qblog

I use Gentoo GNU/Linux, and I’ve been thinking a bit about why I use Gentoo instead of some other distribution. One of the main reasons has to do with my initial experiences with Gentoo, several years ago.

It must have been sometime in 2002 that I installed it for the first time. It was the first distribution I installed. At that time, there was no installer app for Gentoo, and I didn’t want one. I wanted to know what went into putting a working operating system on a hard drive, and a friend had assured me that I couldn’t install Gentoo without learning a lot about that. He was right.

Back then (and still today, if you want) installing Gentoo was done by typing commands. Each step was documented at Gentoo’s website; I didn’t understand all of the instructions, but a lot of them made sense as I performed them. Even the ones that didn’t left some impression in my head, and afterwards, reading some documentation, I’d have an “aha!” moment.

After about a month of using Gentoo, I found I could answer some questions asked by people who had been using other distros for two or three years. This is not to say I wasn’t still a newbie, only that I’d learned quite a few things they hadn’t needed to deal with so far. (It would be great if I could give an example here, but I really don’t recall a specific one.)

So my first forays into Gentoo made for a (mostly) pleasant learning experience. I wouldn’t recommend Gentoo to anyone who doesn’t want to learn quite a bit during the initial install process, but anyone who does want to should consider Gentoo.

Also, Larry the Cow is just a great mascot.

posted Monday, 28 May 2007, at 5:17 am UTC
in categories: Gentoo, GNU/Linux.  there's a comment feed.
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