Gentoo article

Post by **Patrick** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 8:55 am

Interesting read. We know that Gentoo is not for everyone:
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/09/12/213246

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 10:45 am

I have similar feelings as the author of this article.

I enjoyed learning what I did about Linux and how it functions with my jaunts with Kanotix, Slackware, Arch, Underground, and so forth.

Now, I just want (and have) a system that works, is easy to maintain (or does this job itself) yet is still stable and gives me the freedom to do what I want.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 9:03 am

I read part of the article, then just gave up. I think he made his point in the first few paragraphs.

I exaggerated the ease of installing Gentoo. For a proper Gentoo install, you'll need to read the fine manual. Read it a couple of times. Cover to cover. Pay particular attention to the sections on USE flags and Portage.

Anyone who tries to do an install without reading the manual will be disappointed. Even if you DO read the manual it's not easy. It will take a while. You will make mistakes.

This guy tried an install, got part way through it, decided he had it all figured out, then wiped a production system and reinstalled it with Gentoo. He started the install 24 hours before he needed the system for work.

Another mistake he made was using the Live CD installer. From what I've seen it's far from ready, and quite buggy. Yes, it's not his fault it didn't work, but some research would have saved headaches. The Gentoo forums are full of complaints about the 2006.1 Live CD installer.

Gentoo does a really good job of supporting people. I'm surprised at the number of clueless newbie questions in the forums and how well they are tolerated. I don't know if I could be that patient. Reading the forums daily is almost impossible, so it's best to just search.

For me, there's still a lot of documentation that is needed on common tasks. In a lot of cases you'll wind up reading the package documentation to get things running.

I agree Gentoo is not for everyone, especially people who want to install it without reading the documentation.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 7:24 pm

Gentoo's really not that bad. Portage is a fantastic package manager, and the documentation is second to none. We all bust on it, but it's a solid distro, with an insane amount of control for the user. The GUI installer is still a tad buggy, but if you can get through the installation, it's not that hard configuring Gentoo. Hell, if you do a stage 3 install with precompiled GNOME binaries, you can have a fully functional desktop within an hour or so.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 8:48 am

Wally Balljacker wrote:Portage is a fantastic package manager, and the documentation is second to none.

The documentation is good, but it could be a lot better. They've got a LOT of documentation, but they leave out obvious things that I think should be documented. I don't think it's possible to keep up to date docs on EVERYTHING a person would need to know to do an install, though.

I've found nothing on configuring an MTA, so I've resorted to reading the Exim manual. Their kernel configuration guide has useful information, but really just scratches the surface.

What I've found useful is looking at an existing system, comparing how THEY did things, then copying things over. Diffing the Fedora kernel config against my Gentoo kernel config is teaching me lots of stuff.