Can people who used both Arch and Gentoo compare these two distributions? Memes aside, I'm genuinely curious how they compare.
I've been using Arch for about 2 years and it's the only distribution I'm familiar with. My main reasons for using it are rolling release, minimal installation, pacman and AUR (the usual). I feel so comfortable with with pacman that it's probably the strongest reason for me to use Arch.
What benefits are there from using Gentoo? How long does all the compiling really take? Is compiling necessary every time you update the system? For someone who is already familiar with Linux, how difficult is it to get familiar with Gentoo?
As a bonus question, how come no one ever mentions Funtoo around here, since it's lead by Gentoo's creator? How does it compare to Gentoo?
I'm always amazed at how little Arch users frequently seem to know about linux in general
>>55115091
When I say I'm familiar with Linux, I don't claim to know the ins and outs of the system. I'm familiar with the terminal and that's about it. I know more than the average Ubuntu user probably, but that's not much of an achievement. If anything, Arch has taught me how to troubleshoot problems that occasionally pop up.
I think "learning how Linux works" by installing Arch from the terminal is overselling it. It's just following instructions from wiki, that's all.
>>55115051
Gentoo is amazing. I can have multiple conflicting versions of packages, or 64 and 32 bit libraries at once. And it's all fine because the programs that depend on specific architectures or specific versions of programs are compiled from source, so portage just links them with the version it knows it depends on.
See https://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/slotting/ and https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2015-03-28-true-multilib.html
If you've ever had to deal with dependency issues with packages you'll know why this is awesome.
Also being able to manually include (or exclude) certain features from any package or your kernel is extremely useful. For example, I was able to simply remove the SSL heartbeat extension and recompile my packages when the heartbleed vuln came out.
Did I even mention Portage?
>Portage works without any external repo.
>Portage supports using llvm icc etc to build with.
>Portage supports distcc.
>Portage supports slotting of dependencies.(multiple versions of python ruby gtk etc)
>Portage supports multiple kernels BSD Fedora debian etc.
>Portage can thread package installs and downloads
Meanwhile, with Arch
>overzealous autistic fan boys
>"you'll learn how Linux REALLY works!" When it's literally just configuring a package manager and letting scripts do the rest
>offers nothing that minimal net installs already offered for other distros don't
>muh bleeding edge packages!! when you can just install directly from the upstream source in any distro
>only reason to use it is the aur, which is full of broken and unmaintained packages and isn't monitored at all, most "packages" are just a bash script to download the package and it's install script from GitHub
>aur is far worse than Open Build Service, which actually lets you package binaries and programs for multiple distros
It's not the worst distro, but there's nothing it offers that makes it worth using over any other distros and it has the worst fucking user base.
>>55115051
Gentoo is just a step too far unless you like watching Firefox / Chromium taking 2+ hours to compile.
>>55115988
It doesn't take that long if you have an i5
>>55116068
How long for 2500K, for example? And how long on a mobile 2nd gen i5, such as the one in ThinkPad X220?
>>55116084
Hmmmm bout 30 minutes at the most. Xorg on the other hand...
>>55116084
Lies.
>>55116133
I have an x240 i7. It takes 2hrs to compile Firefox. The i5 found in that would take about the same (probably a little longer).
>>55116133
>>55116196
Sorry... just realised you were talking about the 2500k
