Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo for me?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:03:47 -0600
John <irgunii@×××××.com> wrote:

>
> Hi folks,
>
>   I've been using linux for about 12 years now, but only used DE's.
> I've got ADD in the extreme and have poor memory retention so trying
> to learn things 'UNIX' (command line and such) is just too difficult
> for me. I can do some command line stuff but nothing more than
> getting time from someplace to make my clock be correct, heh.

Maintaining a Gentoo install does involve a lot of CLI work, and
usually fanatic attention to detail. It's complex software we are
dealing with and it has to be done. When you use a binary distro like
Ubuntu, someone else is doing all that hard work for you and with
Gentoo you get to do it yourself.

I don't know much about ADD, but I do know that Gentoo is ideal for
OCD people - people like me :-) I'm the resident old fart around here

Someone else mentioned Sabayon, I think that would be good for you to
investigate if you don't like where the big binary distros are going.
You don't have to compile everything by yourself as it has packages but
if you need to tweak stuff under the hood you can do that as well.

Maybe also look into linuxmint, this one is amazingly popular. After
Fedora and Ubuntu it's one of the most popular downloads on my ftp
server. The users say it's because it's easy, simple, it just works and
doesn't force you to install huge amounts of things every time you
want a simple new function. So it appeals to folks who like to just keep
it simple but not so simple that it's hard to use.


>
>   I've been using SuSE/openSUSE now for all those 12 years but I'm
> becoming somewhat disgruntled with the direction I feel it's going
> (don't ask, it'll just get me started rantin' and ravin'). I've
> looked at Slackware, but the package management looks just a little
> bit more than I can try to handle at first without getting frustrated
> and scrubbing it off my hard drive.
>
>   I've looked at a *LOT* of other distro's and too many use Gnome (I
> can't stand it, that's my opinion so don't try to argue with me to
> change), some are a bit too minimalistic and others too much like
> openSUSE is now - huge.
>
>   I finally came upon Gentoo and for the past few days I've been
> reading and looking at things and so far it seems to be what I'm
> wanting to switch to, but here's my quandary:
>
>   I'm dirt-poor and have only a dial-up connection. The Portage
> package management seems extremely nice, but will it be a problem for
> me to upgrade say just one package/app at a time? Will I be able to
> find a tarball of an app I want to try out and be able to build it
> like I would with rpmbuild (will it be as relatively easy as that)?
> Is there a 'repository' of apps anywhere that I can go to to look and
> see if the app I normally use for something is there?
>
>   There's probably more questions, but I best keep this short for
> now, lol. Thanks for any replies and help with these things and I
> hope I made enough sense for everyone to understand what I'm trying
> to get at.
>
>   JB
>
>



-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com