4 ms·

There was this sweet spot for a while where Gentoo just worked like a breeze, Where there weren't too many and too few useflags and when I would recompile Open

There was this sweet spot for a while where Gentoo just worked like a breeze, Where there weren't too many and too few useflags and when I would recompile Open Office when my dorm room was too cold in cold winter nights.

jstummbillig 3y ago
Only on HN could any state that Gentoo was ever in be reflected upon as "just worked like a breeze" unironically and I mean that in a fond, loving way.
- trashburger 3y ago
  But it does! Even with the weird packages I have installed (ROCm) and a ton of accept_keywords unmasks, all I have to do is overnight updated twice a month. I haven't touched /etc/portage in months.
- oblio 3y ago
  You could start from a later stage, I think they had a mostly binary stage 3, and emerge was generally solid, albeit slower due to the compilations. So at least once upon a time (10+ years ago) there was this option of just using it as almost another regular distribution. Slackware on the other hand... (I say this is in a bad way, and I think it's changed since; for Slackware for anything more complex you had to manage the entire dependency tree yourself, and it was a pain in the neck for anything not part of the not-that-many-regular-packages; nota bene: for the "beaten path" Slackware was more or less just another Linux distro, but the "beaten path" was quite narrow).
  - wirrbel 3y ago
    I have this botched up Debian desktop installation that I rarely use but never quite got around to make a clean install because I need an installation medium for that and i don’t have usb sticks anymore. Do change root installs still work? I would probably give it a try again.
- luispauloml 3y ago
  I know it's off topic, but I find it interesting how this sentence was so hard for me to understand. I struggled for many seconds but couldn't go beyond "was ever" because it felt like there was some mistake, like a word was missing here or there. In the first pass, my mind decided that "state" was a verb, and, therefore, there should be a subject appearing before it. But I only found "any", instead of "anybody" or "anyone". Then there is "was ever in be" which, by itself, is a weird construction. It does makes sense in the sentence, because it is "[the] state that Gentoo was ever in" + "be reflected upon". But since I was (unconsciously) dividing the sentence in smaller parts trying to identify the subject, the predicate, the verb, the object, or whatever would make sense for me, cutting the sentence like that only confused me even more. I kept going back and forth trying to imagine which word was missing, and only after pushing through until the quotation, the whole sentence finally made sense. Although I can't think of any example right now, I know that it is common to use sentences with structure similar to this one, and I see them almost daily, probably multiple times a day. However, as a non-native speaker, this one was an actual struggle, and I feel so good for having overcome it that I am willing comment on it. For closure, if I was the one writing this sentence, I would probably use the active voice with an indefinite pronoun, which is also probably what my mind was expecting: Only on HN would anyone reflect upon any state that Gentoo was ever in as "just worked like a breeze". And I ask: were there native speakers that also couldn't understand it in a single reading?
  - Zambyte 3y ago
    Native English speaker here. The sentence was definitely missing a word. I read it multiple times before I got it too. Your rewrite was easier to understand.
    - mgdlbp 3y ago
      a garden path sentence, but it parses. [only on HN] could [any state [that Gentoo was ever in]] be [reflected upon [as "just worked like a breeze"] unironically]_,_ and [I] mean [that] [in a fond, loving way]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

jstummbillig 3y ago

Only on HN could any state that Gentoo was ever in be reflected upon as "just worked like a breeze" unironically and I mean that in a fond, loving way.

trashburger 3y ago
But it does! Even with the weird packages I have installed (ROCm) and a ton of accept_keywords unmasks, all I have to do is overnight updated twice a month. I haven't touched /etc/portage in months.
oblio 3y ago
You could start from a later stage, I think they had a mostly binary stage 3, and emerge was generally solid, albeit slower due to the compilations. So at least once upon a time (10+ years ago) there was this option of just using it as almost another regular distribution. Slackware on the other hand... (I say this is in a bad way, and I think it's changed since; for Slackware for anything more complex you had to manage the entire dependency tree yourself, and it was a pain in the neck for anything not part of the not-that-many-regular-packages; nota bene: for the "beaten path" Slackware was more or less just another Linux distro, but the "beaten path" was quite narrow).
- wirrbel 3y ago
  I have this botched up Debian desktop installation that I rarely use but never quite got around to make a clean install because I need an installation medium for that and i don’t have usb sticks anymore. Do change root installs still work? I would probably give it a try again.
luispauloml 3y ago
I know it's off topic, but I find it interesting how this sentence was so hard for me to understand. I struggled for many seconds but couldn't go beyond "was ever" because it felt like there was some mistake, like a word was missing here or there. In the first pass, my mind decided that "state" was a verb, and, therefore, there should be a subject appearing before it. But I only found "any", instead of "anybody" or "anyone". Then there is "was ever in be" which, by itself, is a weird construction. It does makes sense in the sentence, because it is "[the] state that Gentoo was ever in" + "be reflected upon". But since I was (unconsciously) dividing the sentence in smaller parts trying to identify the subject, the predicate, the verb, the object, or whatever would make sense for me, cutting the sentence like that only confused me even more. I kept going back and forth trying to imagine which word was missing, and only after pushing through until the quotation, the whole sentence finally made sense. Although I can't think of any example right now, I know that it is common to use sentences with structure similar to this one, and I see them almost daily, probably multiple times a day. However, as a non-native speaker, this one was an actual struggle, and I feel so good for having overcome it that I am willing comment on it. For closure, if I was the one writing this sentence, I would probably use the active voice with an indefinite pronoun, which is also probably what my mind was expecting: Only on HN would anyone reflect upon any state that Gentoo was ever in as "just worked like a breeze". And I ask: were there native speakers that also couldn't understand it in a single reading?
- Zambyte 3y ago
  Native English speaker here. The sentence was definitely missing a word. I read it multiple times before I got it too. Your rewrite was easier to understand.
  - mgdlbp 3y ago
    a garden path sentence, but it parses. [only on HN] could [any state [that Gentoo was ever in]] be [reflected upon [as "just worked like a breeze"] unironically]_,_ and [I] mean [that] [in a fond, loving way]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]