Why I Use Gentoo
Through a few deals, hardware failures and hardware acquisitions in the past two weeks I have had the pleasure of installing Gentoo about 3 times and those experiences have made me reflect on exactly why I love Gentoo. So really what is it that I love about Gentoo? It pretty much boils down to 3 things, ease of maintenance, speed and security.
Now when I say that it is a pleasure to install Gentoo most people tend to roll their eyes and wonder what kind of drugs I’m on. Really, what could be so great about watching your computer turn somersaults for an entire day compiling hundreds of megabytes of C code? The idea here is that it is very fast to get a Gentoo install going. I have a pre-flight checklist that I go through on every new box. I can usually take care of that in under 10 minutes. After pre-flighting the system its pretty much send it on its way to compile and go do another task. Sure, installing the OS in this way adds an extra day of lead time to my server builds but I’m in no rush and I could save myself the time by making custom stage4 tarballs for each hardware platform (which I am doing) but lately I have had 3 new arches flow through the shop for which I did not have a custom stage4 so it wouldn’t have helped much anyhow.
A big bonus for Gentoo is that it is fast (in a totally non-ricer sort of way). Seriously now, tell me when was the last time you bounced a server in under 2 minutes? How may people can say they run a very active development web and database server with a memory footprint of less than 100MB? All that and more is possible with Gentoo if you know how to tune it properly. Because Gentoo allows you to compile directly for the type of hardware you have and does not just use a generic compile host you can make much better use of the special features of your hardware. Plus, with the -* use flag you can very precisely tune what is and is not installed on your system.
With the speed comes security. With hardened Gentoo and the glsa tools I feel confident that my server is very secure. Sure, you have to know what you are doing to secure it properly but that is the case with just about anything, at least the tools are available to me to properly secure my systems.
Finally, and really the most important reason that I choose to use Gentoo is the manageability. Portage and the host of other tools available for it make managing multiple Gentoo servers a breeze. With Portage I have been able to develop scripts to download, build, distribute and notify of updates that are pending all while properly resolving the dependencies and looking out for broken systems. No other package manager that I have used from RedHat to Debian is as flexible and powerful as Portage.
To date I have significantly dedicated my shop to Gentoo servers and with every good experience I have with them I see fewer and fewer reasons to ever change. Gentoo rocks!
For those who, like myself, want to REALLY LEARN Linux, Gentoo is a wonderful way to go. As Mike indicated in his narrative, Gentoo has a great deal going for it in many respects including tuning applications to take fullest advantage of hardware and security.
For my part, though, when I installed my first Gentoo system, I was a complete novice at Linux. And though I still have a great deal to learn, the idea of building a new kernel to extend or retract capabilities of a machine is not a problem. I know what the sources are, I know how to select the best (for me) of those sources, compile, and move to the appropriate directory, modify configuration files and off I go. Or keeping the system up to date with portage, changing configuration files with etc-update, adding and removing services as needed. These are all things I learned by virtue of having Gentoo installed.
I would not dismiss all those great distros that do most things for you. Some people don’t want the hassle of the maintenance of a tuned system preferring instead to have a system that takes care of itself. I’m really glad there are such systems out there for those people. For those who want to learn Linux nothing in my experience beats Gentoo.
Sgt said this on March 4th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
I’d have to agree with the previous commenter. I learned a size-able chunk of my Linux skills spending a few days installing Gentoo. Their documentation takes you step by step from manually partitioning your hard drive all the way to installing KDE/Gnome (if you want it). Like building a model car rather than buying one pre-built.
As for making it your primary server OS, it has its own plusses and minuses. Yes it will run a bit faster, but updates will take a lot longer — too long for a machine that needs to be available 24/7 but perfectly acceptable for a 9-5 in-house box.
The best tool for the job depends on what the job is.
Rojs said this on May 30th, 2007 at 8:44 am