Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on May 17, 2006 04:41 PM
gentoo is a meta distribution, it means you can set ot up to suit your personal needs, without all the bloat that usually comes with other distributions. there's only one flavour of gentoo, no need to offer a server version, a desktop version, a whatever-you-might-be-interested-in version : you build your own gentoo, according to your needs.
the graphical installer is kind of a joke but at least it allows you to have a working workstation while building your system.
building or installing new software is sometime irritating because of the time it take to compile a program and its dependencies. updating a program is not a problem because you can compile in background and carry on using your system.
gentoo documentation is the best out there : it might seems a bit reluctant, but it is very useful and understandable even for noobs : gentoo was the first distro i ever installed (i didn't know anything about linux before) ; it took me quite some time but i learned a lot, and it went flawlessly. so as long as you can read and type, you can install gentoo. i didn't have any linux/unix skills and figured out how to install gentoo. i even compiled my kernel manually !!
so pros are : - customisation, - optimisation, - good docs, - helpful community, - good software management, - plenty of software available through portage.
cons are : - compiling time (sometimes binaries would just be enough), - you indeed sometimes wish some things would work without going through the docs...
it's not the perfect distro, but it's very customisable and handy.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 17, 2006 04:41 PMthe graphical installer is kind of a joke but at least it allows you to have a working workstation while building your system.
building or installing new software is sometime irritating because of the time it take to compile a program and its dependencies. updating a program is not a problem because you can compile in background and carry on using your system.
gentoo documentation is the best out there : it might seems a bit reluctant, but it is very useful and understandable even for noobs : gentoo was the first distro i ever installed (i didn't know anything about linux before) ; it took me quite some time but i learned a lot, and it went flawlessly. so as long as you can read and type, you can install gentoo. i didn't have any linux/unix skills and figured out how to install gentoo. i even compiled my kernel manually !!
so pros are :
- customisation,
- optimisation,
- good docs,
- helpful community,
- good software management,
- plenty of software available through portage.
cons are :
- compiling time (sometimes binaries would just be enough),
- you indeed sometimes wish some things would work without going through the docs...
it's not the perfect distro, but it's very customisable and handy.
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