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It's called emerge -C -- of course, that should've been obvious had you read the manpages for the program like most normal people would do.

And IMNSHO, having one decent tool vs a billion is much better ;-)

that some people feel such an urge to embarrass themeselves publicly.

What was that supposed to be?
It all amounted to "I didn't read the documentation, I don't want to read the documentation, but I somehow feel the need to use a distro that requires reading documentation and I'll write an article about the experience."

Really, this is kindergarten.

I used Redhat, Debian (Woody), Mandrake, Suse, Slackware, Gentoo, and -- lately -- Ubuntu, but I am returning to Arch. Finding the best blend between control over the OS and work hours invested is hard, but with Arch I manage. Give it a try if you consider experimenting again.

Split builds are a god send for KDE. The present system can feel a little awkard to use, and I'm sure there could be better & room for improvement.

However, chances are even though the KDE & Qt teams deserve harems delievered to them, I would not choose to use it if I had to sit through a huge monolithic build.

And stuff I have to desire to see or use, i.e. kde-games etc.

I've tried prolly all the major distros, and I have to say I personally think gentoo is the best, as you have the most control over what you're installing of any of the systems I've used. Additionally, the author really should investigate portage. I think it would be very beneficial to him to realize that this article really was a big waste of time.

this sounds like my first shot at gentoo, when i figured i could get by skipping small sections of the install n get by, every install i followed after that was flawless, ya just have to MAKE SURE you know your system well, and read everything/be easy on use flags, its not really all that hard, just takes too long to maintain if your a bleeding edge junkie

You obviously didn't look very hard. On Gentoo's homepage, on the right under the word "Documentation", is the word main index, that could be a good place to start.

Or if you actually read the handbook, the last page "Where do go from here?" provides links to the other documentation.

RTFM

KDE Howto
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kde-config.xml

Nvidia Guide
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/nvidia-guide.xml

Alsa Guide (Sound Guide)
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml

Xorg Guide
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml

Did I miss anything? You decide to do a stage 1, then you whine about long compilation times. That's your bad, not mine.

wow, way to give an impartial review. O_o

"I go back online (with a wired connection; the wireless isn't working yet) with links and search for how to fix my mouse and install KDE. Searching the Gentoo site was difficult, but Google found the Gentoo instructions easily. Hmm, so much for that great Gentoo documentation I've been hearing about."

On the left column of Gentoo.org is a link marked Documentation: Main Index, Which leads to a page with Desktop Documentation which has a whole section on installing KDE.

"I thought I'd be smart and "emerge kde" to get up and running. Wrong! That's not quite right - you have to 'emerge kde-somethingorother' to get it done right."

Actually that was correct, and if you checked the KDE docs on the gentoo site you would have noticed that. Why you would think this is incorrect is mysterious..

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Near the end of your "review" you rant about how long gentoo took to install when you decided to go with a stage 1 installation -- the longest possible method. You could have had gentoo up and running in 40 minutes as well if you opted to use their cd install.

Then you go into a rant about how much you love slackware.

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All I gathered from your "review" was that you didn't read the documentation, you are upset that you choose the longest possible method to install gentoo and it took longer then 40 minutes, and that you like slackware.

-- Jamie Conlon.

I got pretty much the same result, except I came back to debian instead of slack.

After Gentoo, other distros feel like a huge box of legos where none of the blocks quite match up.

Just install FreeBSD and be done with the headache...

im not a fan of gentoo (if you want ports use freebsd), but this guy is either blind or really really unobservant. the one and only time i ever tried gentoo i had zero problems installing it or finding documentation. in fact documentation is the one thing i like about gentoo.

I use Slackware on an older laptop, but I do give this guy credit for trying Gentoo. Gentoo just isn't a good fit for me as I don't have the time to spare by waiting for it to compile all the apps from scratch. I realize I don't have to do it that way, but if I were to use gentoo, I'd rather do it the way it was designed. So in Slack, I will install the base of the distro and utils, then download and compile the sources for the extra apps (provided they aren't too big), then make a tgz file and install it that way. Keeps the system somewhat clean, and uninstalling apps is a heck of a lot easier that way.

