Why do people give up so easilly?

Diezel · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 7:12 pm Post subject: Why do people give up so easilly?

I've been watching forums a little here and there. Many of the Gentoo threads I've come upon users give up way to easy. I just can't understand it. If you _REALLY_ want a tweeked computer and a really fast distro use Gentoo. But sometimes(usually the fist time) the install wont go as planned or you do something wrong, especially if youre not used to this level of tweeking. I'm a "former" Slack user(still use it on my server). And I installed gentoo for a week the first time. Until I took the time and tried to understand what I was doing(1.3). When I finally tried to understand everything went like planned and i got my Gentoo system up and going. And I will never use _anything_ else anymore. I just luv it.
So the big question is, why start a install of gentoo if youre not ready to give it some time. Getting a fast and stable system is not something you get over the night.
Well this thread got messy but I hope you understand what I mean.
All of us who already use Gentoo, let's try to encourage the people who want to use it but just cant get it working: (This is quite normal in Gentoo community I've noticed :wink:

So keep up the good work developers and _all_ of let's help the "lost" ones

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cybermans · Apprentice Joined: 04 Apr 2003 Posts: 193

/me is not even giving up after almost getting that nuts i throw my slaptop out of the window 'cause KDE wont work (for more info look @my multiple posts)
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aethyr · Veteran Joined: 06 Apr 2003 Posts: 1085 Location: NYC

mahellma, I don't think it's a great mystery why people would give up on installing Gentoo. Gentoo has a lot of hype and buzz around it, and they decide to try it, they find that it can be difficult to install and manage without some fundamental linux knowledge and decide to try another distribution instead.

Frankly, I think that's fine. There's lots of distributions of linux because there's lots of different types of users.

Think about it another way, why would a Windows user try installing a Linux distribution, only to give up and go back to Windows?

On a mostly related note, I see a lot of people suggesting ways to improve various aspects of Gentoo (easier install, binary packages, etc etc...), but I think Gentoo should try to concentrate on being the best distribution it can be without worrying about these amenities. Gentoo is filling a certain niche, and other niches can be filled by the multitude of distros, it doesn't have to be a one-size-fits-all distribution.

There's many things in the current system that need improvement before we worry about adding newbie-friendly features.

quikchaos · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 29 Jan 2003 Posts: 107

zephyr1256 · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 8:03 pm Post subject:

Diezel · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 8:07 pm Post subject: Well

the really weird thing is that the ones I have come upon are people who have been using Linux for years. Wich I find really weird. I've been an active Linux user for almost a year now and I've managed to prove to myself that if I want to learn I will learn.
I never said and will never say I want Gentoo to be like RedHat, I think that is a clumsy distro. But it's great that there are distros like RH and Mandrake because if a user jumps from Windows the fall wont be that high.
Gentoo should not be an easy to use distro, not at the expence of the tweeking atleast. But I just cant get it why people who sometime ago took the effort to learn Linux now just can't take the time to get something as great as Gentoo going. It might be a little "hard" to install, or was.(just installed on my P4 and it was easier than Win

) but it's so easy to maintain and update.
Hope you still understand what im bladering about.
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S_aIN_t · Guru Joined: 11 May 2002 Posts: 488 Location: Ottawa

i think the reason that experienced linux users give up on Gentoo is that they have grown confortable with the distro they have been using before. in a way it is very similar to the people who use windows for a long time. they are happy with what they have and there is no reason for them to change. i must admit that i was intrigued bu Gentoo because I was disapointed with Windows. I used FreeBSD. Unfortunately it didn't run as fast as Gentoo does. After installing Gentoo a couple of times and upgrading from 1.2 to 1.4 I am quite happy with everything.

Gentoo works for me. The system doesn't destroy itself. I have the software i need. After using Gentoo for a while, there are some features that i have grown accustomed to. When I go to use someone's computer I always happily return to using my own computer.

However, my philosophy remains the same. To each his own. If someone doesn't want to use Gentoo, there is no reason to force them.
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biggms · n00b Joined: 20 Dec 2002 Posts: 39

The only way you learn is through trial and error unless you wanna go on some fancy course or read a tonne of books.
I think Gentoo is great for learning, sure the curve is steep but hey, you might as well learn the hard way rather than two lots of easy ways.

Speaking of which, I know one guy who did a fsck on a mounted ext3 partition, now thats learning the hard way! Any kinda fix for this (totally corrupt disk)? When i've got time I might give him a hand.

