Gentoo...huh, good God George, what is it good for....

Albert_Alligator

Absolutely something?

What is Gentoo good for? Many in the Linux world disparage Gentoo as an enthusiast distro only.

So what is the answer?

I believe that Gentoo can offer some functionality that none of the others can. I believe that Gentoo has the best foundation on which to build, and by that I mean that the package management system, and the way rc-scripts and run levels are handled.

I'm struggling with convincing companies that Gentoo is as good or even better than Red Hat and SuSE. But it does take some real understanding of Linux and safety procedures and being able to lock down your system to really make Gentoo work.

I believe that Red Hat and SuSE are made easy for those who want easy point and click administration as well as plug and play drivers and software for any and all devices a person decides they'd want to install.

Where do you stand? And how can we, the community, change the perception, and make Gentoo kick the others collective butts?

I'm pushing Gentoo as the perfect platform for scientific computing, but in order to make that a reality, I have a whole lot of convincing to do, as my bosses don't know squat about software....... except that they want to bundle it with their systems.

Al
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scvalex · Apprentice Joined: 04 Sep 2005 Posts: 169 Location: Hell

Gentoo is for people who really like pain

scvalex · Apprentice Joined: 04 Sep 2005 Posts: 169 Location: Hell

I.E. for people who want to know what they're doing, and more importantly what the bloody computer is doing.

eealex · n00b Joined: 29 Oct 2004 Posts: 65 Location: Japan

playfool · Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 9:11 pm Post subject:

I don't really see Gentoo having much justification, aside the "because I can" angle - which is fine, if you want to run Gentoo because you like it, then do it.

Q-collective · Advocate Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 2076

Alighieri · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Jan 2005 Posts: 88

bitwise · Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2005 11:07 pm Post subject:

Taladar · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 9:43 am Post subject:

Gentoo is the easy alternative to rolling your own distro.

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

Gentoo makes linux easier. From ebuilds for just about any package (free or non-free), to USE flags, to the rc system, right down to the colored output on the command line.

Not including the plethora of documentation and howto's in the "Documentation, Tips & Tricks" forum.
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To · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 1:32 pm Post subject:

If you want an optimized system this is the choise. Also also because you can do it :wink:

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andyfraser33 · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 2:19 pm Post subject:

tom56 · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2005 11:06 pm Post subject:

In my opinion, Gentoo is the easiest distro to use. If you take the time to read the documentation, it's much easier to have everything "just work" than Those Other Distros. I started using Gentoo to escape RPM hell with Mandrake, and I've never looked back.
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Albert_Alligator · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 5:40 am Post subject:

dang, I'm still discovering just how right I am about Gentoo being the Shiznit.... Red Hat absolutely sucks when it comes to easy management of Run levels....they make it so damn complicated when it should be as simple as add/delete/status is for rc in Gentoo. chkconfig is absolute bullocks....

/rant

Al
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AllenJB · Veteran Joined: 02 Sep 2005 Posts: 1285

Gentoo is about control.
It's about not having to install arts and esd when a pure alsa system will get the job done.
It's about not having thousands of silly unneccessary dependencies.
It's about not having the system ever overwrite any of my config changes - ever (to date).
It's about not having my RPM database corrupted every time I install PHP on my machine I'm trying to use for web development (mentioning no names, Suse!).
It's about not using a commercial distro and when it comes to upgrading being advised to "reinstall from scratch because our upgrade system doesn't work" (And it being true - Suse, again!).
It's about being able to use the latest, greatest software in a stable manner.
- Knowing that if a version of a package I'm using is buggy, I can report it and it'll get fixed and mask it and use another version.

Allen

rdavl · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2006 Posts: 52

It definitely is a sadistic distro and you do have to be an mazohist to use it...