That wasn't a review. That was an "I love Slackware and not Gentoo" rant. Declare it as such. There were so many problems that could have been avoided by reading the well-written install document. Especially the "blocking" bit. The documentation (and the make.conf file) specifically say that unless you want to get your hands dirty, do NOT unmask the unstable packages. Tsk tsk. So much for a fair review.

Summary: Slackware user finds that the distribution he uses and he is familiar with takes him less time to set up and gives him less headaches than a new one, which he has to learn.

Of course you're not learning Linux, you're learning Gentoo, the same way you had to learn Slackware once. Or you're going to tell me your Slackware knowlege applies universally to any other Linux distro? Given the results, I'd really say no.

Poor, poor article.

I switched from Slackware to Gentoo because I got sick of ./configure && make && make install. Even if any of the apt-like Slackware binary package managers had everything I wanted, I'd still be stuck with a build that's either bloated with features I'll never use or doesn't have some feature I want. USE flags are a good thing, Steve, and if you don't want to tweak them, the defaults are usually good. Also, any software that I install manually is independent of managed packages and requires manual updating.

Gentoo updates everthing, including core OS components, with one command. I'm running ~amd64 (the ~ means unstable) with hacks to expose even less stable software (xen and the latest GNOME), and of the >500 "packages" I have installed, only two currently fail to build from source. Another crashes occasionally unless I downgrade to the amd64 (stable) version.

Another complaint I have about Slackware is how easy it is to screw up dependencies during the installation. Gentoo has a rather slim base installation, and I only install dependencies as they're needed. With Slackware I always ended up installing libsomethingoranother because I was afraid programs would break if I didn't include it.

What I like about both Slackware and Gentoo is how they don't "customize" packages like GNOME on Fedora or Solaris, for example. They also don't provide non-standard GUI administration tools, so you're forced to learn "least common denominator" administration practices.

Well - I use Gentoo for my main system. I'm not a fanboy/zealot of Gentoo though. I use Ubuntu on my laptop because I just wanted a Linux system quick and easy. (Actually - I would run FreeBSD on my laptop but for the fact that my sound card is apparently unsupported. Bummer.)

Anyway - in reading this review, it sounded to me like this guy fell in love with Slackware a long time ago. He is a Slackware fanboy/zealot and tries other distros just so he can poo on them. He learned a long time ago how to do things one way - the Slackware way. And now he's afraid to learn anything new.

It sounds like he wanted a distro that would install everything "out of the box" and "just work" without having to know anything about setting up the X Window System, or configuring anything. That's not Gentoo. I could have told him that ahead of time and saved him a lot of trouble. Gentoo is more for people who want to know how things work.

If he wants an out of the box experience that just works, that's cool. I have no problem with that. I don't think of less of people who want that experience. There are times, such with my laptop, where that's what I want as well. But I'm not going to try Linux From Scratch on my laptop and then write an article complaining about how I had to do all these "wacky" LSF-specific steps that don't export to other distros just to get Linux up and going.

As far as "What are these USE flags all about?" - I guess he has never compiled a program from source. When you compile from source, you have options to include or exclude different compile time options. For me personally, the USE flags are probably the single coolest thing about Gentoo. I don't believe I'm necessarily getting a performance boost, but I know I'm excluding a lot of stuff that I'll never use when I compile a program with certain USE flags enabled, and others disabled.

The USE flags are a simple short cut to compiling everything from source with certain options enabled/disabled. As far as it being a Gentoo-only solution, yeah - sort of, I guess. But if you've compiled source code before, you understand exactly what it's doing and you THANK GOD it's doing it. It saves you a lot of monotonous work that would otherwise go something like:

Download source code
Download patches
Patch the source code
Read the README
Download any source code the original source code depends on.
Download patches for that source code.
Patch that source code.
Read the README
(Repeat until all dependencies have been met.)
Compile all source code dependencies.
Compile original source code.
Install original source code.

