Just wanna preface, I’m not trying to like attack Gentoo or anyone that uses it, I just wanna understand lol

I’m like an intermediate Linux user I’m definitely not an expert, and Gentoo is something I’m still quite confused about. To me it just seems unnecessary, like the real version of people making Arch just seem incredibly complicated. Does anyone actually use it as a daily driver? Why? Is it just for the love of the game? Is there some specific use case I’ve not heard or thought of?

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    331·
    10 hours ago

    I used it for a couple of years, it’s great if you love customizability and want to run a very clean system. However, the last straw for me was when I needed to edit an image, realized I didn’t had Gimp, so I installed it (which took a long time since I needed to compile it), opened it and it wouldn’t open the image because it was a PNG (I think, or jpg, the specific format doesn’t matter) and that format requires a compilation flag to be enabled, I added that flag globally because why the hell would I not want to have support for it, and recompiled my entire system. By the time I had GIMP able to edit the image I didn’t even remember what I was going to do. I went back to arch not long after that, but always missed defining the packages I want in files to keep the system organized and lean.

    • InnerScientist@lemmy.world
      7·
      4 hours ago

      Have you tried our lord and savior NixOS?

      You can customize any package down to source patches but everything you leave at default just gets downloaded. I even had custom kernel patches that worked across kernel updates without modification and all it costs is:

      • 1 human soul
      • 90 Years of linux experience
      • Learning Nix
      • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 hours ago

        I have, in fact I have migrated my home config to nix. The syntax is still a bit weird and still unfamiliar in some cases, especially around the inputs, overlays, etc. Next time I install a system it will definitely be NixOS, currently it’s only running on a backup laptop that I use for testing.

    • Ŝan@piefed.zipEnglish
      31·
      4 hours ago

      Þis is exactly what bumped me off of Gentoo. I can’t say I much noticed þe benefits, but I really did notice how much time, energy (literal electricity, fans running for hours), and delay it introduced whenever I upgraded or installed software.