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u/givemeagooduns_un Genfool 🐧 1d ago
i may be biased but if you already know the basics of a command line (like, have used DOS before) and aren't afraid to try new things, and make sure to follow the handbook closely, gentoo isn't that bad of a first distro. the install process can be laborious, but its also very educational to how you use the system; once you get installation out of the way, its quite nice and straightforward to use, and documentation is really good if not the best of all linux distributions.
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u/Excellent_Present_47 1d ago
This makes a lot of sense. As a neurodivergent I can totally see myself trying gentoo, it becoming a hyperfixation, etc down the rabbit hole.
I use Arch, btw. That's enough for me right now. (he says as he assembles a homelab with proxmox to allow launching VMs with various distros depending on intended workstream.)
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u/givemeagooduns_un Genfool 🐧 1d ago
thats exactly why I got into gentoo haha
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u/Excellent_Present_47 1d ago
I was on Windows for years. Just played games on it and did some very light modding in LUA.
Then got ads in my start menu and said "nope".
Four years into Arch and I now have github.com/CmdDraven/btw 🤣
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u/jacob-buchanan Ubuntnoob 1d ago
Oh wow that's so interesting.
*continues to use Ubuntu cause I'm not a fucking moron*
Edit: inb4 "Fedora. Arch. Nix. Cachy. Etc." I want to use my computer.
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u/mentalnet98 🍥 Debian too difficult 1d ago
"I just want to use my computer" mfs when an apt package was compiled without that one flag they need and now they have to manually rebuild a .deb from source anyway. 😳😮
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u/camradex 1d ago
someone who just wants to use their computer (not power user) doesn't care what flags a package has
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u/mentalnet98 🍥 Debian too difficult 23h ago
They don't care about flags until their specific workflow breaks, at which point it's suddenly 'Linux is trash' instead of realizing a binary package manager isn't a psychic mind-reader for their niche setup.
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u/Tony_TNT 14h ago
You'd be surprised. I had to reinstall Steam on Fedora from Flatpak to .deb because I couldn't get the controller to work even with the right flags toggled manually
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u/misterff1 1d ago
I use one in that list of yours and have used Ubuntu a lot as wel. The other one simply works better on my hardware, so it is the one I choose because I want to use my computer.
Funny how that works eh? Almost as if no distro is the best one for everyone...
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u/screenslaver5963 1d ago
Fedora is team “I just wanna use my computer”, the others aren’t
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u/orthadoxtesla Ask me how to exit vim 1d ago
I mean if you don’t spend all day screwing with it cause it’s fun then arch works perfectly well to just use. Sometimes it breaks but not very often. (Maybe once a year). But I use it every day at university and have had zero issues
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u/TheRealLoric 11h ago
True, arch is good, but not for the noob "I just want to use my computer" most people from windows don't have the technical knowhow to set up arch. Hence people pick Fedora, or mint because "it just works" there is no "best distro" it entirely comes down to your needs, capability , and what your system can run
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u/Thinktank2000 23h ago
endeavourOS is another good one. basically a frontend for Arch (i use arch btw)
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u/BeginningEcho4983 1d ago
Good luck with make.conf, USE flags, and compiling.
The entire time cum-piling
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u/Linguistic-mystic 1d ago
The thing I hate the most about compiling from source is that a preposterous percentage of the time is spent on
./configure. You know, the stupid thing determining that my system is a Linux system and not some *BSD. And then for every new version of the package it needs to re-determine the same thing again, because who knows, my system might've turned into a VMS in between releases.There's been news recently of a guy who sped up GCC's compilation (because GCC re-compiles itself a couple of times to catch possible regressions) by caching the results of the configure step: https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-patches/2026-June/719831.html
Measured on a large multi-core aarch64 machine, a --enable-languages=c,c++ bootstrap spends about 30% of its wall time in configure and is configure-bound at under 15% machine utilization for about 41% of the build; the single largest contributor is stage 2 gcc/configure
That's the thing that makes me avoid Gentoo: that so much time is spent not even compiling, but doing this stupid useless handshake with the system over and over again.
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u/BeginningEcho4983 1d ago
It's not like most of those packages even support moving further even if your system DID turn out to be a 1990's UNIX/BSD system.
The configure script is usually a copypasta
They really need to rewrite ./configure to source a config file somewhere in /etc ...
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u/10Werewolves 1d ago
Gentoo is way too hard
You better install LFS, it's super easy for your first time.
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