Should I learn Gentoo?

[MutantJohn]

So, I love Arch. It's amazing and I love it for everything that it is but at the same time, I feel as though I've plateaued in terms of learning new Linux things. Normally, I learn Linux through stuff just breaking and Arch just isn't breaking enough for me...

I left Ubuntu for Arch because I wanted something more. I've heard Gentoo is a pretty advanced distro to use so I was just wondering, is there anything good about learning Gentoo?

I'm doing this purely for my own curiosity. I love computers and stuff and learning more would be nice but is it worth it?

[grumpy]

You haven't actually said what you want to achieve by changing OS.

I'm surprised you left Ubuntu for Arch because of wanting "something more". Ubuntu is installed by default with quite a few extra packages, whereas Arch is a more minimalist system. Odds are, to move from Ubuntu to Arch, a lot of things you were doing before would have required you to either install additional packages (if you're lucky) or find and configure packages so they can be used on Arch. If that isn't true, you probably weren't using much of what Ubuntu has to offer.

Gentoo is pretty interesting, because it is not typically a binary installation. You will almost literally be configuring and building your OS from source. The advantage of that is you will get a OS uniquely tailored for your needs (few people will have exactly the same system) probably with very good performance if you optimise it for your hardware. You will also learn a lot about linux in the process of building the OS, and you will have considerable control over your system configuration. The disadvantages are that it takes a fair amount of knowledge and work to get a working system (you'll probably install it several times, in various configurations, before you're happy), is somewhat less likely than other linux distributions to exploit features of newer hardware, and you still need to install applications.

[phantomotap]

Normally, I learn Linux through stuff just breaking and Arch just isn't breaking enough for me...

O_o

Advertisement?

I love computers and stuff and learning more would be nice but is it worth it?

Welcome to Linux From Scratch!

Until you've basically understood everything, stuff just will not stop breaking.

Soma

[grumpy]

Until you've basically understood everything, stuff just will not stop breaking.

You mean that I can always expect stuff to break???? Oh, bugger!!!!!

[PrinceCruise]

Long time Slackware user here. You won't get any special treatment from Gentoo TBH apart from setting up cflags/Gcc optimization and such and hours of watching software compiling, if that gives you some kick.
You want to go hardcore, go LFS, BLFS and so on.

Regards.

[MutantJohn]

Ooh, I see now. Gentoo sounds okay. I don't get a particular thrill from watching code compile and I don't even know how to set gcc optimizations for code that I write myself. I know the -O3 flag but that's about it.

Linux from scratch sounds intense though. Holy poop.

But it's a good place to know where to start so I'm gonna check that out. Thanks guys!

And Arch best distro!