2 Gentoo or not to Gentoo ... that is my question ? :)

[bizcuit]

Have mucho respect for the nixers here at the grill. Hard to find a more knowledgeable n tell it da feck like it is crowd of people. So I ask fellows, anyone tried Gentoo and what was your impression ?

In other nix related news, the grill may have some competition. Am considering coming out with my own distro. Going to call it Pornix, hmmmm, tentative motto is going to be "Watch all the porn you want and never worry about those nasty viruses Again ! AT LEAST NOT THE COMPUTER KIND !!!"

Vllbbq! :)

[rhowaldt]

pornix sounds good. have your ip hidden and shit, comes with a browser with a whole bunch of sites bookmarked and guaranteed to play each video on those sites (so yeah, flash should be installed). add some suggestive directory names and a fitting wallpaper and you're done.

[simgin]

Double penetration testing tools :)

Sorry couldn't help myself :D

[ivanovnegro]

Have no time for that. :)

[Theo]

I installed it, but I don't know.. The result of: top | less is dissapointing :P

[bizcuit]

Heya's 2 Rhow and Sir Ivan, hope you fellas + families are well. :)

LMAO @ Simgin, good idea ! Is going into the release notes now. ;)

Thanks Theo ... used it for anything length of time ? Installing it a real pain ? Looks like the install options selected by a user initially can have a big impact on the finished OS. Not sure I really want to spend the time learning how to optimize a Gentoo install.

Edit: LMFAO Theo, just got it, top less. Chit man thought you were talking about Gentoo. Someone really should start pushing the immunity to many of the web nasties angle to drive users to gnu/nix. If infection free internet porn watching and perversion isn't a strong point/selling point, I don't know what is.

Still really can't find the motivation to try it myself either Sir Ivan. Always used Debian ( or based) for the majority of the time and the thought of having to learn to emerge and reemerge stuff makes ma head throb. After being used to all the binary goodness in repos. Maybe someday, guess won't know unless I try it firsthand.

Would appreciate any additional feedback on the topic from the nixers here who know. Might join the Gentoo forum and ask the nixers there what they think of Gentoo vs Xyz Linux, what makes it better/worse etc. Though not as likely to find unbiased people, asking about a distro on it's home turf. There's always da mighty Google.

Pornix, from an ancient african word for "Where did I put that lotion and roll of toilet paper.".

[dkeg]

I find it depends on what you are willing to put into it. If you're motivated, and have time, I'm sure it would be a cool experience. But most don't. Most are not linux admins for a living. Most are just regular dudes trying to make a living, whether white collar, blue collar, whatever. I have always been a Debian user. No reason. It was just how it happened. I have had aspirations to install and configure BSD and Crux, but it just has not worked out. Other things happening. Debian, sid, strikes a nice balance of generic and 'hey, I'm not just a regular linux using squid'. This is just my opinion. I'm middle aged, 4 kids, 3 dogs, 2 cats, career. What do I know. I make colorschemes and usless scripts. Buy hey, do what makes you feel good.

[machinebacon]

Even though I have no kids - gentoo is even for me much too much "work". Not that you need to do anything special for the emerge process, but to get to a full environment (say, you want X, a graphical browser, maybe an office suite, a media player, some editor, vym or zim, a PDF viewer, this and that) it will cost you another important factor: time. Said scenario equals 2 weeks of constant compiling.
Time spent for getting more or less the same crap that you get in Arch, Slackware, to 99.9% in Debian (and which, by the way, you can reproduce to 100% on any other system if you install from sources). As first time user, you won't play around with the flags before compilation, you will run into problems after 2 hours of trying to compile support for your nvidia card, just to either forget the idea of installing what you actually wanted OR cancelling it and going to bed, turning on the PC the next day to format the partition again because you are sick of looking at debug information in your spare time.
I have been there and done that with funtoo and gentoo, and both are somewhere in an unfinished state on some spare hard drive's 37th partition. The things I installed via emerge work just the same way they do on *any* other Linux distro, nothing is shinier, quicker, easier, better, worse, slower, uglier than the other. I just don't get my wasted days back *insert Frantic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tac*

If you got a life, scratch the idea and stay with Arch.

