Re: [gentoo-user] can one tell me: gentoo vs opensuse

[LinuxIsOne]

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Lorenzo Bandieri
<lorenzo.bandieri@×××××.com> wrote:

> Well, maybe my experience will be useful to you. Ubuntu was my
> introduction to linux. First, I'll start by saying that before linux I
> didn't know absolutely nothing about computers and the like. I had my
> first desktop pc at home (windows xp) when I was 15 or 16 years old.
> Before that, only my father owned a pc, for his work, and I was not
> allowed to use it. My high school was centered around
> humanities/classical studies: ancient greek, latin, philosophy; after
> high school, I managed to get into med school. So, no computer
> science/informatics at all. However, I was really curios about
> computers, and I messed up my family's desktop pc a couple of times :)
> At 19, I was given a laptop, only for me (windows vista, if I remember
> correctly). I decided to install linux on it, and I chose Ubuntu
> because it was the distro of wich I heard about the most. After some
> months, I decided to move away from ubuntu because I felt it was too
> limited - I wanted to learn. In the following two years I tried other
> distros, but at last I felt that only two were apt to me: Gentoo and
> Arch Linux. Of these two, I tend to prefer Gentoo.

That's really nice to know.

> What's the point in this story: I started as a computer illiterate. I
> think that, had I chosen Gentoo (or Arch, or Slackware) as my first
> distro, probably I would have given up with linux. I could never get
> started so abruptly with the terminal, CLI etc. I needed a gradual
> introduction, to get familiar with filesystems, directory hierarchy,
> basilar command line usage etc. Ubuntu, at the time, provided this.
> Just remember that *probably* you won't learn much by using Ubuntu. If
> you want to learn, when you're ready, you will have to move on. You
> learn more after an attempt to install Gentoo than in one year of
> plain Ubuntu usage :)

> At least, that is my real life experience and my opinion. I'm just one
> user; on this ML there are really knowledgeable users, so you should
> listen to them[1].

> [1] BTW, I just want to say that I really love this ML. Thanks guys.

Yeahs thanks and your story really gives nice things to remember. I
would definitely try now Gentoo and since it is an advanced version of
Linux usage, so people here are, of course, having more knowledge and
more mature, including you. When you say 'You learn more after an
attempt to install Gentoo than in one year of plain Ubuntu usage :)',
this line is really good to know. If this is true, I guess after some
initial learning I would step towards Gentoo, I bet. But since Gentoo
was not in top 5 at distrowatch.org so that also (earlier) made me
thought that Ubuntu or openSUSE are more matured Linux distributions
but I forgot that the rating I saw was of popularity and not of more
advanced or the one giving more learning curvature.

Thanks.