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chrispy · Apprentice Joined: 10 Nov 2002 Posts: 228 Location: Tokyo

I totally agree that the only way to learn is through trial-and-error. That works for everything in life.

I was pushing a friend to give gentoo a try (he was a debian user because of me) and the first two times he went on and installed gentoo, he gave up because :
1° takes much time
2° he was afraid of making a mistake and having to start EVERYTHING again from scratch
3° apt-get was more than good enough for him

but eventually, one day, I made myself available for him throughout his 3rd installation experience, (was quite difficult with the time diff .... he's in Copenhagen, I'm in Tokyo) answering/helping him with whatever I could, and now, the only distro he is installing on his boxes is .... gentoo.

I think it's only a matter of how people are willing to involve and spend their time for the results they expect. Therefore, the people that 'give up' are just not ready to spend the extra 5 hours+ to install gentoo, over the time required to install the (in)famous redhat, just to get a functional linux desktop... (no offense... I used RH as my fist linux distro 5 years ago !)

sulu · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2003 7:12 am Post subject:

I think there a several possible reasons for people to give up:

- They just dont have the time to fiddle around for hours (days)

- Sometimes problems in Gentoo are really weird and very hard to track
down even if the solution might be a simple emerge unmerge - emerge

- Configuration issues (my samba just works in SuSE, Mandrake, ...). This is a main point in my view where comercial distros do have a valuable service to offer

For me personally i think there is no way back. I find those binary distros "suspicious" so it seems i got quite gentooed last months.

Seoushi · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2003 9:00 am Post subject:

I just see alot of people read reviews/hearing by mouth about the "rave" of gentoo but it doesn't tell the user how hard it is to install. Personaly I think gentoo was easier to install than alot of other distros, thanks to the documentation team. But the other users don't take thier time to read the docs/search the forums and then they come into a problem and try to figuare it out, but they get stuck, then they just hate dealing with it and say well such and such worked I'm going back. However making an easier install isn't going to help this because if you don't know your system then your not going to be able to use it either. At one point in time I though even a text based install would be useful, but then I realized if it wasen't for me installing my system from stage one I would be worse off. If people don't want to take the time to install gentoo they do have other choices and I have no problem with that.
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merlinBSD · Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2003 3:36 am Post subject:

I come from BSD and I always wanted to tried gentoo because linux kernel got much more powerfull multimedia driver

But my many first atempt on my old mobo always ended badly because of hardware issues :-/ Oncethe installation went well but once i reboot my network card did weird thing(watchdog BS)... 1 week trying to solve the problem and I just gave up and reinstall freeBSD although my sound card was doing weird sounds! But this damn mobo died a few days ago and i got myself a nforce2 and yay it works

heh heh So far im very happy to be running the most powerfull linux distro (but i still runBSD on my server heh)!

Anyway to answer ur thread I beleive many people give up simply because they come to gentoo as a first (or second) linux install and they realise that they have a lot todo to configure it

Well nothing is bad I think people who gave up with gentoo will come back one day... when they will realise that the only way to go is the port system heh heh! And afterall if they give up its just because gentoo is not suitable for them at this moment...

/me cant live without ports!

modal · Apprentice Joined: 02 Oct 2002 Posts: 277

I think Gentoo is fun. That's why I use it. OS's aren't supposed to be "fun" i suppose, but I think gentoo is. I love to have to hand-config almost everything. (if you mess with RH or MDK, you are asking for your system to not work) I love to scour the forums for ideas and fixes. (no other distro has a community like ours) I love to have the newest things (uhh, why wait for rpms, or debs?). I love making something from scratch and rearing it like a child, seeing how your decisions affect the final outcome. If you don't like what your system has become, because you bloated it with too many non-portage-sanctioned ebuilds (like me), then you start over from within your old install to a new install, where you don't make the same mistakes and can just move the good config files that you've made over to your new install. (you can't do this so easily with other distros, hell, if you want to upgrade rh or mdk, the prefered method is to reformat!!! wtf?!?!)
Gentoo is fun because it doesn't hold your hand, or tell you what to do. It's fun because you actually have to learn how to use *nix to be effective. Now that I know *nix (since i also use OpenBSD, and toyed around with HP-UX-at school) I would NEVER go back to windows. There just isn't as much functionality, ease of use, and customizability. I wish that there was a Gentoo for every kernel in the world.