Howdy y'all from Gentoo (Switched from Arch to Gentoo)

[tricky_florence]

Although I made the switch from Arch to Gentoo in 2010, I just wanted to say howdy! But also I wanted to say that after all these years I really still love Gentoo and think it is a superb tool that I can use for my daily driver. Gentoo has certainly given new life to my x200 and it has been a blast being able to compile everything from source! I do want ask what was everyone else's a-ha moment when they realized Gentoo was for them?
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Just ended my friendship with x200, now E14 gen2 amd is my best friend.

[Zucca]

[pjp]

I was using a RH version 7.x around 2002. I had been keeping an eye on Stampede Linux (it had a goal of being optimized for the 486), but never seemed to reach a "usable" release (according to the then website, using different words). I somehow came across Gentoo (1.2a?) and have used it since then. It wasn't until some time later that I learned Daniel Robbins (Gentoo founder) had worked on Stampede.
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Quis separabit? Quo animo?

[tricky_florence]

[Zucca]

[NeddySeagoon]

tricky_florence,

Welcome to Gentoo.

By first install was Red Hat 6.1 or maybe 6.2 right at the end or 1999.
I was dual booting with WindowsNT at the time.

In early 2002 I gave up Windows as NT was never going to get USB drivers and went Red Hat.
With Red Hat, as the versions rolled on, I became increasing frustrated that it would revert my configuration changes behind my back.
I downloaded the three CDs of Red Hat 9 over 512kbit ADSL but never installed it.

I was already shopping for a distro that put me in control of my PC.
It came down to LFS or Gentoo, which from the outside appeared to be LFS with a package manager.
So I installed what today is Historical Gentoo :)

I've not looked back. I'm still fighting off Red Hat. There is no autoblackmagic on my desktop system.

Do you realise you can never leave?
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Zucca]

[tricky_florence]

[pietinger]

[Zucca]

I know only Artix which offically supports more init systems.
But unofficially Gentoo can be quite easily to configured to take any init system. I know here are some who use runit and s6 for example.
So far my adventures with gentoo+systemd are over. It was a fun ride. But it had some of the problems as I had with Arch.
I'm always eager to test out more as my free time allows.
_________________
..: Zucca :..
Gentoo IRC channels reside on Libera.Chat.
--

[spica]

The first OS I started to use was FreeBSD5 in 2003, that was a first year in university. Somewhere in 2012 my employer gave me a computer with specific hardware, it worked with Ubuntu, but I had problems with running FreeBSD on it, so I installed Gentoo.

[tricky_florence]

[spica]

[figueroa]

@ tricky -- Welcome to the Gentoo Forums.

In response to your asking, I was an early adopter of Linux using Slackware exclusively on the console until about 2000, and mainly used it as a terminal to access remote Unix hosted networks and for working on bash scripts to use on those Unix hosts. But I found Slackware impossible to keep up-to-date between releases. I then skirmished with Red Hat, now in a GUI with Gnome and KDE, but finding RPMs difficult, arcane, and unreliable until Mandrake. After Mandrake tanked around 2004, I made a deliberate search for another Linux I could maintain AND comprehend. I explored Debian briefly, then found Gentoo either late in 2004 or early 2005, thanks to DistroWatch descriptions.

That winter, before installing, I printed the entire Handbook on a Star dot matrix printer which I followed during install and then used as a reference manual for many years. I never seriously considered changing to another distribution, though I have used a fair number of others, mainly Debian and Ubuntu based, installing for other people and in the small-scale enterprise.

In 2006 I deployed and supported six (or maybe one or two more) Gentoo computers at two operating locations in support of a para-church organization attending major church jurisdiction triennial meeting. These PCs were cloned from a custom installation that I tailored to meet the needs of the users during this two-week engagement, after which the computers were donated to various non-profit organizations for their office use. This project made me at least conversant with using and maintaining Gentoo for the long-run.
_________________
Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi

[schrdlu]

Personally I have never gotten my head around the bsd way,Arch I blame for the demise of a laptop( prbably unwaranted) 1st compute experience dos 3.2 followed by 5.0,then win 3.1,win95 for quite some time. win 7 longer period,a dabble with win 10.
1st linux a boxed version RH5.2 with several upgrades then an Amateur colleige introduced me to gentoo,from which I have never recovered,being a person who hates to fork out finance for a free item,I have attempted to put in as many bug reports as my intellect would allow& I really get a kick out of compiling up a system circumventing blockers & stoppers.
These days the brain is a lot slower,but I still manage to keep 5 machines of different capabilities running.
Fingers tend to runaway sometimes,hence my latest runin with portage not syncing with the local repositories.

[keet]

It was in 2008. My friend had introduced me to Gentoo a few years before, but I had been using Windows mostly until then (apart from a few tries using Red Hat and Mandrake around the year 2000 and a little dabbling occasionally in the following years), and wanted to try switching to Linux. I installed Ubuntu, but my sound card didn't work -- it was a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 or something like that. The forums or some guide said that I needed to recompile my kernel and maybe switch to the Open Sound System, as well. I recompiled my kernel with the appropriate options, but then my Wi-Fi stopped working. I decided that Ubuntu is not really meant for people who customize their kernels, so I installed Gentoo and have been using it since then.

[the_actuary]

I installed Gentoo about 6 months back, not with the idea of using it, but with the idea of giving it a spin. Before I used it, I was of the opinion that gentoo is a gimmick for nerds wasting time compling stuff and autistic Linux billies obsessed about every kb ram usage. The aha factor came as I was installing it. I realized how beautifully things are laid out in Gentoo with a serious use case in mind to make life simple. Postgresql eselect is a really good example.

The maintainers have spent a lot of time structuring the package workflows in a way that cohesively integrates with the entire system. Gentoo is just not about use flags, or minimalism and compiling, it's the approach of doing things that is so addictive. The rest of the goodness is a by-product of this.

Now I use Gentoo in my personal laptop, my office desktop and my office server. I don't see myself using anything else going forward (well maybe raspbian os for rpi).

[tricky_florence]

Been a minute since I was at work, but, reading these stories of the a-ha factor makes me both nostalgic and somewhat glad to see how much has changed for computing long term development as I stand by my statement before long live Gentoo.

[tricky_florence]

[Hu]

[figueroa]