Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 14:30 on Tuesday 31 May 2011, Alex Schuster 
did opine thusly:

> Alan McKinnon writes:
> > Apparently, though unproven, at 01:28 on Friday 27 May 2011, Kevin
> >
> > O'Gorman did opine thusly:
> > > It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel
> > > a little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
> >
> >
> >
> > I know how you feel :-)
> >
> >
> >
> > I've tried to get away from Gentoo several times, and failed. The amount
> > of work we all put into keeping things working is best described as "bat
> > shit crazy", but we do it anyway. Maybe it's like a drug thing, we all
> > need a daily fix or we need to prove we can still do it.
>
> I tried various distros (SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, Libranet, RedHat), but
> when  I started using Gentoo, I was hooked. No fancy shmancy GUIs that
> hide what's really going on beneath, and that often enough have their own
> bugs so that it's easier to not use them. Rolling updates, no fear that
> upgrades mess up everything. Good documentation, that explains what has do
> be done and why, instead of just telling me what to do and where to click.

That's what keep me on Gentoo for my own machines (bar one) and I have never 
needed to re-install it anywhere. 

But at work, things are different. Gentoo is banned from the -prod machines 
(the risk of some n00b admin running "emerge uND world" and walking away is 
too great, plus even just (deep) upgrading a single package is often more than 
a reasonable amount of work for someone who doesn't know portage.

It's encouraged on -dev, mostly because I can change versions of almost 
anything with no hassle at all. A developer wants python-3.2 on a box that 
already has 2.4 and 2.7? No problem!

I do run Ubuntu on the netbook, but I treat that like it was an Android device 
or a big web browser i.e. I don't try and get fancy and mostly stick with what 
the installer and apt want to do.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com