Oh Gentoo
Well it’s been a couple of months now since the start of Experiment 2.0 and I’ve had plenty of time to learn about Gentoo, see its strengths and… sit waiting through its weaknesses. I don’t think Gentoo is as bad as everyone makes it out to be, in fact, compared to some other distributions out there, Gentoo doesn’t look bad at all.
Now that the experiment is approaching its end I figured it would be a good time to do a quick post about my experiences running Gentoo as a day-to-day desktop machine.
Strengths
Gentoo is exactly what you want it to be, nothing more. Sure there are special meta-packages that make it easy to install things such as the KDE desktop, but the real key is that you don’t need to install anything that you don’t want to. As a result Gentoo is fast. My startup time is about 10-20 seconds and, if I had the inclination to do so, could be trimmed down even further through optimization.
Packages are also compiled with your own set of custom options and flags so you get exactly what you need, optimized for your exact hardware. Being a more advanced (see expert) oriented distribution it will also teach you quite a bit about Linux and software configuration as a whole.
Weaknesses
Sadly Gentoo is not without its faults. As mentioned above Gentoo can be whatever you want it to be. The major problem with this strength in practice is that the average desktop user just wants a desktop that works. When it takes days of configuration and compilation just to get the most basic of programs installed it can be a major deterrent to the vast majority of users.
Speaking of compiling programs, I find this aspect of Gentoo interesting from a theoretical perspective but I honestly have a hard time believing that it makes enough of a difference to make it worth sitting through the hours days of compiling it takes just to get some things installed. Its so bad that I actually haven’t bothered to re-sync and update my whole system in over 50 days for fear that it would take forever to re-compile and re-install all of the updated programs and libraries.
Worse yet even when I do have programs installed they don’t always play nicely with one another. Gentoo offers a package manager, portage, but it still fails at some dependency resolution – often times making you choose between uninstalling previous programs just to install the new one or to not install the new one at all. Another example of things being more complicated than they should be is my system sound. Even though I have pulseaudio installed and configured my system refuses to play audio from more than one program at a time. These are just a few examples of problems I wouldn’t have to deal with on another distribution.
-Sigh-
Well, it’s been interesting but I will not be sticking with Gentoo once this experiment is over. There are just too many little things that make this more of an educational experience than a real day-to-day desktop. While I certainly have learned a lot during this version of the experiment, at the end of the day I’d rather things just work right the first time.
Previously (for the first experiment) I was running KDE 4.3.3 on top of Fedora 11 (Leonidas).
Check out my profile for more information.
I had the same experience, and I have tried for years, believe me, because I wanted to prove to myself that I could deal with it. I could deal with it, but looking back, it was mostly a waste of time. That said, I have learned quite a few things in the process.
I started using Gentoo in the early days (around 2003), and it seemed quite impressive at first.
Over time, I could not be convinced.
The major flaw of Gentoo is the package manager. Installations often do not work, especially for complex compilations (e.g., openoffice) and it seems a waste of time to figure out that openoffice did not install (after hours of compilation; interesting complex programs take long to compile, even with relatively fast processsors).
You mention that you did not install things out of worry for the fatal or endless installation. I had the same. I also noticed that many Gentoo packages are not the latest.
If you are keen of tinkering, Arch might be a good alternative. It works surprisingly well, and if it goes wrong, you won’t have much time wasted.
Being one of very few source code-based distributions, and a rolling release distribution as well, Gentoo is definitely not for beginners or for those who want very quick installation of packages. That said, for people who do want to get under the hood or who want fine-grained control of their Linux installation, it is an excellent distribution. However, it does take a long time to learn how to use Gentoo properly.
I find Gentoo’s package manager Portage highly usable, and compilation of source code on my Core i7 laptop is fast enough to make installation of most packages fast and painless. However, on older machines it certainly can take a long time for the bigger packages to build or for e.g. the several hundred packages of KDE to install, but I personally don’t regard that a show stopper given the benefits Gentoo provides.
Portage has progressed a lot over the last five years, and these days I have very little trouble when installing packages: Portage resolves many blockers automatically or tells me what I need to do (such as add or remove a USE flag) in order to install a package. The fact that Portage is powerful and very flexible is borne out by the fact that it is the package manager used by the developers of Google’s Chrome OS (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_OS).
I would never recommend Gentoo to a newcomer to Linux or to someone who wants quick installation of pre-built (binary) packages, or indeed to someone who does not want to have to tinker from time to time. However, for someone with several years experience using Linux who wants to learn more about how Linux works and does not mind tinkering, Gentoo can be very rewarding.
Gentoo was my first when I made the foray into linux. And it was a painful experience! I stick to debian based distros now.
I was a Gentoo user on PPC (NAS) and on my primary laptops an x24 and then a T61 (x64) ThinkPad for about 4 years, I had this idea that It was the only way to _really_ understand Linux… looking back it was overkill…
Gentoo really is a powerful distribution…. but if you don’t run:
emerge –sync && emerge -DavNut world && emerge –depclean && revdep-rebuild
like once a week _at least_ you wander off the Gentoo brick road…. it won’t be long until you end up in a world of pain… In some cases if a dependency falls out of the portage tree… and you can’t find a suitable overlay… You may end up very sorry indeed…
More than a few times I could not upgrade via portage. Granted there may well be an arcane way of manually compiling your way out of the hole, but deeper the hole the more your arse hurts… after more than a few long compiling sessions rebuilding your box… you are left with the distinct feeling the Gentoo package managers have gang raped you in some type of cyber jailhouse showers… I just hurts too much to keep picking up the Gentoo soap …
Like me, you may end up deciding that life it too short for Gentoo.
After some rehab using Arch Linux… I have moved on… I have young loving family, the sun is shining and I run Debian Linux. There is life after Gentoo.