6 ms·

Choice of menial things (author's words), "flexibility" of having only what you need. Touting a shorter compile time as a benefit against binary packages. Good

Choice of menial things (author's words), "flexibility" of having only what you need. Touting a shorter compile time as a benefit against binary packages. Good stats on an old machine. These all seem downright odd as benefits. > Finally, the control over your kernel configuration is a huge selling point WHY? Why is this a huge selling point? Why would I, the OS user, care if the kernel is tiny and tailored? What does it materially change when I use the computer? I guess my reasons for picking an OS are just too different. I prefer something that lets me do all the things I sat down at a computer to do. Ideally, I wouldn't even know what OS I was using. I don't mean to demean the users of Gentoo. Especially if there's a joy to it - if you enjoy configuring kernel-level stuff, distribution hacking - that's great. All that power to you, and Gentoo looks like a good fit. But defending it with these kinds of points just seems tired and strange.

mberning 13y ago
Pretty much the reason I stopped using FreeBSD as my desktop os and got an OSX machine. Nothing against the DIYers out there, but the vast majority of people have other things they would rather spend their precious time on.
- dmix 13y ago
  I recently did the inverse: OSX to Arch Linux. My motivation was very much similar to why I switched from Textmate to VIM. I hit a wall in terms of how powerful and efficient I could be with Textmate. Wheras I knew I could become equally productive in VIM within a few months and in return I would have a seemingly endless opportunity to improve my toolset in the future. The majority of people need optimized prepackaged software - agreed - but for someone who has spent the majority of their life on a computer, via hobby and now work, the context has shifted from "I just need it to work" to making a long-term investment in my tools to maximize productivity and enjoyment of the time spent on the machine.
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    Can you expand on your Textmate efficiency? I'm new to OS X and it's tools, currently on Sublime Text 2 but haven't really configured it at all. I want to hear all of it! Thanks.
    - AYBABTME 13y ago
      I'd suggest that you try not to jump in the 'configuration band wagon' and first try to learn the very basics of Sublime Text. Also look for v3, which is neat. Sublime Text 3 is a great editor on its own, and while I do have packages and plugins installed, I believe new users should take the time to familiarize themselves with the editor before bloathing it with whatever X blog post says. As to ST vs VIM, I used to use Vim, I still use it everyday. ST has a much nicer GUI than MacVim or GVim... and the stuff I used to do in Vim, I can do just as well in ST with Vi-mode. Now if only ST3 was not proprietary software.
      - rfnslyr 13y ago
        I've downloaded an app where when you press CMD, a popup appears displaying shortcuts for that program, it's been working wonders. Honestly, I might just go back to VIM, it just feels like home after using it for so long. I've yet to try vintage mode.
        ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
        What app?
      - pimeys 13y ago
        I'm a long time VIM user and I jumped into the Sublime wagon for a day. And I realized that Sublimes VIM mode was not at all enough, just a shadow of the real thing. To this day, only thing that comes really really close is Emacs with evil mode. For me, the more I use computers for work, the more stuff I build, GUIs start to be too much in my way. I just need to learn the editor keys and window manager keys to the spine. I don't want nags from my OS to update something, some windows to float wherever they decided this time or some weird services running which I don't know they exist. Total control on what you own. That seems to be my goal as I get older and more proficient.
  - Ziomislaw 13y ago
    I actually moved from linux to freebsd, because I was lazy. Main selling point is: no matter what you tweak, it _will_ work and it will work as you expected it to.
jiggy2011 13y ago
The big advantage is going through the process of putting the system together which gives you knowledge that you can apply to other distributions. It makes weird errors feel a lot less intimidating and you build more confidence in resolving things yourself when google doesn't help. In other words you start to understand what parts you need to make a functioning OS. Gentoo installs can be very snappy on old hardware, I ran it for a while on an old AMD Athlon and it booted faster and felt way more responsive than much newer machines running Vista etc. Of course it's not as quick to install and get to a desktop than say Ubuntu, but it isn't really trying to be. Having said that it's really not all that hard, if you've used Linux before and can follow an instruction manual you will be up and going in an hour or two depending on how fast your computer can compile the code. It's also rolling release, so you don't have to worry about doing big distribution upgrades. You can keep a gentoo install rolling away for years quite happily.
warfangle 13y ago
The last time I felt it worthwhile tailoring my own kernel was to breath life into an older P3 laptop. In this case, it improved battery life by 30% over windows (my primary concern with it, as it was for class use in college). In this case, it was almost a decade ago.
jlgaddis 13y ago
When I began using Linux ~18 years ago, my PC sported an astounding 4 MB (that's megabytes) of RAM and was powered by a 486 processor that ran at a whopping 25 MHz. Even though it took hours for a kernel to compile (as opposed to mere minutes now), it was worth it. At the time, having the absolute latest and greatest kernel was truly a necessity, depending on your hardware. Besides, one could fire off the compilation process before she went to bed for the night so it's not as if you sat around watching the scrolling text and watching for the build to finish. The effects of building my own kernels were noticeable. If I simply included everything and the kitchen sink -- like today's distribution-provided kernels do -- it's quite possible that my machine might not have successfully booted up after I installed the new kernel, updated my symlinks, and re-ran LILO. Every time I ran "make menuconfig", "do I compile 'x' into the kernel or as a module?" is a question I had to ask myself over and over again. Deciding wrong quite possibly meant wasting several hours worth of my time. Today? I'm typing this on a laptop with eight 2.7 GHz cores, 32 GIGABYTES of RAM and a terabyte of storage (roughly 8,000 times as much RAM and storage as that old PC and somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 times the amount of processing power). I cannot remember the last time that I configured and built a kernel by hand. The optimizations that were once so critical are now a thing of the very, very distant past.
agravier 13y ago
Ha! Interestingly, the article "You're probably not for hackers" currently on the front page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043318) is talking about building products for that other side that you find so strange.
na85 13y ago
I actually really really like Gentoo.... for a server box. One day a few years ago I thought I'd throw it on my laptop. Biiig mistake. As an end-user I'm perfectly happy using a binary distro like Fedora. Storage is cheap and I've got lots of memory. System load is typically rather low so I just don't need the kind of performance optimizations that gentoo can provide. As a server OS? I'd strongly consider Gentoo. As a desk/laptop OS? Hell naw.
jallmann 13y ago
> But defending it with these kinds of points just seems tired and strange. Why? Those are the points that are important to him. The set of points that are important to you are likely non-intersecting. You say you're trying not to demean Gentoo users, but it sure comes off like that. It was a cool article and I learned new things about Gentoo and what makes it appealing to its users. It just sucks to see people put that down (by calling it odd/strange/tired/etc) because it doesn't conform to what they value out of their OS.
beefsack 13y ago
Some people actually enjoy tinkering with the OS, the OS is a bit of a toy for me and I format to something new every two weeks or so. I can't imagine anything more boring than an OS which hides all the nuts and bolts, that's the sort of computer I give to my mum. Each to their own.

