Why do you use Gentoo?

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

I misunderstood "build your own distribution ..." to mean exactly that as opposed to "customize your system / Gentoo how you want."
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lefsha · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2020 9:41 am Post subject:

lefsha · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2020 9:48 am Post subject:

danielittlewood · n00b Joined: 13 Apr 2020 Posts: 60

A few reasons. I was seduced primarily by Portage. I started using suckless software, and alongside I had
occasionally needed to compile my own programs when a binary package was not available. It was bugging
me that I made changes to the system that I couldn't keep track of - installing dependencies ad-hoc for
example and not being able to track whether i installed something on purpose or not.

I also wanted to do it for a long time as a learning experience. The reputation of a gentoo install was quite
appealing to me, because I had messed up easier installations before and been very frustrated at having
no idea how to resolve it. The guides around gentoo are so thorough that I would usually really understand
my problems once I'd fixed them, rather than just resorting to a script.

Finally, the wiki and community more generally have just been delightful. I hear people say the quality
has decreased since a while ago, but I have always been able to solve my problems by coming here.
Combined with the Arch wiki, which is also a really good resource.
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nikolis · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2003 Posts: 200 Location: Athens

stability, code quality, fun.

radio_flyer · Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2020 5:11 pm Post subject:

I usually recommend other distributions to people who ask me about installing Linux. Gentoo requires a certain mindset to appreciate, and a somewhat warped one at that. If you still remember Slackware fondly, if you've ever built Linux From Scratch (or been tempted to), and you see compiler errors as a challenge and not a distribution maintainer problem, Gentoo will eventually find you.

The most important feature of Gentoo for me is that it can be built entirely from source. As an engineer and hobbyist I often find myself trying to build some esoteric software, whether for meshing, airfoil analysis, astronomy, CNC, whatever. Having access to the library sources and development headers by default makes building such software much easier.

Another important aspect of Gentoo is that it is a rolling distribution. It's always close to the leading edge of upstream, and if I want bleeding edge I can always throw a '~' in package.accept_keywords. The other advantage of a rolling distribution is that upgrades are seamless. The only time I've ever had to 're-install' Gentoo since 2004 was during the 32-to-64 bit transition. Other than that, my half-dozen or so computer upgrades since then have simply been to copy the disks, boot up the new system, re-configure the kernel for the new system hardware, rebuild GCC and LLVM, and then rebuild @system and @world. Once done, my desktop and system looks just like it did before, only faster. Gentoo even tells me when it's time for a new faster system--whenever it takes longer than an hour or so to compile a package. (That package used to be OpenOffice, now it's QtWebKit and Chromium.)

I also love the choices Gentoo gives you. KDE is my primary desktop, but I also have XFCE installed, as well as most of Gnome. I run OpenRC and not systemd. With eselect I can choose among different blas, lapack, or compiler implementations. Most other distributions give you those choices only at installation. Gentoo allows you to run them all at once. With disk space and CPU cycles to burn, you can be like a kid in a candy store of compilers, build systems and applications.

I know the OP said three, but here's four: last but not least, the quality of the Gentoo developers and users is second-to-none. There are excellent and knowledgeable moderators on these forums, developers who hang out here as well, and a diverse user base with an insane variety of special needs. If I wanted to remote-mount /usr over a cell-based connection to the autopilot controller of a moving Tesla, there's probably some user here who has already done that and a moderator or dev who could explain the latency error messages.

I have few issues with Gentoo. AMD needs to get OpenCL working properly on their open-source drivers, the python folks need to stop making incompatible changes, and a lot of upstream maintainers need to learn how to use automake, cmake or meson properly, but those aren't Gentoo issues.

Marlo · Veteran Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 1591

The Tesla is already taken

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gengreen · Apprentice Joined: 23 Dec 2017 Posts: 150

Simply because it's the only system I can understand and manage with efficiency

coz apt-get, yum pacman and co... are only giving you the illusion of being in control of your system.

With Gentoo your system have no hard dependency on some third party developer following order of some shadow entreprise.

Ubuntu, Fedora, 90% of the distro aren't better than Windows.
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xahodo · Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2020 2:30 pm Post subject:

Things I like:
- Portage: the amount of control it gives over what to do with packages is, simply said, amazing. For example: I exchanged out openssl for libressl on a running system with the help of an overlay. Portage didn't complain, it simply did what I wanted it to do.
- Eselect. It makes life so easy. Just turn something on or off without needing a text editor or black magic.
- Choice. I can choose whichever init system I use, without fear of any consequences. I can choose to use xorg or wayland. The list goes on and on. If it's not in portage, I can probably find it in some overlay.

Things I miss, other systems have:
- a proper discover (kde) backend to portage.
- system breakage.

It simply never occurs (unless I actively work to that end).
- flatpak/snap/appimage support.

djdunn · l33t Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 812

because it was a lot like BSD ports.

i was tired of dependency hell.

because I've been using it so long, i'm too stubborn to change.
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mounty1 · l33t Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 942 Location: Queensland

As others have said, flexibility.

I've tried a few others and although they generally work well, when they don't, you're stuffed, just as you are with Windoze, MacOS etc. Someone else chose, and they chose wrongly (for you).

