How many of you also use Gentoo?
 

What do you think of it? What are your current experiences with it?

I tried it, and could never get the kernel to build as well as boot. Wasted about 72 hours on just the install phase alone trying to decipher Gentoo's haphazard documentation.

Don't get me wrong, Gentoo is a very sound distribution, like Slackware, and works well from my experience with the Live disk. It's no Slackware by all regards, but it's a good distribution if you can figure out how to get it to work, boot, and install properly.

LFS is about like Gentoo without package management. However, before you venture away from Slackware into these systems, get some skills and knowledge under your belt first. These aren't beginner level distributions.

I used to (long before Ubuntu switched to GNOME 3). Gentoo is a fun distro, but it subjects your computer to a huge amount of wear and tear.

Excellent distribution for long cold winter nights. Keeps you busy AND takes care of heating the room when you build all the stuff from scratch.

I used it in the past as a distribution for me to learn.

Gentoo's portage was based off of FreeBSD's ports according to the reading material, but the last I saw of it, it was more like OpenBSD's ports. This is in the sense that if I want to build something like say...qt4, I get one qt4 package built with what I want (OpenBSD calls this "flavors", Gentoo calls these "USE flags") rather than say multiple qt4 packages that each serve a different purpose (e.g. qt4-this qt4-that, etc).

The last time I checked Gentoo, some things that were part of the base system could not be removed as they can in Slackware. Although, to be fair most of these features are quite commonly used on both desktop and server systems (e.g. iptables, lvm, and the likes).

Like Slackware, anything not included in the base system usually has to be built from source by the system administrator except Gentoo has ebuilds (I've never written an ebuild before so I'm not sure of the specifics) and Slackware has SlackBuilds which are just shell scripts. Some of the stuff in portage is pre-built (e.g. libreoffice cause that just takes forever).

One could use pre-created packages just as you could in Slackware of course, but I never really felt building them in the first place.

I used in the past.
Probably if Slackware didn't exist and I had time to spend, gentoo would has been my choice.

I already installed gentoo once, it isn't that hard to install. The thing that got me was portage, the most confusing and complicated package manager in the world. I got mad at it and gave up. I am trying it again but I am probably going to give up on it too. Since, from what I've read, the "optimisations" doesn't make that much difference I don't see the point of it.

If you think that Gentoo is about optimizations you totally missed the point. Being able to optimize the software is merely a side effect of any source based distribution. The main point of Gentoo is that it is more a meta-distribution than a distribution, it is the ability to easily build up a system from scratch with the software you want, compiled with the dependencies you want (as much as possible, of course), basically to use Gentoo to create your own private distribution.

Having said that, I have tried it a few times, but I also deem its package management system to be too complicated, I prefer simple and easy package management. If I want a highly configurable source based distribution I would go for CRUX instead, its approach is quite similar to BSD ports and Slackware's Slackbuilds. But seeing how easy it is to adapt Slackware to my needs with its existing Slackbuilds system I don't really feel the need for going fully source source based, the partial approach I use now is good enough for me (posting this from a Slackware 14.1 machine with customized graphics stack: VDPAU enabled, xserver-1.15, xf86-video-ati-7.3, Mesa 10, ...).

I've always heard about gentoo "optimisation". At least that is one its selling points, according to its fans. It'd be nice if it really boosted performance. Since that is not true I don't see the point of it. And if you want something from scratch, Linux from Scratch is the way to go imo.

How much you benefit from compiling your software optimized highly depends on the software itself and on your specific use-case. Saying that optimization does not boost performance in general because it does not do that for you is not really valid.

Of course you can use LFS, if you want to. What I was saying is that Gentoo provides an easy way to do the same thing (as do most source based distros), since it already has things like package management inbuilt and its USE-flag system makes it easier for the user to install software with the dependencies the user wants, since it eliminates the need to learn about the configure options for any software you want to install (which you for some software projects even have to do if you only want to upgrade that software, due to changed default compile options).

I've seen a lot of people, including the gentoo users, saying that the performance difference is irrelevant, imposible to see. That is what I meant. Sure, applications like video encoders, would be faster. But I don't see the point of spending hours and hours to set a desktop on gentoo if it won't be much faster. I am still trying, anyways.

I think that if you are using gentoo to build your distro it is still going to be gentoo or a gentoo-based distro, since it is going to use most (if not all) gentoo tools, like OpenRC and portage.

I've used Gentoo in 2003 for some months, but for my tastes it has too much `glitter'. If it has to be source-based, I prefer simpler systems like CRUX or LFS (or BSD, for that matter), which are more in line with the KISS philosophy, though if I'm going to compile from source, I can just as well use something like pkgsrc (which I'm actually using on this Slackware box).

Though I have to say that I don't care about how most programs are configured and compiled -- that is one reason I like Slackware: the programs I care about I compile myself, for the rest I use the official Slackware packages.