mberning 13y ago

Pretty much the reason I stopped using FreeBSD as my desktop os and got an OSX machine. Nothing against the DIYers out there, but the vast majority of people have other things they would rather spend their precious time on.

dmix 13y ago
I recently did the inverse: OSX to Arch Linux. My motivation was very much similar to why I switched from Textmate to VIM. I hit a wall in terms of how powerful and efficient I could be with Textmate. Wheras I knew I could become equally productive in VIM within a few months and in return I would have a seemingly endless opportunity to improve my toolset in the future. The majority of people need optimized prepackaged software - agreed - but for someone who has spent the majority of their life on a computer, via hobby and now work, the context has shifted from "I just need it to work" to making a long-term investment in my tools to maximize productivity and enjoyment of the time spent on the machine.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  Can you expand on your Textmate efficiency? I'm new to OS X and it's tools, currently on Sublime Text 2 but haven't really configured it at all. I want to hear all of it! Thanks.
  - AYBABTME 13y ago
    I'd suggest that you try not to jump in the 'configuration band wagon' and first try to learn the very basics of Sublime Text. Also look for v3, which is neat. Sublime Text 3 is a great editor on its own, and while I do have packages and plugins installed, I believe new users should take the time to familiarize themselves with the editor before bloathing it with whatever X blog post says. As to ST vs VIM, I used to use Vim, I still use it everyday. ST has a much nicer GUI than MacVim or GVim... and the stuff I used to do in Vim, I can do just as well in ST with Vi-mode. Now if only ST3 was not proprietary software.
    - rfnslyr 13y ago
      I've downloaded an app where when you press CMD, a popup appears displaying shortcuts for that program, it's been working wonders. Honestly, I might just go back to VIM, it just feels like home after using it for so long. I've yet to try vintage mode.
      - ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
        What app?
    - pimeys 13y ago
      I'm a long time VIM user and I jumped into the Sublime wagon for a day. And I realized that Sublimes VIM mode was not at all enough, just a shadow of the real thing. To this day, only thing that comes really really close is Emacs with evil mode. For me, the more I use computers for work, the more stuff I build, GUIs start to be too much in my way. I just need to learn the editor keys and window manager keys to the spine. I don't want nags from my OS to update something, some windows to float wherever they decided this time or some weird services running which I don't know they exist. Total control on what you own. That seems to be my goal as I get older and more proficient.
- Ziomislaw 13y ago
  I actually moved from linux to freebsd, because I was lazy. Main selling point is: no matter what you tweak, it _will_ work and it will work as you expected it to.

