Slack guy turns to Gentoo!
I used to be a big fan of slackware, and had it semi-running for a while. I loved the simpler package manager, which is why I stuck with it for such a long time. I say I had it semi-running, however, because quite a few things would not work, and I didn't know why. I couldn't get the Gimp, Gxine, Totem, or XMMS to work for a long time, until I downloaded and compiled them from source. After being compiled on my box, everything was peachy, and they worked. However, I didn't like having to go all over the place, downloading and installing tarballs just to get my software working; I didn't mind the compilation process, just the required manual steps to get to that point.
Enter Gentoo. I found and installed Gentoo from a stage one install, compiling everything as I went. After the initial bootstrap process, the first thing I noticed was that gcc was a lot faster than it was on slack. As I continued, I found out about emerge. It is like slapt-get or swaret on steroids! You can choose to use binaries, or have ebuild compile automatically from source. You can enable or disable dependancy checks from the command line. If you don't want to disable all dependancy checks, you can make portage think you have a package installed (called 'injecting' it). It is awesome! Then, if there isn't a piece of software in portage (yeah, right!), you can easily create a custom ebuild for it, which just involves writing a modified shell script! Best of all, as you can compile everything on your machine with any optimizations you want, everything runs quick, and fits your configuration!
I have been using Gentoo for a while, and haven't managed to break my installation yet, like I did countless times in slack. Compilation hasn't been a real issue for me, as I have a pretty fast machine (took just a 1/2 hour to compile x.org), however, if it was everything has a precompiled alternative. I am frankly amazed at the amount of software in portage! Aside from a few strange software choices (Using devfs rather than udev and xfree86 4.3 rather than x.org) that are easily remidied, it is my dream distro! Changing their defaults is quite simple, like to replace devfs with udev there is a guide on the gentoo site, which basically involves two commands and the optional editing of a single line in a configuration file (Gentoo's all about choices, after all)! Contrary to popular belief, it is not hard at all to configure, many times needing only an etc-update. I found the installation a learning experience, however was helped out tremendously by the excellent Gentoo Handbook. If I knew about this distro when starting out with linux, a lot of needless frustration would have been avoided (stay away from RedHat like the plague)! Anyone interested in using Linux but doesn't know where to start, please seriously consider Gentoo. I think it would make many people's experiences with Linux much more enjoyable. :D
Re: Slack guy turns to Gentoo!
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Originally posted here by TheRepublican
[B]I couldn't get the Gimp, Gxine, Totem, or XMMS to work for a long time, until I downloaded and compiled them from source.
Install swaret and run swaret install <package>. I did that with xine-ui and had a fully working version ready to play DVDs without problems (it even did things like creating the /dev/dvd symlink for me).
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Best of all, as you can compile everything on your machine with any optimizations you want, everything runs quick, and fits your configuration!
As someone once pointed out to me - by the time you've done all those optimisations your machine might run 5% faster, but it'll take you 10% longer to get there. :)
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Aside from a few strange software choices (Using devfs rather than udev and xfree86 4.3 rather than x.org) that are easily remidied, it is my dream distro!
Gentoo does not choose xfree - the packages that you can install (such as Gnome) do. I must admit that depending on devfs is a nuisance though - I removed support for it when I compiled the 2.6 kernel because it is obsolete, only to be left with an unbootable system.
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Anyone interested in using Linux but doesn't know where to start, please seriously consider Gentoo. I think it would make many people's experiences with Linux much more enjoyable. :D
Whilst I use Gentoo occassionally (although I had to remove it from my laptop in favour of Slackware because it kept segfaulting on emerge's), I would never recommend it as a first Linux distro. Even I find it rather boring to go through the install process, and I've been using Gentoo for long enough to have memorised most of it. If you show someone Linux and say "hey, it'll take a whole day to install and you have to read this 8+ chapter manual first" do you really think they are going to use it? Add that to the fact that Gentoo does very little for you in terms of more advanced tasks like paritioning (ooh, fdisk - what a lovely user-friendly tool...) and any newbie is likely to give up before they've even begun.
