I ran it 2003-2006ish.

Having a package manager that updates online was a game changer for Linux distributions.

I had been using slackware for 6 years prior, and there was no real update path. Best case you’d just get the latest release on CD and install it over your (hopefully) separate root partiton.

Conpiling all your stuff sounded like a good idea in the age of the architecture options at the time. Alpha, Crusoe, PowerPC, SPARC and MIPS were all viable options.

I used it for a couple of years, it’s great if you love customizability and want to run a very clean system. However, the last straw for me was when I needed to edit an image, realized I didn’t had Gimp, so I installed it (which took a long time since I needed to compile it), opened it and it wouldn’t open the image because it was a PNG (I think, or jpg, the specific format doesn’t matter) and that format requires a compilation flag to be enabled, I added that flag globally because why the hell would I not want to have support for it, and recompiled my entire system. By the time I had GIMP able to edit the image I didn’t even remember what I was going to do. I went back to arch not long after that, but always missed defining the packages I want in files to keep the system organized and lean.

I recently tried Gentoo, I liked it, dare I say I loved it. The problem is, I don’t have time for it. I would love to use it as a daily driver on my main rig but due to my work it would never fly.

I am however thinking of putting it on my server where I just don’t need to spend time with it. I can compile and and just let it be while I do something else.

Its fun to see all the dependencies that your computer needs. I did install it on hardware. (Planned to use it as a daily driver and dual boot Bazzite for gaming on the weekends. Got lazy and now sticking with Bazzite).

I think its a fun Saturday/weekend project to boot up a VM and go through the install process to see what’s behind the scenes that your “normal” OS does for you.

I used to use Gentoo on my laptop, mostly for fun but also because I kept having issues on other distros (Ubuntu mostly) where I wanted to run the latest blender release but my libraries were out of date. On Gentoo I could easily get the most recent builds.

I miss really digging deep into what my system was doing and understanding how the different components worked. I had choices at every step and owned every package, feature, and configuration. Also being able to easily patch and collaborate on fixes with maintainers through a local overlay.

I also feel like that understanding provided a knowledge of dark magics of how and why distros work forged in the mistakes of my Gentoo systems that’s been valuable in my career.

That said, I don’t really have time for it these days. Being able to just turn my computer on and it just works with a mainstream binary distro is a stability I’ve needed for things like work and home servers for family stuff.

Some people aren’t patient with you needing to entirely rebuild your system because you broke an ebuild or didn’t read a news and it trashed your system and it’s got several hours of recompiling system packages ahead of it.

That said I’ll perpetuate the trope and say I broke down and finally started running Arch on some personal machines this year and enjoy it. It’s not the same but it’s filled a bit of that itch and is fun to push the edge and find other people doing the same.

genuwu

deleted by creator

Intermediate Linux user + 6 months of Gentoo = advanced Linux user.

I’m not kidding. You can do this with other distros, but it will get you used to parts of the software engineering process you might not otherwise be exposed to. That was my experience at least.

When I first installed Gentoo, it was because it was one of only around three distros that supported x86_64 at the time. Yes, that was a long time ago.

I’ve kept it as a daily driver for a number of reasons. First, because I’m a control freak, and Gentoo goes out of its way to allow me to select exactly the packages I want, and gives me access to all the knobs and switches that other distros may hide in the name of user-friendliness.

Second, because once installed it’s surprisingly solid and trouble-free—Portage is an excellent (if slow) package manager that, judging from what I’ve heard from people running other distros, is better than the average at preventing breakage, and since it’s rolling-release there are no whole-distro upgrades to complicate things. I ran one system on rolling updates for 17 years without reinstalling, and it was still pretty much up-to-date on all packages when I retired it back in March—try that with Ubuntu. (The replacement system also runs Gentoo.)

Thirdly, I’ve been with Gentoo for so long that I know how to create packages, unbork a system that I’ve messed up by doing something really stupid, and various other tricks. If I went to another distro, I’d have to relearn much of that from scratch.

(A fourth reason for some might be that it supports a wider range of CPU architectures than any other distro except possibly Debian.)

I think in the day when desktop Linux was jankier and you had to tweak things a lot to get them to work well it was more beneficial to have a distro where you just compiled everything from source anyways. Now it is anachronistic, IMO.

much like arch it was handy back in the day when linux was severely lacking in hardware support and following daily bleeding edge actually gave you something. especially during that weird time when 32 bit vs 64 bit was a choice with pros and cons that couldn’t really be ignored.

I used to run it on about 800 prod boxes and we provided the hosting for the Gentoo forums. It’ll always have a soft spot in my heart, but even with us using binary packages I won’t miss how long emerge takes.

I’m using it right now, at least for personal project development. It’s surprisingly reliable. Aside from the well-known USE flags that let you nitpick stuff at compile time letting me mix newer stuff while keeping the rest stable.

I do have my complaints:

• it’s rolling release, making it less fitting for production use, tho not as bleeding edge as Arch
• the package management logic could perhaps be more robust; one of my pet peeves is that it keeps pulling the latest version of Python despite not being used
• some slight, relatively meaningless changes in package metadata might trigger recompilation
• the default configurations might not be the most sane

I have found sweet spot and preserved my configuration here for anyone to use.

I ran Gentoo Linux 2003 to about 2008. I initially picked it up because of a hype. However, I loved the degree of customisation over the system that I got at the time. The install process teaches you of alternatives to things that distributions would include. It gave me a lot more choice as to what I used with my system and the process of installing. It definitely made me understand how the system worked a lot more.

I reinstalled it 2023 and I’m still using it too today. My reasons are different now. One is a hint of nostalgia. However, another is the package manager. Since the package manager is only text files, it is very easy to extend and change with your own packages. Releasing packages on other systems is much more involved process.

Another reason is when you compile the code yourself you can choose the options to some it degree with use flags. I still build my own kernel as I can choose what to include and I think I will be moving to a unified Kernel in efi soon and do away with grub.

Using Gentoo compared to most other distributions the system feels more open and more malleable.

While I do consider arch rather similar and I did use it for a couple years. The AUR scared me a bit.