What is the one thing you love most about Gentoo?

Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

You are telling me that package.keywords and package.unmask song and dance routines are easier than just enabling a cvs repo? The whole song and dance routine you have to go through because you are not notified about use flag changes automatically is easier than being prompted for options that one has not already enabled at the very least? Then there is the whole emerge -f;emerge song and dance routine, lets not forget that you have to do --ask for a confirmation prompt and there is no explicit way to disable --ask so it would have to be a seperately named alias if you wanted to make Portage prompt you before an emerge operation which is alot better than doing emerge -p; emerge...Yea Portage isn't hard to use.

2crazy · n00b Joined: 07 Apr 2003 Posts: 54

I switched to Gentoo a few years ago, because it was and is a hell lot of fun to use :-)

Aynjell · Veteran Joined: 28 Jun 2004 Posts: 1117

Onkobu · n00b Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 36

...there's nothing more, nothing less. After a few emerges I got used to config file placement and once the system is working it won't be screwed up by installing a totally new package. I can also jump between versions really easy and everything's compiled to my needs...(bzflag works with sdl, mozilla plays videos on amd64, bash-completion's fancy...)

budman7 · Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 2:45 am Post subject:

What do I like best about Gentoo.
That is hard to answer as there is so much to like about it.
But if I had to pick one thing: Portage, the best package management system of all.
apt-get is close, IMO. but not as good.
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Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

Uhh right so because you never need to or feel like using certain features the overall stupidity of the implementation of those features is not relevant to the level of ease of use of the tool..Oh yea great arguments....Guess what there are enough programs that I use that do not function properly unless I use the ~arch or even straight cvs version on my machine. Hell there are some applications that do function on my architecture (amd64) that do not have amd64 keywords in the ebuild so I have to go in and hack the ebuilds or do stuff with the keywords file. If the Portage tree was just split between archs and then throgh window manager, then toolkit etc package.keywords would be rendered totally pointless and Portage itself would be far more efficient all at the same time. Ridiculously long package.unmask files that contain 100+ entries for entire window managers like KDE or gnome and associated applications would also be done away with because the split tree would implicitly mask/unmask who sets of related ebuilds. Package.use is a good idea because I have no desire to force the same exact options for every single program on my system and constantly have to do USE inline before emerging something.
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<3 · Veteran Joined: 21 Oct 2004 Posts: 1081

I forgot to mention that I like http://packages.gentoo.org

cokey · Advocate Joined: 23 Apr 2004 Posts: 3355

I love the community. It's the distro that brings people but it's really the friendly community that makes people stay.
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Drysh · Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:01 am Post subject:

msalerno · Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 6:39 pm Post subject:

I used to be a Redhat and Mandrake user, I remember reading on a different forum about Gentoo. It interested me, so I decided to install it. It took me a few days to get it going, but once I did, it was nice.

Working as an admin on a Redhat box and needing to install php with gd/freetype/mhash support was an experience since there was no rpm that comes with all that stuff. Building from source was nothing new to me, but it was a huge pain in the ass, mixing libraries from rpm's with source packages and with older or newer versions to keep the dependant rpm packages happy. Upgrading was also a pain in the ass for the same reason. This is just one example and just one of the many reasons I stuck with gentoo. Ahhh USE flags ...

Upon first installing gentoo, I realized that there was so much more to linux. For redhat installs, all you have to do is click next. For a gentoo install you have to read up on USE, CFLAGS and CHOST flags. Suddenly all of the stuff that was printing to my screen while compiling started to make a little sense.

Then came the kernel configuration. I had installed my own kernel on my redhat system, but I know of many people who maintain linux systems that would be lost compiling their own kernel. Who needs a bloated kernel?

The fact that you need to compile your own kernel, setup your compiler flags and lots lots more give you the ability to customize your system and learn something new almost every day.

Ultimately, one of the best benefits are these forums.

slim-never-fat · n00b Joined: 17 Nov 2005 Posts: 8

i think it's wiked cool

alamuru420123 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 18 Oct 2005 Posts: 82

Portage without a doubt. Absolutely NO DEPENDENCY PROBLEMS to date

Quake3 for linux without hassles ... 'emerge quake3'
Download accelerator for linux, prozgui .... 'emerge prozgui'

Goalie_Ca · Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 9:15 pm Post subject:

Customizable. The only reason why i'm willing to put up with things occasionally breaking. It takes a lot of time to keep it maintained compared to ubuntu for example. Udev changes and pmount and all that other stuff really take time to setup and keep going. That and cleaning up the system after you've been running it for a while. Luckily the gentoo toolkit goes a long way to helping.
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calr0x · Apprentice Joined: 16 Aug 2004 Posts: 244

The biggest thing I have seen as a difference is Portages unbelieveable collection of software. I have, right now, EVERY app I use installed thru Portage and that's pretty huge to me. Teamspeak? Q3? The top 10 mods of Q3? The mods of Ut2k4? Ut2k4 itself?!!! Vmware? You gotta be kidding me. It goes on and on... pftpfxp? LOL. Its almost a game to stump Portage sometimes. I know it has its gaps, but did you know an ebuild was the first "package" I have ever made on my own? That says something..

