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The Gentoo documentation is absolutely astonishingly great. But it's the only aspect of the system that I consider good. Everything else is a mess. Gentoo feels like someone sat down to a Debian or CentOS system, used it for a while, and said, "You know, I really like it when I have to compile stuff from scratch, and make all of my own decisions about options and stuff and what tools to use, even though I have no idea what the difference is between various init systems, FTP servers, versions of Apache, configuration tools, etc. I don't like how easy and quick installing software from apt-get or yum is, or how it all seems to Just Work when it's done. I know, I'll borrow some ideas from FreeBSD's far more complicated to use and error-prone package management tools, and make a whole new Linux distribution that requires significantly more time and effort to use! It'll be awesome!" And a billion and one nerds with too much time on their hands saw it, loved it, and climbed right on board. I'm sure I'll be voted down for this, as Gentoo has rabid fans, but I'm always stunned by how effectively the community markets Gentoo to new Linux users, and what an astonishingly bad experience it provides to those new users. Encouraging learning is wonderful, but foisting a seriously challenging learning experience on to users while calling it an "easy to use" Linux distribution is doing them, and Linux in general, a grave disservice. Gentoo is not easy to use, and it is extremely easy to break. |