Downloading Gentoo, should I stick with it?

[White Wolf98]

Well, when I started using Linux, I used Ubuntu, it all abruptly ended when I kept killing the system by accident.

Now I'm back into the Linux community, hoping to have a better experiance with Gentoo.

I like the Visual effects in Linux. And the no spy ware and Viruses. What I like most is, its challenging. I've always liked doing things the harder way, when theres an easy way out. Plus, when I'm on Windows, I feel someone is watching me...
I like to do Emulation mostly, some games. Most game I play work with Wine anyways.

So I'm going to make the switch, to Linux, if I like Gentoo, I've heard good things about it.

What do you all think about it? Are there better distributions? (I heard its got allot of features and is virtualy created by the user. I like to know my OS!)

[Mak213]

Hello,

there are viruses and spyware for Linux. Just not as much as there is for Windows. To think that there is none is wrong. Every OS has its flaws.

I personally use Ubuntu and have had a great experience with it. Gentoo looks like a good Distro to use though.

If you want use the Linux Distro Finder.

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

Cheers,
Mak

[Jayce]

Gentoo is a good choice, but I haven't used it extensively. I'm sure you'll be satisfied with that distro. I heard from some die-hard users real good things about it.

A question I have though is, the problems you ran into with Ubuntu, did you bring them up over at ubuntuforums.org? Great site for Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu issues.

I believe, and don't quote me on this, that Gentoo is an OS that may be a little more difficult to run, so perhaps it's up your alley. Personally, I like being able to customize things to my liking, and I also like things to "just" work. So, that's why I stuck with Ubuntu. :P

Give Gentoo a shot. It's a solid distro. At this point in the game, it's all about preference. At the core, we're all the same.

[TKIII]

Gentoo is a great distro, especially if you like doing things the hard way. I ran Gentoo for about half a year, and now I'm running Kubuntu (Trying out Linux MCE ).

There are a few things that I would watch for if this is your first time running Gentoo, one is compiling your kernel. If you choose options from scratch, look at every entry and use the help. The first time I installed Gentoo, I went that route. I didn't notice PCI support, and so didn't enable it. Also enable Unix Domain Sockets, they allow for inter process communication in a *nix environment (aka: you definitely need this) I didn't and my hard drive wouldn't mount.

The other method for your kernel is to use genkernel and then deselect the options you don't need. This is the safer method, but I am guessing you are a lot like me from your description and like to do things the hard way to learn what you can.

The other thing about Gentoo is the package installing. Compiling takes quite a while and doesn't give too much of a performance boost (I've heard figures from a 2% to 5% increase in speed). Speaking of Portage, make sure you set all your usage flags, nothing is more frustrating than compiling a window manager and then not having support for JPG images .

That's the advice I can give you. I hope it helps.