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I used Gentoo from 2004 to last year. What finally drove me off of was the enormous amount of time it took to update my system (literally weeks on my old laptop

I used Gentoo from 2004 to last year. What finally drove me off of was the enormous amount of time it took to update my system (literally weeks on my old laptop) as it compiled all these enormously bloated apps. It was also super annoying to have to constantly keep updating or risk system breakage when you finally did try to update. That meant that my computer had to virtually never stop compiling to keep up with the endless updates. It was a complete waste of power, compute resources, and wear on my computer's components. I hate to admit it, but switching to a binary-only distro made almost all these headaches go away. I miss having the flexibility of Gentoo, but I don't miss endlessly compiling from source.

mhss 4y ago
As someone whose first Linux distribution was Gentoo back in 2005, what took you so long? I mean, it's always been a 'high maintenance' distribution. The appeal for me early on was that it forced me to understand more about how a Linux distribution worked, compiling different kernel options, etc. After a few years I moved to simpler distributions like CentOS, then Arch and finally just using MacOS to ssh to a VM with stable Debian releases.
readingnews 4y ago
Hrm, longtime gentoo user here, since 2002. I have used everything else, slack, redhat (since like the MIT TSX archive times, still have the floppies), debian, mandrake, SuSe, MX, Anti-X, Puppy, Yellow Dog. Those are distros I _used_ not installed for fun, but used for work or daily drivers. I am not sure why, but I keep going back to Gentoo. My main desktop at work and home is gentoo after a fairly long hiatus of Slack, Mint, MX. I think I see (with the exception of MX and Slack) a lot of distros going the way of "Windows" in their design choices towards users. If you are not a "power user" perhaps gentoo is not for you. I teach at a uni, and feel like if you are not a developer, perhaps most modern linux distros are for you... but if you are a developer, then perhaps something like Gentoo or Arch might be a good fit. NOT because you will be doing more work, but because a lot of the others are going towards spoon-fed operating systems that make too many choices for you, or phone home / make search suggestions too much for you. OTOH, perhaps you can stop emerging bloated apps. Or get something newer than a "old laptop". No one said you should recompile every dang linux package on machine that has a slower than everything else storage and bus because it is portable. Recall, you normally sacrifice for portability. I hope you continue to use linux, no matter the flavor, and to each his own, but I think many comments here are along the same thread: "I tried this free thing, where I could design it myself, build it all myself, and it was _work_ and I did not like it", when in reality the idea is "you have ultimate control, and it will cost you a little _work_, are you OK with that?"
yung_steezy 4y ago
You might have benefited from installing the -bin versions of big packages like web browers.

mhss 4y ago

As someone whose first Linux distribution was Gentoo back in 2005, what took you so long? I mean, it's always been a 'high maintenance' distribution. The appeal for me early on was that it forced me to understand more about how a Linux distribution worked, compiling different kernel options, etc. After a few years I moved to simpler distributions like CentOS, then Arch and finally just using MacOS to ssh to a VM with stable Debian releases.

readingnews 4y ago

Hrm, longtime gentoo user here, since 2002. I have used everything else, slack, redhat (since like the MIT TSX archive times, still have the floppies), debian, mandrake, SuSe, MX, Anti-X, Puppy, Yellow Dog. Those are distros I _used_ not installed for fun, but used for work or daily drivers. I am not sure why, but I keep going back to Gentoo. My main desktop at work and home is gentoo after a fairly long hiatus of Slack, Mint, MX. I think I see (with the exception of MX and Slack) a lot of distros going the way of "Windows" in their design choices towards users. If you are not a "power user" perhaps gentoo is not for you. I teach at a uni, and feel like if you are not a developer, perhaps most modern linux distros are for you... but if you are a developer, then perhaps something like Gentoo or Arch might be a good fit. NOT because you will be doing more work, but because a lot of the others are going towards spoon-fed operating systems that make too many choices for you, or phone home / make search suggestions too much for you. OTOH, perhaps you can stop emerging bloated apps. Or get something newer than a "old laptop". No one said you should recompile every dang linux package on machine that has a slower than everything else storage and bus because it is portable. Recall, you normally sacrifice for portability. I hope you continue to use linux, no matter the flavor, and to each his own, but I think many comments here are along the same thread: "I tried this free thing, where I could design it myself, build it all myself, and it was _work_ and I did not like it", when in reality the idea is "you have ultimate control, and it will cost you a little _work_, are you OK with that?"

yung_steezy 4y ago

You might have benefited from installing the -bin versions of big packages like web browers.