Why do you use gentoo?

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It's stable, secure, and awesome. I voted that one, although another would be that it does everything I want. I first started with Mandrake, loved its speed and then made the move to Gentoo after three weeks. Basically, I went from being scared of the terminal and not knowing how to compile my own kernel to loving the terminal and compiling kernels all the time in three weeks. That's when I moved to Gentoo and was shocked at the enhanced speed and stability plus I now have software that is awesome and which in Mandrake I would have had to go through dependency hell to get.

[m0sk]

Voted "It does what I want, WHEN I want!"

Although you'd have to consider the compile-time of things I guess (yep, just read /. before posting this )
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panic ("No CPUs found. System halted.\n");

[geniux]

Does what I want, when I want . I've never been so pleased with a distro before, nothing is close to it.
And the Gentoo Forum are by far the best place too visit on the web . Anyone can get the problems they have with Gentoo solved here.
Great job everyone, keep it up.

[codergeek42]

1. A great & awesome user community helpful in a very polite way (I have only once seen "RTFM, n00b!" to a non-spammer on an entry in the LJ community) to both newcomer (like me) and 'power-user' alike.
   
2. Configureable/tweakable to my heart's content (this actually gets kinda addicting after a while :p)
   
3. Portage is awesome. (I love Portage because of its ease of use, dependency-resolving, and because of USE flags. I.e., I have no need for printer support, so USE="-cups".)
   
4. Things happen on my system the way I want, the way I tell it to. No more, no less.
   
5. Stuff is fixed (GLSA, etc.) very soon after vulnerabilites are known.
   
6. Did I mention how awesome the user community is?
   
7. Portage tree is kept relatively up-to-date.
   
8. I'm not sure why, but I've always liked compiling things from source, even if I tweak nothing, use the default options to ./configure, etc. The idea that I CAN change/redistribute the source is something I've never felt I had by default with binary RPMs (Fedora, SuSE) or .debs (Debian)
   

I prolly forgot something though....
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~~ Peter: Programmer, Mathematician, STEM & Free Software Advocate, Enlightened Agent, Transhumanist, Fedora contributor
Who am I? :: EFF & FSF

[Frodg]

Where is the option for:
I never actually use the PC for any type of production - I just configure gentoo ??
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Aerosolo ergo sum - I spray therefore I am

Gentoo - Registered Linux User # 361400

[Twitchy]

You forgot to add "Because it makes the chix0rz drop their panties"
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current screenshot

[gnuageux]

Cause I wanted to be able to have my desktop background set to a pic of Larry the cow, without being a total fraud
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Registered Linux user#364538