I haven't tried Arch or Gentoo yet. I got fed-up with distrohopping before I got round to trying them.

Arch is nice, it's still much higher-level than Gentoo and uses precompiled packages, but it's very minimal and simple (as in small and elegant, not as in simple for noobs to use).

So there's no such a big difference between Ubuntu and Arch (unlike Gentoo -> Ubuntu).

According to DistroWatch, Arch is for competent Linux users and Gentoo is for developers and network professionals.

Now, Gentoo installation is built from source code, does that really make a lot of difference if i'd rather install (e.g. Arch) from pre-built binary packages? would my computer be faster not including features specific to other processors/modules ?

Also, i'd like to download ans install a package "as it is" and not "Ubuntu-ized".

So generally that means.. which do you think is better?

I also wonder why people call Gentoo advance.. There's not much difference to it as Slackware and LFS. It's just perhaps that people knew Ubuntu first. Back in the old days, Slackware was even just a normal distro and I also thought that Redhat and the likes were more difficult or less easy to understand.. less hacker friendly.

In most case it will.

What do you mean not "Ubuntu-ized"? Not like Debian-based packages?

Some geniuses can learn Arch immediately without trying other distros. What do you think is more difficult, Arch with docs all around, or DOS? And many people learned DOS on their own before.

I'm not a professional, but i think, for me, Gentoo is better.

"If you want to learn about the inner-workings of a Linux system, Gentoo may be for you.
"

Maybe because Gentoo is not so easy to install...

Why do you say that it's less hacker friendly?


Packages altered by Ubuntu.

I wasn't around long enough to know that.

Wow I'm glad.
If you have time and eager to become an above-average or advanced Linux user, perhaps you can try installing these three distros in order:

Slackware -> LFS -> Gentoo

Slackware is the base so that you'll have a general understanding what Linux really means. LFS is there to ensure that you understand how a Linux system works. And Gentoo will be there for you to go further without limits.

You'll find that LFS is a lot more difficult to handle than Gentoo but it's generally for starters.

Simply because I can't tell what and how packages were installed and how my system was really setup-ed? It's more like being blind if I have things done that way. I also don't have all the tools I needed right away. Slackware for example already has everything I need for starters, to learn and let me be able to play around my system even without connecting to the net. /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs were also a great help.

Gentoo also makes modification but only fixes and some helpers to make the source package compile and install in uniform with the system. Perhaps in most distros also but were does Ubuntu go far?

1 members found this post helpful.

I would have been really happy if I knew Linux at your age. That would be around 9 years before in high school. I could really think about the naughty things that I could have done with such an ability. DOS was too limited back then. My enthusiasm and hunger for extreme computer skill and knowledge was just choked because of less information. But perhaps learning DOS first instead of Linux gave me more benefit especially with understanding and control in many sides of OS worlds.

Why not going straight with Gentoo?

Aren't they the same? both are built up from source code.

It's your option. I'm just trying to explain why Gentoo is not that difficult.
Gentoo has helpers. For Gentoo, after all configurations are done, it's just as easy as 'emerge -e system' and you have everything built or rebuilt.

LFS is.. well you'll really build it from scatch,... manually. No helper scripts. You'll only have a book that gives you procedures on how to build and install the packages. Sometimes it's really difficult since there are also unexpected errors. Most packages that you'll use in LFS are raw or unpatched by the distro. Some may have patches but you also have to patch them manually. In LFS I mean packages as source packages.

1 members found this post helpful.

So basically you are creating your own distro with LFS...

The only thing about Gentoo that i saw and didn't like so much is compilling time, takes days!!... So i might do what you said, just getting Gentoo before LFS.

Remember, Gentoo still compiles everything, too!

It's just that in Gentoo a script does it for you and in LFS you type a compilation command for each package.

1 members found this post helpful.

Ok, thanks for all. I think i'm gonna try Gentoo first.