[bizcuit]

Thanks A LOT guys, same conclusion I'd reached. Lol ... have an Arch install brewing on another lappy as we speak/type. :D

Still good to hear it from nixers who know of which they speak. Btw hope life's treating you guys good, Dkeg and da mighty Baconator ! Looks like the answer to the question for me is definitely not to Gentoo. Am going to Arch for awhile and give it a fair chance just for the hell of it this time around. Plus w the added benefit that I'll be able to tell peeps "I run Arch Linux". No doubt there will be many oooooo's and ahhhhh's. ;)


Vllbbq!

[wuxmedia]

o/ linux admin here :)
I have enough trouble with apt/dpkg let alone installing compiled stuff...

[ivanovnegro]

I make colorschemes and usless scripts. Buy hey, do what makes you feel good.

And we love you for this. :)

[bizcuit]

Yeah ... your input is definitely appreciated Wux and sending ya some good vibes from the divided states of america fellow nixer. :D

[bizcuit]

Arch as yet defeats me dammit !

Tried to follow a decent looking tute to save time. Apparently wrong fn shortcut as the install is mounting read only. So will have to turn to the official documentation and lost much time following aforementioned chit ! Arghhhhh. Fortunately biz is armed with a lil time and a lil beer. Gentoo we are evidently not to be. However if I ever have an extra 2wks to waste that could change. :D

Edit: Though doubt it, as MB's word is golden to me, if he found no real bennies, I won't either. So will save the 2wk for something more productive.

Vll! :)

[machinebacon]

1) Set up some Linux (Debian netinstall will do)
2) Pick the guide to install Arch from an existing Linux installation
3) chroot into the newly created Arch install
4) follow through
5) create GRUB entry
6) reboot into Arch
7) waste another day or two getting what you already have in Debian ;)

[bizcuit]

^Lmao .... once again, your words are golden J. :)

Pretty much and at this point not sure why I'm bothering. Followed the official docs, took a lil over an hr getting the base and base-devel system to install. Still a long way from what anyone would consider a full OS though. No doubt another 1+ hrs to screw with it in getting all the stuff normally taken for granted working ! Arghhh !

But am officially running Arch ( sort of). Anyone who wants to can now shower biz with ooooo's and ahhhhh's, if anyone feels compelled to do so. :D

Btw: That's one cool thing I've noted about grub2, didn't even bother installing a bootloader for Arch, or a Debian netinstall either and an existing gnu/nix OS's grub2 picked them up and boots them no problema. Didn't want Arch to fiddle around and overwrite the junk already in the ESP. So it's nice to be able to skip it.

[wuxmedia]

Good to have you back around bizzy :)

Arch - oooh, aahh. :D

[bizcuit]

Thanks much Wux, coming from a nixer such as yourself that means something.

Random babblings about Arch, since this thread has pretty much run it's course. Am onto them, have been for awhile me thinks. As to why they make installing the OS such a monumental PITA.

1. Weeds out many of the dumbest, laziest, help-vampish types. Any effort or complication is too much for these types. So they'll go elsewhere and not crap-up the distro's community or insult it's creator by using the gnu/nix he's put together.
2. Demonstrates that the user is at least willing to RTFM and put forth some effort themselves to utilize the OS.
3. Damn ... ya really do feel like you've sorta accomplished something after going through all the over-complicated bs. Kinda like HA, I DID IT ! BOW DOWN ALL YOU NON-ARCHERS OF THE WORLD AND BE YE HUMBLED IN MY PRESENCE !!! Lmao. Inciting x-nixer(s) to a feeling of distro fanboi'ism perhaps.

So gotta admit imo, it's crafty, it's devious, multi-functional and somewhat eloquent in the way it's implemented. Thus biz approves on general principle.

[wuxmedia]

^ yeah you got it. :)

1) Learn about the system.
2) Run happily for a while...
3) System borks... vaguely recall something about how the broken thing should work.
4) Reinstall. figure out why thing was broken.

[rust collector]

haha, you remind me of me, the first time I got arch installed.
I was super happy and bouncing around.

So, now break it, and start over. It will be easy this time.

Oh, just a warning, if you do, you will end up with... well, arch... on your computer. be careful!

[rhowaldt]

bacon's points are proper in the sense that your endresult will likely not be anything you cannot get by going the straight Debian route.
the only thing i want to say in favor of doing Arch, Gentoo, LFS, whatever the fuck, is that if you are a slight noob, it will at least give you a bigger understanding of how Linux works under the hood. if you're up for that, go for it. if it is the results you care about, just listen to Jules. i found myself a lot less noobish after trying Arch.