I've attempted to install Gentoo on a few occasions. I'm not patient enough to stick with it. Slackware, Debian, and the BSDs work well for me. At the moment I'm running Slackware and OpenBSD.

Yes, optimization levels are very fickle to argue over. Most documentation and users will use only the basics of the basics of stable levels like "-O2 -fPIC -march=native" for maximum stability. Otherwise you risk nuking something inadvertently.

Gentoo's approach to the core however is unique making it a single package, which actually is a innovative way of handling it and similar to how FreeBSD maintains it's core. I'm not certain but I think I have seen where you can completely rebuild the OS core with a single build script.

Mine is set to -Os -fpic -march=bdver2. Gonna keep trying it, still didn't even finish the basic install, not enough time to do it lol.

Same here.

-JJ

I have gentoo on my other computer and I prefer slackware.

I think the only reason I have gentoo still running on that computer is because it's such a pain that I just like to have it to say I did. It's not that it's so difficult.. just a pain in the butt

Used Gentoo and found their community very helpful and intelligent. It is installed right now as a backup.

Prefer both since Gentoo shows me how a system is put together from scratch. But Slackware lets me be lazy, mess around without breaking stuff, and build from source code with my own optimizations on an already running-installed system, and I don't need an internet connection to do it or install (except for those slackbuilds that need serious updating; dev86 for example and those annoying ones with hard-coded vanilla CFLAGS). Seems faster than Gentoo and I use the same optimization on both (probably because of the KISS structure and pure scripting setup). Also ended up doing bash this way and got more familiar with sed, grep, bash and Linux (for f in `blah`; do echo $f | sed 's|**|*|g' | xargs blah ; done || etc). It's more stable for me (emerge -e world caused more problems than Slackware bootstrap, and broke system more than once; portage doesn't always like python updates e.g. and your system is gone if portage goes) and I fixed a borked Slackware system more than once (broke system downgrading glibc. Booted Slackware DVD, fixed links, and succesfully bootstrapped on older glibc without internet).

Gentoo is like a learning tool but Slackware lets me learn in a lazy way that's fun without breaking stuff. It's also the coolest thing to have multiple window managers and switch them cleanly via xwmconfig.

I'm not going to argue with above posts.
However, being a Gentoo user since 2004 I can tell running Gentoo is not masochistic and it will not take the best part of your day. Once you get used to it five to ten minutes of your time weekly is enough to keep it up to date - and I'm running unstable! It will take significantly more of CPU time indeed, but do you care? I have Gentoo in all of my boxes, even low power ones. Building using distcc in pump mode, using portage binpkg feature, etc. You won't kill your Raspberry Pi if you run Gentoo on it.

Gentoo is a charm.

I had very little experience but it had impressed me with how much you can learn simply by installing it. Their documentation and forums are very helpful. However I have very little spare time to learn anything this days, so I stick to Slackware as I find it much more cost effective in terms of effort to get it up and running. Also I think that for a production environment, Gentoo is not an option, while Slackware excels. Other considerations are economical and environmental. I cannot justify the waste of such resources unless you really need to and compiling _everything_ is expensive. Then there are the technological resources. Consider the limited capabilities of the Raspberry Pi for example, Gentoo would not be a feasible option for me.

Emerging xorg now. Gentoo seems fun, I think I will use it as a "playground"

Thought it would be annoying but I have to say: gentoo is pretty cool
I might cheat on slack for a while

I installed it once. It was a fun experience. I liked some things, didn't like the others, but got more respect for Gentoo out of the experiment. Generally a nice distro, just too time-consuming and too automatic for my taste.

I've been thinking of giving Gentoo another go after some LFS experience. Might be able to deduce why some stuff never worked back then when I tried to build it.

Well, installing it was pretty "easy" (not exactly easy but it was well documented so it was straightfoward).

I installed it several times, but always when X or Xfce was compiling i said to myself "nah, i have better things to do in life".

If i wanted rolling release distro, i would be installing Gentoo. I like that it is not necessarily bleeding edge; software is just a little postponed, but i believe it's better tested. And i like that if you install a package as a dependency, it gets updated only if the package it depends upon needs this dependency package in newer version than you have installed - not like Arch, which updates everything everytime.

Plus the Gentoo liveDVD has the smoothest and coolest KDE implementation i have ever seen.

I believe back in the 32bit days the difference between 386 and SSE optimized code could have been noticeable.

Xorg and XFCE compiled really fast on my machine, thought it would take ages but Xorg, for example, took less than a hour.

How have you configured your kernel? With genkernel or configured manually? Or with a premade config (Slackware for example)?

I wanted to get to it as fast as posible so I used genkernel. At some point in the near future I will rebuild it with manual configuration.

