MagnusB wrote:Gentoo uses this with their package manager (Portage) where you more or less compile each installation. This could be great for some, and a good way to learn how Linux works etc, but what you gain from it is nothing more than a personalized system and a tiny bit of performance boost.
However, if you want to compile, Debian based systems are not the best way to go. Slackware, Arch Linux and of course Gentoo are much better for those purposes..
Hello I use gentoo and I am new here to mint, because I want to try mint.
Gentoo install all from source, exept binary packages, e.g. adobe-flash, acrobat reader, nvidia-drivers, ati-drviers
But there are some binary pre-compiled packes, because they took very long to compile: eg. openoffice-bin, mozilla-firefox-bin
The power of gentoo is, to rip everything out, which you dont like. E.g. tomboy, evince, brasero and so on out of gnome
The power of gentoo is also its useflag, if you disable the mp3 use flags, you wont get mp3 support build in the packages. You can customize it how you like it.
I have my root parititon encrypted and a software raid also for my root partiton.
Gentoo is about choice. Many binary distros are installed very fast, but thats all. If you need a working compiler environment, a custom kernel and so on, its difficult.
The speed improfement in gentoo, is nearly null today. In the early ages, you get a speed improfement, because most binary distros where compiled for the 486 architecure.
A sad thing what I have to say, gentoo is 95 % stable, 2 years ago it was 100 % for me. That was the reason why I went to unstable branch, because the stable argument is gone for me. I run now on my gentoo box, gnome 2.29.92 which is really a nice software, but full of bugs sometimes. Therefore overlays exists to get e.g. the newest gnome.
One year ago, in January I used ubuntu for 3 months, Sadly my vga card has a vga bios bug, and the only way to solve that problem was using a more in deep linux, like gentoo, because I had to manually change every kernel. Since 2 months, this bug is covered in closed source nvidia binary. I didnt find a way to change the kernel or any good guide about custom kernel configuration in ubuntu. well after that I used arch-linux, which is something more prune and easier to maintain for me.
If you have gentoo questions ask me, pls. I use gentoo for 4 years now.