Or - use Gentoo and type "emerge <program>" to accomplish the same thing.

At the beginning of his article he told happy Gentoo users to go away. That's kind of funny. He should have took his own advice before ever trying Gentoo. As a Slackware zealot/fanboy, he should just use the One Thing he knows and be happy about it. Because until he's willing to actually learn something new, and actually take the time to read about something new, he's never going to be happy with another distro.

never read such a trolling moronretarded contribution. im coming from slack also, and am quite happy with gentoo. i didn't downloaded any ISOs for 2 years and its still running and up2date.

this article reads like written by a microsoft executive which says: "you may be happy with linux, but i would recommend you our product, 'cause it just 'works'"

...

I didn't read the directions and it didn't work?

Of course not. This isnt a review, it's a "SLACK RULEZ!" post.

This is the worst article I've read! I didn't even get past the first page because of the poor consturction and grammar.

OSnews editors: Make your writers read The Elements of Style. It is available for free at http://www.bartleby.com/141/. It's a classic and basic guide to writing.

Language is about communication. How can you express yourself clearly if you don't understand the basic rules of language? I'm trying to be a preachy grammar teacher, but you should have a minimum level of professionalism in your writing for the sake of the readers.

"Your points are contradictory. Slackware DOES apply to other distros, Gentoo does not. This is why I had problems with Gentoo. Very little in Slack is custom - most of it is straight "out of the box."

Which part of the Slackware package management system applies to RedHat, Debian, Arch, etc...?

Slackware isn't the gold standard for the way of doing things. Debian is pretty different from Slackware. RedHat is pretty different from Slackware. And both of those have a larger install base than Slack.

If you want "the one true way" to do thing, you should use FreeBSD bro. That's it's greatest strength in my opinion. FreeBSD isn't just a kernel, it's a complete system. If someone makes a custom distro based on FreeBSD and totally mucks up the way things are done, it would be a valid complaint to say that their way isn't the right way. But with Linux, that just isn't the case. There is no one right way because there is no single distro that dictates how things are done. Whether you like that or not is a matter of opinion.

No, you did clearly not read the documentation.

Examples:
You chose a stage 1 install without knowing what it does, only then to complain about how long it took to compile everything.

You wrote the article without even knowing how to install KDE on gentoo, though there is very extensive documentation on the subject which can be found easily.

You still don't know what USE Flags are, though it is described in great depths in the gentoo documentation.

Conclusion:
You are an idiot!

I've already tried Mandrake(actual Mandriva), SuSe, slackware, freebsd and actually using Gentoo. My thoughts are, Mandrake, and Suse for beguining, learning linux. Slackware simple, and powerfull linux but we then start to understand what are conf files, and some other things that we need to do manually. Freebsd is good but lack of hardware support, total control, and we need to know a little of what we are doing.
Gentoo, we learn how linux works, it's not easy but gives you total control, and for god sake read the documentation, and stop saying i can do that or this...
Arch is also good, i've recently installed it to a friend of mine i have no idiea if it's good or not.
Gentoo maybe it's not to ordinary persons but now that i'm used to it i can't leave him, emerge myself!!
The speed boost is good...

I fear OSNews quality is going down,down,down in these times.

BTW it is the first time I see a Linux user thinking and behaving just like any clueless Windows user(*) "Hey,things-are-not-exactly-as-I-am-accustomed to? Do I have to read DOCS? My god, this system sucks!" And he is a long time Slackware user, not a newbie using Mandriva from 2 months.

If this means something about the Linux user base, it means something bad. I hope Linux catches on by creating more clever and educated users, not by lowering itself to meet the mind of retarded.

(*)-I don't mean all Windows users are clueless or lusers. I mean the author of the article looks like a clueless one.
(**)-Full disclosure: I'm a Gentoo user.