I recently wiped it off the partition. Gentoo is fun to install, all of the software I use is available, ati proprietary driver works well, It performs admirably. I do not like the package manager at all, I use USE="" mainly from the command line and seem to get everything I want installed. I use slackware as a host system to build Gentoo, as well as use slackware as a host system to build lfs. the portage system seems to want to mimic FreeBSD with the exception of actually working. It is a fun distro, and a great teaching tool, and also teaches me how to avoid installing all of system-d.. unless I want to use gnome.. which I do not.

ATI proprietary driver didn't work here :(
I am using the open source one

And I am using the desktop profile + setting specific USE flags on /etc/portage/package.use

:) Couldn't be more wrong. People run Gentoo farms out there, portage binpkg feature makes it extremely easy to use a binhost to provide binary packages to all nodes running on similar hardware, and so on.
Regarding Raspberry Pi you can cross-compile all packages for it in a powerful computer and still have the customization Gentoo is famous for.
Dig into it first, then speak.

I think everyone here should try Gentoo, it is really fun

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t...ighlight-.html :hattip:

As far as I remember, back in 2002 there was only a Stage1 install available. Full installation took about a week on a Pentium-II.

heh, looking at the neighbouring rar/unrar topic, there seems to be some nostalgic mood :)

When trying out Gentoo do not forget the boost. :p

^Love the classic funroll-loops website! They have the link wrong in that thread, though.

http://funroll-loops.info/

You are surely more versed on Gentoo than I and I certainly would not want to taint the awesome reputation Gentoo has among us Slackers. However I have to admit that I do find the solutions you proposed as esoteric, but then perhaps your scope is much wider than mine.

All gentooers have lots of respect for Slackware, no question about that.
BTW, in case you happen to own a device running Android then you already have Gentoo ... in a way. While Android is advertised as an OS it really is not, it is a bunch of apps running on Linux, built on Gentoo ...

A potential client called me around last Christmas and asked me if I accepted to do some Linux server maintenance on one of his machines, running a few dozen websites. I said sure, of course, what distribution is running on it?

"Gentoo. And I fear the last update is from a few years back."

I've never refused a job offer in such blunt terms.

Earlier I said running Gentoo is not masochistic. Gentoo is a rolling distro, you have to keep it up to date (easy) or you will face major problems (hard). Bringing 2 years old installation up to date is an interesting exercise but it is not for faint of heart. It can be done, yes. But you need to know what you are doing and you have use intermediate versions of software which are no longer available thru portage.

Currently in the process to migrate from slack to gentoo
Damn, my heart is broken

Don't feel like you have to use just one or the other. They're both great distros. I use Slackware, OpenBSD, and Mac OSX, and I love them all, for different reasons. Just yesterday I tried a live DVD of Antergos, and I'm shocked to say that I actually liked it, Gnome 3 and all!

I can't deal with a dual boot. I always end up using only one of them.

The moment a friend asks you to install Linux on his or her computer, you'll probably migrate back from Gentoo to Slackware. ("Hey, you don't mind if I stay at your house a couple days... you know, X.org, Firefox and Libreoffice are quite long to compile...")

I install Lubuntu for friends.

BTW, if you have more than one Gentoo node distcc will reduce compiling times considerably. And you do not have to sit and watch it, use screen to start the task and leave it running with low priority.

It wasn't too long along when I actually still had a 9600 bps dialup Earthlink account and a machine at a blazing 733 MHz equipped with 256 MB [sic] of core. Since I measure everything in terms of football, it was around the time that Colt McCoy was playing for the tu Longhorns -- maybe a couple or three or four years back.

I dreaded when I'd run emerge @world on Gentoo and see more than 15 new packages. The downloads alone were an all day affair and the build went well into the night. So I quit being a Luddite and moved into the the modern world with a high speed network and an i7-core with 32 GB of RAM. Just the other day when KDE 4.12.2 and some other things came out totaling 197 package, I took a dinner break. By the time, I gulped down the last bite of dessert, it was all done.

Among Gentoo-2.2, Slackware-current, FreeBSD-9.2 and my homegrown variant of Linux from Scratch, I really do like them all. I'm not a distro hopper since I stick with those but I do take a look at some others on occasion to learn new techniques. The only one I've really found wanting is Debian/Hurd but I realize it's still mostly a proof of concept and not yet meant for day-to-day use.

Over on the dark side, I may be the only one in this forum that actually likes what Windows 8.1 has become -- especially with Cygwin on top to keep things familiar with a few xterms running on that platform. Plus, with JP Software's Take Command shell, it's a very comfortable environment for this command-line guy.

I'm running a few distcc hosts in my office. Distcc is one of those "high geek factor" applications. :)

I think I would end up installing something like Mint :p
And LibreOffice is outrageous, it takes longer than the whole installation/configurarion proccess lol

Cygwin works plain and simple. No argument from me.