So you may have heard of the install gentoo meme, when I looked the guidebook I thought it looked a little complex like with Arch.

Does Gentoo have something special that other distros do not? Apparently you can use the USE FLAGS to determine what stuff you want and it’s meant to be even more lean on resources.

Isn’t there a Gentoo installer like with Arch? With Arch I can confidently just run the installer on a VM but I got stuck with Gentoo

  • @m4m4m4m4
    11•3 months ago

    Apparently you can use the USE FLAGS to determine what stuff you want and it’s meant to be even more lean on resources.

    True and false; the “something special” in Gentoo is that you can tailor it to fit to your needs, and as far as I know no other distro comes even close - maybe the now almost defuct Funtoo. The “it’s more lean on resources” always seemed to me like a strawman people don’t like it came up with to diss on Gentoo.

    • GhoelianEnglish
      1•3 months ago

      The “it’s more lean on resources” always seemed to me like a strawman people don’t like it came up with to diss on Gentoo.

      Wait but isn’t being more lean a good thing? Or am I misunderstanding how they’re using that word?

      • @m4m4m4m4
        6•3 months ago

        Of course it’s a good thing, but it’s not something Gentoo is particuarly goot at it (nor any distro, that is) but its detractors claim Gentoo says is “lean on resources” only to “debunk” that.

        And the myth that is “supercomplicated”, but in the end the only “difficult” part is to install it - in the daily, pedestrian usage it’s pretty much like any other (rolling release) distro. Well, of course except package installation/update times, but it’s beyond to me why people created that false urgency of needing to have everything installed and updated the second you issued the command. It’s not like you won’t be able to use your computer at all while Portage does its thing.