I've made 2 bugreports submitting ebuilds for apps not yet in Portage (based off ones I found), and have installed more I made on my own in my overlay. I don't know why, but it just seems ANYTHING can be in Portage, save time to make the ebuild and having enough "give a shit" to do it...

There are many other reasons already covered... Great community, slightly underdog status in the linux community, "feel" thru the Gentoo colors, and an overwhelming sense of simplicity and elegance constantly, even when doing complicated things.

I am as happy as I have ever been with Gentoo in my 2 years or so. I have no desire to switch, and I only wish laptops weren't so lame that installing Gentoo on it didn't make me sob like a girl. =P

jedsen · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 4:22 pm Post subject:

crossdev, not doubt.

pv · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 9:29 pm Post subject:

1. Gentoo is the source (distfiles, portage, emerge).
2. I can change/configure everything (/etc ...).
3. I can optimize everything (CFLAGS).
4. I can make everything stable (CFLAGS, portage, emerge).
5. I can modify everything for my needs (USE, portage, emerge, /etc).
6. I can understand how everything in it works (distfiles).
7. I can get help when I need (/usr/share/doc/, man, info, forums.gentoo.org :wink:

).
8. I have a choice (USE, CFLAGS, portage).

But the main idea is that it's me who controls the system, not the reverse like in windows, mandrake and so on.
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sundiver2k · Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2005 6:24 am Post subject:

Freedom

sundialsvc4 · Guru Joined: 10 Nov 2005 Posts: 436

I like the fact that you can install from source when you want to, although I admit that I do wish that there were more binary-version packages available for common configurations. For instance, I crunched around trying to get OpenOffice to work and finally discovered a binary for it and just installed that and it works fine. When there's "nothing special" about my setup or the package that I'm installing, I hate to think sometimes that I am just the 15,623rd person who's doing the same damm thing... waiting for a compile to finish.

But maybe the nicest thing about Gentoo is that it is, post installation, fairly compact. There's not "everything but the kitchen sink." There's not "support modules for DecSystem Model BR-549 Token-Ring Controllers" cluttering up my disk-drive. You get to choose what you need, and you get plenty of practice at system administration tasks. Because the set of installed features is quite specialized to what you need, that also means that there isn't a lot of unwanted interaction going on. Gentoo encourages you to 'know what you run and know why you run it."

I fully understand, of course, that distro-writers (or the Microsoft people) work toward an entirely different objective: to provide a usable system, that will successfully install and run on just about any machine, while demanding a minimal amount of know-how from the owner of the machine. I'm not saying in any way that those people are "wrong," just that I'm very glad to have discovered Gentoo.

And the machine .. now .. is fast! I mean, wa-a-a-a-y ... fa-a-a-a-a-s-t! I don't hide my head at the coffee shop anymore. I used to consider the machine "slow" and was thinking about trading it in...

In fact, one well-meaning person not long ago asked me, "Is that [Microsoft] Vista?" Heh .. heh .. heh .. "nope!"

Frodg · l33t Joined: 11 Feb 2004 Posts: 761

Stability
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tehnad · Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 7:59 am Post subject:

I must say that this has been the best OS that I have ever installed. I have learned more in the last three days from loading and breaking my sytem with Gentoo then I have learned from Ubuntu in the last 9 months that I have ran it. Building your OS from scratch is actually some fun stuff and has gotten me out of my low that I have seemed to have been in for the last three months. Thanks to the Gentoo team for coming up with such a great and supportive OS that totally rocks. I am looking forward to adding on with my usual break and fix theme that my roommate and I seem to have going!!

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hammy · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:49 am Post subject:

My favorite feature of Gentoo is rc-update. No more dicking around with linking and runlevels. rc-status shows me what I want, all of my processes at a glance, and an easy way to manage init scripts.
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phish · n00b Joined: 20 Nov 2003 Posts: 19

portage makes my life so easy.
I recently was helping a friend who uses FC4, it made me wish I knew how to install portage on other distros.
Maybe I'll go search the forums.

thoffmeyer · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 12:13 am Post subject:

I'd have to say the simplistic of it all when it's installed.. or to me it's simple :-?

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diilbert · n00b Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Posts: 52

1 Word:

Portage.

Need I say more ?

rdk · Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:04 am Post subject: