What is the beauty of Gentoo: Myths and Reality

During the reading of this article and comments to it, I had a strong feeling that the majority of users who use other distributions have not quite the right idea about gentoo-like systems. Most likely the source-based phrase itself is to blame.

Someone, having heard it, represents at the same time a computer, steaming from the efforts applied during the endless compilation of the next utility. Someone recalls dependency-hell, which waits for us when installing tarballs. Someone thinks that this is a distribution for young school enthusiasts who are ready to sell their homeland for speeding up the system and reducing download time for a couple of seconds. Some run in shock after learning about the almost complete lack of graphical administration tools.
Since I believe that this distribution is greatly underestimated, and, as a result, fewer people use it than it could (and the wider the community, the better), I decided to describe my, perhaps deeply subjective, position on this issue and try to convince readers that the distribution is not as brutal and hardcore as it seemed.

Everything, of course, is simple ... but not quite.

Despite a vigorous start, it is necessary to clarify that a number of difficulties in comparison with others (for example, Debian and the notorious ubuntoi) are still present.

1. Without documentation anywhere. You will have to read a lot to install this distribution. It is highly desirable that it be read in English, because Russian version does not always have the current version
2. The console is our everything. If you have a consolidation, you have to overcome yourself. She is here always and everywhere: installation, updating, configuration, all this and much more.
3. If you urgently need to reinstall the system, or put it on a new machine, this can take quite a long time. Keep this in mind when putting gentoo in production.

Speed

Many people believe that gentoo will provide them with a huge gain in the speed of the programs. But let's see for yourself. On top-end hardware, everything works pretty fast, with the exception of bloatware distributions, and, as a rule, the difference between debian and genta is not so great as to bother in most cases. And on a weaker hardware, where optimization would seem to be necessary, the gain will be very small, since the difference between the instruction set of your processor and, for example, i686 is not great.
So the acceleration of work here is more likely to turn off unnecessary features and reduce software size. Also, do not forget that this speed will be purchased at the price of the speed of software assembly and installation. The latter, however, is not as big as it seems. The times when the bulkhead took days had passed. :)

Complexity

The threshold of entry is indeed somewhat high, but there are several points that make life much easier.

1. Community. It is rather big, he has a large Russian-speaking diaspora. In view of the complexity of the distribution and its focus on enthusiasts, there is a huge chance that your problem has already surfaced, and if not, then there remains the rather big chance that you can be helped to solve it.
2. After this threshold, when you understand what's what, using the system becomes much more simple and predictable. Including this is achieved by hardening the user, no matter how scary it sounds. In the same ubunt, I still had to climb into the console, but there it was rare, and I had time to forget some of the necessary commands, it caused me to break a certain pattern. I am silent about the fact that the config that was manually adjusted was not always updated normally.

')

Applications and stability

Well, with controversial moments, like, finished (almost), and now goodies! I did not just combine these two points. It is the method of installing, updating and uninstalling applications that makes a significant contribution to system stability. There are many applications. Lots of. If in doubt, look for the utilities you need, for example, here .

• Installation of all this variety occurs through the emerge and eix utilities . A remarkable feature of gentoo is a really stable “stable branch”, combined with the possibility of painless installation of fresh versions of the programs you need. In principle, you can completely sit on unstable software, just why? Conversely, knowing that some versions do not work well in my case, it is possible not to update on them.
• The system of slots, which makes it possible to install multiple versions of one library, and disable dependencies by disabling USE flags, contribute to the resolution of problems with dependencies. Often frightened by the need to assemble the core, but in fact there is nothing complicated about it, and with the help of genkernel it does not require any special skills.
• Those who care about licensed purity of karma can specify with which licenses the software can be installed.
• Rolling releases make the update more painless.
• The eselect utility will help to set a number of environment variables, for example, default python and java.

Conclusion

I would like to say that I do not in any way want to detract from the merits of other distributions. Many of the possibilities I have described are also present in them, but ...
Due to the complex installation and high threshold of entry, gentoo has very good documentation and wiki, which ensures that the user will at least come across the existence of most of these features before they need them. And this is an IMHO benefit, because it eliminates the stress that arises when you need to solve a problem, the solution of which you do not even imagine. Sooner or later, in any distribution you will get to the console. It is nice to have on hand the familiar tools that can solve your problem, and not to look for them on the forums.

PS or deep IMHO

I chose gentoo because it turned out to be simpler and clearer for me to use than others. Everything is predictable, and most of it is described in quality documentation.
PPS Well, a beautiful console out of the box also played a role. :)