take a lot of time.

My job is first responder, and the reason I choose gentoo is because a lot of time when I in night shift with no call there will be a lot of time to spend, so I choose gentoo as a new hobby.

I love computer and gentoo seen like a hobby that can learn a lot about computer, but I don’t have any coding background, so when I reading the document some time I feel gentoo might beyond my ability to understand.

Is there someone like me who don’t have any coding background but eventually become understand gentoo?

It fully depends on your desire to learn and perseverance, not on any programming/coding background. Gentoo will be more difficult if it's your first linux system.
Let's say user A) had 1-2 years of general linux experience. while user B) had 0 linux experiences prior of Gentoo. In that scenario user A will have easier time navigating the wiki of Gentoo because it assumes at least some experience with the command line and basic GNU utilities. User B would have to additionally research everything he doesn't know, which takes time and energy.
If you feel overwhelmed it might be the sign that you are taking too much information at once, since you already have a working gentoo you don't have to continue to dig deeper right now, slow down. Each time you install a new application take a peek at its use flags, research them in particular, disable those you don't want perhaps, and move on with your day. Do that (the research) only for the task you are facing right now, this way you will spread the information load over longer time period.