jiggy2011 13y ago

The big advantage is going through the process of putting the system together which gives you knowledge that you can apply to other distributions. It makes weird errors feel a lot less intimidating and you build more confidence in resolving things yourself when google doesn't help. In other words you start to understand what parts you need to make a functioning OS. Gentoo installs can be very snappy on old hardware, I ran it for a while on an old AMD Athlon and it booted faster and felt way more responsive than much newer machines running Vista etc. Of course it's not as quick to install and get to a desktop than say Ubuntu, but it isn't really trying to be. Having said that it's really not all that hard, if you've used Linux before and can follow an instruction manual you will be up and going in an hour or two depending on how fast your computer can compile the code. It's also rolling release, so you don't have to worry about doing big distribution upgrades. You can keep a gentoo install rolling away for years quite happily.

warfangle 13y ago

The last time I felt it worthwhile tailoring my own kernel was to breath life into an older P3 laptop. In this case, it improved battery life by 30% over windows (my primary concern with it, as it was for class use in college). In this case, it was almost a decade ago.

jlgaddis 13y ago

When I began using Linux ~18 years ago, my PC sported an astounding 4 MB (that's megabytes) of RAM and was powered by a 486 processor that ran at a whopping 25 MHz. Even though it took hours for a kernel to compile (as opposed to mere minutes now), it was worth it. At the time, having the absolute latest and greatest kernel was truly a necessity, depending on your hardware. Besides, one could fire off the compilation process before she went to bed for the night so it's not as if you sat around watching the scrolling text and watching for the build to finish. The effects of building my own kernels were noticeable. If I simply included everything and the kitchen sink -- like today's distribution-provided kernels do -- it's quite possible that my machine might not have successfully booted up after I installed the new kernel, updated my symlinks, and re-ran LILO. Every time I ran "make menuconfig", "do I compile 'x' into the kernel or as a module?" is a question I had to ask myself over and over again. Deciding wrong quite possibly meant wasting several hours worth of my time. Today? I'm typing this on a laptop with eight 2.7 GHz cores, 32 GIGABYTES of RAM and a terabyte of storage (roughly 8,000 times as much RAM and storage as that old PC and somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 times the amount of processing power). I cannot remember the last time that I configured and built a kernel by hand. The optimizations that were once so critical are now a thing of the very, very distant past.

agravier 13y ago

Ha! Interestingly, the article "You're probably not for hackers" currently on the front page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6043318) is talking about building products for that other side that you find so strange.

na85 13y ago

I actually really really like Gentoo.... for a server box. One day a few years ago I thought I'd throw it on my laptop. Biiig mistake. As an end-user I'm perfectly happy using a binary distro like Fedora. Storage is cheap and I've got lots of memory. System load is typically rather low so I just don't need the kind of performance optimizations that gentoo can provide. As a server OS? I'd strongly consider Gentoo. As a desk/laptop OS? Hell naw.

jallmann 13y ago

> But defending it with these kinds of points just seems tired and strange. Why? Those are the points that are important to him. The set of points that are important to you are likely non-intersecting. You say you're trying not to demean Gentoo users, but it sure comes off like that. It was a cool article and I learned new things about Gentoo and what makes it appealing to its users. It just sucks to see people put that down (by calling it odd/strange/tired/etc) because it doesn't conform to what they value out of their OS.

beefsack 13y ago

Some people actually enjoy tinkering with the OS, the OS is a bit of a toy for me and I format to something new every two weeks or so. I can't imagine anything more boring than an OS which hides all the nuts and bolts, that's the sort of computer I give to my mum. Each to their own.