To give a couple of examples:

Mint 20 on a Lenovo W520 with Optimum graphics and two external monitors. They've gone with the Nouveau drivers, which don't really work that well on that hardware. Change the panel arrangement and it can go haywire.
NixOS on same hardware. Brilliant package manager, best by far. But the Linux it installs is pretty vanilla. E.g., KDE Dolphin is built without FTP support, which happens to be important to me. Also, to achieve its cleverness it uses several levels of indirection via symlinks and it is noticeably slower.

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unheatedgarage · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2016 Posts: 60

shimbob · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Sep 2003 Posts: 140

leifbk · Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2021 11:49 am Post subject:

Gentoo is sexy. Binary distros and Windows are not.

And a big +1 to radio_flyer.
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Buffoon · Veteran Joined: 17 Jun 2015 Posts: 1369 Location: EU or US

Reading this thread, at least some of you are apparently using Gentoo. What a horrible choice. Don't you know compiling is causing climate change? But not to worry, Red Star OS is coming to all of us.

https://linuxreviews.org/Red_Star_OS
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maalth · Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:17 pm Post subject:

Jojobinha_2009 · Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:27 am Post subject:

Got bored with Arch... wanted to try something different...
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figueroa · Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 1:50 am Post subject:

steve_v · Guru Joined: 20 Jun 2004 Posts: 409 Location: New Zealand

maalth · Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2021 4:18 am Post subject:

jmq · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2021 Posts: 2 Location: Seattle, WA

Gentoo user since ~2009, but only just now finally registered an account here.

Pros
===

Source-based distro
=============

Very important to me. As an engineer, I like being able to make patches,
examine the source, compile with different options/USE flags, etc.

Excellent documentation
===============

Highly flexible meta-distribution. I don't use KDE or Gnome anything like that;
only i3wm, so I really appreciate being able to build only exactly the system I
want.

Great community of smart people
=====================

Community is so important. I think Gentoo attracts a certain kind of person
that I really admire.

Cons
===

Not as popular as it used to be
===================

I don't need it to be extremely popular, but I sometimes worry that it might
die out one day. I also think there are many people out there that would love
Gentoo, but might not know about it.

A lot of people think this is a "meme distro"
===========================

This perception annoys me because AFAICT, it's one of the most serious distros
for a deeply technical person: If you want a source-based, rolling update
meta-distribution, this is the /only choice/.

Gentoo is primarily in the desktop space
=========================

As a desktop user of Gentoo, I totally understand, because it is an amazing
desktop distribution. But, I think it could be incredible as a server-side distro
as well. If we had more popularity in the server space, it would really shore
up any concerns I have about Gentoo's fading popularity. More support here
would be awesome. <- I'll start soon by launching a side-project of mine on
Gentoo servers.

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redfish · n00b Joined: 27 Apr 2021 Posts: 22

Just to keep this thread on the top. Gentoo is an unmatched wrapper around ./configure && make && make install. And, this is massively useful for managing software stacks on High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters, where you don't have root, and where you absolutely need to build from source to get the most out of the fancy CPUs.

But wait, one does not need any wrapper, right? Who needs package managers?? Portage? So complicated! Nah, you can just follow upstream instructions for "how to build our software", each with a different build system, with tens of configure options, with its own way of specifying dependencies, buggy build code, and of course never a 'make uninstall' -- yeah... have fun with that, while I just 'emerge foo/bar' and easily edit and version-control existing build recipes that contain within them wisdom and sweat from past decades, neatly organized, infinitely flexible. Or... sure, you could use some strange module systems built on the premise that one can make a distribution just by setting environment variables, and that Portage, pacman, dpkg, and rpm are just overcomplicating things for extra fun. Or, you could just use the prebuilt binaries with the choice of version and configuration made for you, surely your app couldn't possibly need a dependency that's a recent release or configured differently.

Portage: Bringing Hackers' Wisdom to Science
Guilherme Amadio, Benda Xu
https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02742

Gentoo Prefix as a Physics Software Manager
Benda Xu, Guilherme Amadio, Fabian Groﬀen and Michael Haubenwallner
https://www.epj-conferences.org/articles/epjconf/abs/2020/21/epjconf_chep2020_05036/epjconf_chep2020_05036.html

Familiar names there in the author list. The world owes a lot to them.

DeadlySyns · n00b Joined: 14 May 2021 Posts: 8

1. The cost of processing power has dramatically reduced in the past decade. At the time of this post, an AMD 3700x (8c/16t) is $300. I built out my 3700x desktop for $700 reusing an old video card. The 3700x crushes the emerge --deep --update @world monthly rebuild.

2. Control - the genius of direct ./configure manipulation via USE-flags is what sets Gentoo apart from the rest.

3. Speed - Corollary to point #2, the optimum C-flags for the 3700x are -O2 -march=znver2 -pipe , when doing intensive cpu maths, every tick of efficiency counts. Binary distributions miss the mark with generic compiles. If a better way exists, I believe it's necessary to take it.

figueroa · Posted: Sat May 15, 2021 2:58 am Post subject: Re: Easy.. because I can

CaptainBlood · Advocate Joined: 24 Jan 2010 Posts: 3864

DeadlySyns,

Welcome to Gentoo.

Thks 4 ur attention, interest & support.
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