Gentoo

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Something as simple as finding help, where do you go for Debian help?

I usually find the included docs are good enough. And for a specific package there usually isn't anything Debian-specific, so google works fine. And I hang out in #linux on irc.arstechnica.com all the time and most of the people in there run Debian or Ubuntu.

I'm also subscribed to a few of the Debian mailing lists, but most of the questions asked on them are simple so I usually just lurk to stay abreast of what's currently broken.

But how is a newbie supposed to know about that?
Honestly, the little stuff I've mentioned above is just that, little stuff, the big thing IMO is the community, and the docs.

And I imagine for someone who doesn't know what Fontconfig, X11/Xfree/X.org, etc, nVidia drivers, and so forth, Gentoo's docs will be quite the relief since they're usually titled "Guide to making a good desktop" or such.

Like I said, Gentoo is just a very friendly distro for anyone willing to give it a shot, it's too bad some people give it a bad name with their "OMFG I'm s000 l33t, Firef0x pwns IE, and Gentoo pwns everything, it's so uber fast since it's compiled for my machine" crap.
I agree about that though, it's gets old really fast.

 

[EtOH]

Gentoo is awesome, however if you don't have a good amount of confidence and experience it can be daunting to say the least.

I got tired of it and am using Ubuntu alot now, I like that distro a little more for myself personally.

Both are great though.

 

[Nothinman]

But how is a newbie supposed to know about that?

I never said they should, but they'll have to eventually if they want to use Linux for any amount of time no matter what distro.

 

[IEC]

Thanks for all the responses guys, I've bought a KVM and plan on installing Gentoo on my linux box over spring break 🙂

 

[Nothinman]

I've bought a KVM and plan on installing Gentoo on my linux box over spring break

And hopefully you'll be finished by the time you're back in school...

 

[OffTopic1]

Gentoo if you are a micro manager.

Debian if you just want some thing that just work with out question.

Other distros are quicker to setup, and may have some quirks that you learn to live with & work around.

IMHO, install them all & find one that you like most.

 

[spamsk8r]

I used to run Gentoo, but the constant compiling was just too difficult. Plus, waiting for someone to write an ebuild for the latest software release was frustrating. I run Ubuntu now and am very happy with it.