But hey, every pervert enjoys it

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Athas · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 5:19 pm Post subject:

slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

yabbadabbadont · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 9:30 pm Post subject:

kands · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 10:12 pm Post subject:

To me Gentoo is about removing the layers of abstraction that many other distros and OS's apply between the user and computer. Learning what is really going on at every level of running a daemon or just the OS is a powerful tool over time. I will not defend Gentoo as one of the easiest distro's to learn or even to use at times. It is, however, a great opportunity to really learn what is going on inside your computer, what it really takes to be an administrator.

I have used many OS's including over many years and find Gentoo to be unique. Unique in that it allows the people that use it to truely understand what is going on. I have introduced Gentoo into each of the companies I have worked for and have found the technical abilities and core troubleshooting / understanding capabilities of my technicians has dramatically improved across all the systems they administer. I believe it does take ones knowledge to a new level and allows them to think outside the box and approach many problems from alternate angles.

Any system will have its problems. Understanding the shortcomings is part of understanding the system and ensuring the system is used to its full potential. Gentoo is powerful, flexible, quite well supported, and will (hopefully) improve as we move into the future. Kudos to the entire gentoo develepment team and community.
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drawsmcgraw · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 12:13 am Post subject:

I say 'none of the above' because I don't consider myself an enthusiast, I'm not a mainstream admin, and Gentoo sure-as-shit isn't for everybody. I like it because I'm a control freak about my computer. I hate not knowing what's going on. A small sample of that is that I knew I was under a script-style SSH brute force attack because Gkrellm was telling me about network activity that I knew I wasn't responsible for. It's small, yes, but that's why I have to know what's going on. If I have to have a PC, it's a dual-boot and I will find a way to do everything on the Linux side, and I use the Windows side as a crux while I'm learning how to accomplish the task. In fact, I'm **this** close to getting my box to push an image to my TV. Once that's done, I'm not sure I'll see much of any of Windows again, especially when all these damned multimedia codecs make 64-bit versions.

Gentoo is perfect for me for the reasons other people have mentioned: no unnecesarry installs, I get only what I want, I know a helluva lot more about Linux because of the manual approach, and I have a much higher appreciation for what I have. This, of course, is not for everyone, but that's what Macs are for

Most of the other reasons I love Gentoo are kinda Linux/Gentoo related, like downloading/compiling/configuring vsftpd in 10 minutes and I'm done. No searching for an executable to install or waiting for some slow-ass GUI. I want vsftpd, BAM! Done. Of course, other things aren't quite the same (yay ATI-drivers....), but you go and try to set up a vsftp server on a Windows box.... Yeah.

And don't get me started on homework. I'm sure that half the population here must be college students, or are some other form of self-acclaimed academic. Programming with VI (or Gvim, if I need something really advanced) and having gcc right there make simple programming assignments fly by, and with the advent of Ooffice 2.0, I can feel safe about writing up docs and term papers or just cranking out a .pdf. I'm just more educated and able because of Linux, and especially Gentoo.

Yes, Gentoo is a royal pain in the ass at times. But in the end, I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I love, and am proud of , my Gentoo box.
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pilla · Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 3:07 am Post subject:

Gentoo is about the best community ever

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tsunam · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Feb 2004 Posts: 343

I'm voting for, crazy developers and users who like to put their machines through the 5000 meter speed skating twice in a row!
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xanas3712 · Guru Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 455

I think Gentoo isn't too difficult having used slackware/mandrake/debian previously.

Actually using/installing software is not that difficult. Installing the OS is a bit of a pain compared to other distros but if you use something like Kororaa or Jackass! then it's not even hard to do that...

The only thing preventing regular people from installing linux in general is not understanding their hardware. They don't know about partitioning or about drivers or any of that jazz. It's a little easier to install windows since you don't really have advanced partitioning available to you, and drivers are all click installs from the cds that came with the hardware.

BTW, Does anyone know of a linux install that automates partition setup & bootloader? If there was something like that with a kernel with much driver support I think that would settle a lot of the issues. Obviously the automated paritition setup would have to be optional and the bootloader would have to be capable of detecting other oses so it would install properly.

erikm · l33t Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 634