Ok so first things first. Gentoo is really just hot garbage wrapped in… more garbage.
Here are a few reasons why:
- The LiveCD is mostly worthless.
- Installing must be done in a certain manner or you waste hours of time compiling.
- If you install via the reccomended manner, you end up with an out of date system.
- “emerge -U world” breaks your system. How the hell am I supposed to be able to use this heap o’ garbage if I can’t update the system (see #4)
- The minimal install CD is usable only by someone with a 98 page manual in their hands.
- I’m NOT kidding! 98 pages. I wont bore you with a link.
- Gentoo does not support one of two things which are not working by default:
- ATI Video Card
- Nvidia Video Card
- After some hours of research, the “proper” way to update the system is run these commands:
- emerge sync
- emerge -uDpv world
- emerge -uDv world
- emerge -pv depclean
- emerge -v depclean
- revdep-rebuild -av
- revdep-rebuild -v
- dispatch-conf
- EIGHT COMMANDS! I’m done with Gentoo for quite some time.
I’m back to running Ubuntu right now. It’s a temporary solution because I was unable to burn a CD from a LiveCD.
Someone suggested on Digg that I give Slackware a try. I think I should do him one better and try Solaris x86. But I know for a fact that I can’t get past the bootloader because my cdrom drive is Serial ATA and will not work – period.
I think the next Linux distribution in my path is going to be … PCLinuxOS. A LiveCD with heavily touted hard drive installation based on Mandrake.
12 replies on “Back to the future… again!”
Hey Mate,
Try Arch Linux (clean,simple and fast)
Hi…
If you are looking for linux that just works, Gentoo is not for you. Then you sholud use Ubutnu. On the other hand, if you don’t like default settings and want to optimize system for your computer, then you should use Gentoo. Once you set it up, it works excelent.
Sorry for my bad english…
Hi mate, i understand you, but disagree with some few points.
Now when i look again , it’s all five.
1.Install is hard only the first time, it took me 2 weeks back in 2004 when i compiled my first running kernel with custom config. Now ? I have working system in around 45 minutes.
2.LiveCD is not useless as the Installation manual is on the web or on the CD and after gentoo install number 51 you start to remember the steps. Also the CD can be used as recovery.
3.emerge -a nvidia-drivers
Check http://www.nvidia.com for proper settings or your xorg.conf
Takes 10 minutes.
4. emerge -auDN world is enough, it will tell you if it need to update the /etc/ or you will see if some app stopped working, But this happens rarely on stable branch.
5. You are not done., I believe that you run Gentoo right now. You can’t stop smoking because Gentoo is addictive.
I do also have similar days when emerge -avDN world destroys it. Last time it was the xorg 1.4 w/o nvidia support. So i wiped the disk with ubuntu.
In 60 minutes i am configuring latest ubuntu, removing all ubunu artwork, removing Gnome, adding enlightenment and fluxbox. But this lasts 3 nights and my old love “gentoo” is back on the laptop, and now happy again.
What i learned? : don’t go too experimental is my rule now. so no system wide keyword unmask, only specific apps.etc. keep is light, so enlightenment.
did check Arch linux while ago, sounds attractive.
Indeed, Gentoo is Addictive. I have a Gentoo partition WIP right now, I’m not sure what I’m gonna do with it, but it’s there.
I love the control of Gentoo, hate the frustration of setup. I did an install from stage 1 once….in 2004…it seemed easier then.
you should switch your gentoo package manager to paludis. you can avoid tons of breakage this way, as it is more strict and robust at the same time.
i’ve been using gentoo since 2004 and i never really regretted it. it also helped me learn tons of things about linux in general, which “newbie-oriented” distribution would never give me chance to.
i used it to install my system, build a friend’s system, create embedded systems and generally doing some more crazy things :]
btw you can install gentoo via chroot from any linux distro, as long as you are running 2.4 or 2.6 kernel (that matters _a lot_ when you’re building glibc in a chroot)
Ah yes, Gentoo is very definitely a love-hate relationship. I have it running on 7 machines right now, but I would never use it in real production. (I have a CentOS box for that.) I just about blew away Gentoo on my laptop to try Ubuntu again, because I think the bluetooth stuff on there would allow me to use Nautilus to swap files with my new cell phone. (It’s only available on amd64 in Gentoo.) However, I recall that I’m NOT running Ubuntu on that machine because of problems with Ubuntu’s evolution-exchange module, which I need for work, so I didn’t move. I guess I could try building from source or making an ebuild, but that sounds like more work than I have time for right now.
Love your site. I’m glad you switched to Linux in general. Your articles have been great. We need more like you in the Linux “community.” (I reprogramming all of my personal site, but I hope to get that done and get some technical content back “out there” soon.)
Are you kidding me? – You’re leaving Gentoo to go back to that God awful slow piece of flaming trash Ubuntu?
Dear God man it’s i386 – and when you actually do compile a i686 kernel everything starts to go out of wack!
Ubuntu is such an overrated piece of crap.
Hey man, don’t bash Ubuntu. It’s is a great distro. Easy to install, easy to use and everything just seems to work. Then again, I’m writing this from my gentoo laptop while installing gentoo onto two machines that used to run Ubuntu.
gnewsense. 🙂
Heck, all linux sucks badly. If you need system that just works and always makes sence… Its not solaris either. For servers try FreeBSD the most sane OS I’ve ever used and I’ve used a lot of operating systems. For desktops… Well, thats another story
First time in my life that I’ve read such a lame, ridiculous, deranged and hypocrite article. Your arguments are as bad as those which Hitler used to justify the killing of jews. You’re a fucking noob, that’s the problem. Nothing more to say here.
I hit this post because I just trashed a Gentoo VMs. I have to admit that gentoo 2007 ran until today without major problems. I set it up and forgot. It forced to be remembered only when you have to install something. Usually on server side a sysadmin does not have lot of time to do something 😉 [somebody may call it lack of planning somebody is even able to answer to request as” your lack of organization is not my emergency” and so on…]
Anyway I had to upgrade it to the 2008 profile. Then I had several problems [fixed] then I start installing other needed stuff.
In practice being Friday, I dropped the gentoo project otherwise I cannot enjoy my weekend 😉
As a funny note:
in this precise moment while I am posting before leaving work a Slackware has been already :
– installed
– configured [firewall,IDS] and install all needed software
– tested the application server
– started the migration of databases
in the meantime the gentoo is still installing needed software.
I am not here to blame gentoo, it serves me for more than one year in a fair way. Simply it does not fit with my schedule 😉