What makes you like Gentoo?

numerodix · l33t Joined: 18 Jul 2002 Posts: 743 Location: nl.eu

1. portage
2. community forums

or was it the other way around.. *scratches head*
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racoontje · Veteran Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Posts: 1290

o The neat way Portage works.
o The neat way rc scripts are handled.
o The neat way it tought me how /etc worked.
o The neat way the community works.

boroshan · l33t Joined: 16 Apr 2003 Posts: 730 Location: upside down

I'd have to go with the emerging "portage and the community" meme.

Can I ask: why are you undertaking this project? Having been through the gentoo evangelism phase myself, I really don't think that Gentoo is for everyone.

My Father, for example, was worried by what he percieved as a lack of stability. I'd run emerge -uD world and a week later we'd find something that was broken. For me personally, that's part of the fun, and I learn things fixing these odd glitches. But my dad was scared off linux and back onto XP. On the other hand, Debian Stable has this rep for being ultra reliable. Maybe if I'd put that on his machine, he might still be using it.

For me, Gentoo is the best choice. Probably the best choice overall for the enthusiast. But you have to be ready for it. If your friends are happy with their distros, why not let them get on with it?

Assuming they're not using microsoft or anything anyway. Then you'd have a sacred duty to perform

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Devard · Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 12:28 pm Post subject:

Portage easily does it for me with the package installation.

The community is also vibrant and helpful.
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syg00 · Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 12:33 pm Post subject:

No fucking GUI installer that insists it knows what I want more than I do !!!!

Oh, and portage
... and you lot of course.

But see the first sentence...

befortin · Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2004 Posts: 193

I love being able to keep my system up to date with just one command :

mantheorem · Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 5:05 pm Post subject:

boroshan · l33t Joined: 16 Apr 2003 Posts: 730 Location: upside down

Can't argue with that

The thing I like least about Gentoo, I suppose would have to be fact that I find out things are broken, weeks after the change that broke them and often have no idea what caused the problem. For instance I've not needed my USB key in weeks. Then I find myself overseas and my only net connection is via my employers system.

Suddenly, when I actually need the bloody thing, my USB key refuses to mount. Nothing I can't sort out, and I accept the breakage as a necesary price that I pay for gentoo's advantages. But it's still a royal pain sometimes
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codergeek42 · Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 5:54 pm Post subject:

The community is awesome (especially the much closer interaction the users/developers seem to have than with other F/OSS projects).

The documentation is thorough and explanatory.

Portage kicks ass.
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codergeek42 · Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:09 pm Post subject:

mantheorem · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:27 am Post subject:

Windows does have the convenience of automation for several tasks, but that automation comes at the cost of removing options and choices from the user.
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mark_lagace · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:26 am Post subject:

I'd have to say the best 'feature' of Gentoo is the documentation. Portage is great, but then again, so is apt. The documentation that Gentoo provides though, is unparalleled. It gives in depth explanations of not only how to do something, but also why you would want to do it, and what other options exist that you might want to consider. The combination of the official docs on the web page, the gentoo wiki, and the Documentation, Tips and Tricks forum is a tremendous resource that really shouldn't be overlooked.

donjuan · l33t Joined: 11 May 2004 Posts: 760 Location: At Uni

fuji · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Apr 2002 Posts: 111

Hehe, I installed Gentoo because of Larry the Cow so... I like Larry the Cow.....

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Came for the hype, stayed for Portage.

mantheorem · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:46 am Post subject: doc

I feel lucky that Gentoo was really the first distro I ever played with - luckily, this means that I never had to go through a poorly documented distro.
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Omega21 · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:00 am Post subject:

Omega21 · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:01 am Post subject:

Cadex · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2005 Posts: 14

I like Gentoo because it is just the kind of Linux distro I have been looking for: It's slim, fast, requires only the stuff that you really want and has a very nice packet management!

Had SuSE for quite a long time and thought it was "okay". I still think that SuSE is a good choice for newbies.
But when I got my (pretty slow, 400MHz) Notebook, SuSE was just too slow, so I had to look for something faster.

I installed "Linux from scratch" - and thought it was very much exactly what I wanted: Only those packages that I need, optimized for my system etc.. But soon I recognized that installation of LFS can be real pain: It takes a lot of time, and if you just type one letter wrong then in the end you maybe have to start all over again. When I finally had a basic running system, something else bothered me even more: I could very well live without those massive graphical configuration tools SuSE etc. provide - but in the end I just didn't want to live without some kind of packet management tool... Doing _everything_ by hand is horror

Then I heard of Gentoo, and installed it - and though I have so far just installed the system, I think it is really exactly what I want: It's quite similar to LFS, but it's rather easy to install, since only few parts have to be done by hand. Furthermore, you can but you don't have to compile everything if you don't want to, a Stage3-install only takes a short time. And there is portage, probably the best thing about gentoo!

So from what I have seen so far, Gentoo seems to be pretty much like LFS - it has all of LFS' up sides but not the down sides and ships with a really superb packet management.

kimchi_sg · Advocate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 3038

Portage!

andyfraser33 · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:08 pm Post subject:

What do I like about Gentoo? All the things people have already mentioned really: Portage, community, docs, control over the system etc. If my system suffers from bloat it's because I made it bloated.

I also like the use of colour on the console. A booting Gentoo box looks very professional without having to resort to a boot splash screen. There's a feeling of quality about the whole distro.[/b]
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Omega21 · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:03 am Post subject:

mantheorem · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:24 am Post subject: What!

I'm entirely new to linux.... what's a vector optimized wordprocessor?

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codergeek42 · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:27 am Post subject: Re: What!

Omega21 · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:37 am Post subject: Re: What!

mantheorem · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:54 am Post subject: Thanks

Thanks for the link. I think I understand now.

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Peace. Love. Gentoo.