Any Gentoo Users on this list?

[colin davidson]

Hi All,

I have run Gentoo for a year or two on my home box, until the
motherboard fried. I have a new MoBo and am setting it up - installing
Gentoo right now, but it's a slow process (not per se - the problem is
finding time to do it). However, you're welcome to consult with me,
for what it's worth.

There really isn't much difference in the "user experience". You use
"emerge" rather than "apt-get" or whatever. There seem to be a lot
more "supported" packages - but "supported" just means that there's a
ebuild script, Gentoo does very little if anything in the way of
patching.

You will likely find yourself updating fairly frequently (I did) and
that will mean updating your configuration which becomes a pain in the
**** chore.

The big difference is in the "USE" flags. Here is where Gentoo really
comes into it's own. Forget about any benefits that come from
compiling for your hardware - they are neglibable if they even exist.
But with the "USE" flags you can disable conditional compilation to
support packages that you will never use, and here there can be a real
difference.

With Gentoo you are bound to learn a lot (you may with other Distros,
but with Gentoo you WILL, like it or not).

I wouldn't recommend Gentoo for newbies (I've seen some who do, and
shudder when I see it), nor would I recommend it for a corporate
standard, but if you want to learn and particularly if you want to be
able to look at the code, Gentoo is a great choice.

My gmail is colinpdavidson, feel free to ask questions there if you
don't want to bother the tlug list (though I can't see why not, any
question will most likely have interesting technical content).

Cheers, Colin

On 2/19/09, Tyler Aviss <tjaviss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I asked this awhile ago and there weren't many out there. If I find
>  some more free time in my future I may look at poking around with
>  Gentoo a bit myself though.
>
>  If you do decide to switch over, would you care to keep a log of
>  important differences to note, etc? It would be nice to create a
>  knowledge-base of sorts for this.
>
>
>  - TJA
>
>
>  On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 2:48 AM, I. Khider <contact-uc+NVM1kvX9BDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>  > Greetings all,
>  >
>  > I am a refugee from Ubuntu who wishes to learn Gentoo Linux. I was hoping I
>  > could meet with a fellow Gentoo user in Toronto and work out a tutoring
>  > arrangment. All I want is help with some basics of Gentoo so I can take it
>  > from there. Please e-mail me off list and hopeully we can work something
>  > out.
>  >
>  > Thanks,
>  >
>  > Ib Khider
>
>
>
>
> --
>  Tyler Aviss
>  Systems Support
>  LPIC/LPIC-2
>  (647) 302-0942
>
> --
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