this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Full time user of Gentoo since 20+ years here. Oll servers, workstations, laptops and even on an android tablet once.
It's not complicated at all, mostly just different from anything else. And truly configurable to the last bit.
Edit: it seems there aren't may gentooers here, AMA :)
Yay AMA! ❤️
How do you feel when you(have to use) a different linux system of that happens? Is it as different that it's like "using" MacOS or Windows to you?
How lo does it take you to set up a system from scratch?
what's the biggest downside from your perspective?
Thanks in advance!
Using a different distro feels awkward. I am so used to how stuff is organized in Gentoo :) but it's still Linux, so no, it's only minor differences.
(Spcially, i hate when using a SystemD based distro, because i am not used to it and it honestly feels cumbersome compared to OpenRC. Gentoo also has SystemD support, it fully support it, but i never found the need for it, so i never switched, and never got familiar with it. My fault)
Last weekend i setup a laptop from deleting the windows partition to full LXQT desktop in 4 hours. The laptop is quite fast, and i skipped all ocmpiler hogs like firefox (choosed firefox-bin) and rust (choosed rust-bin). Later on, i also installed a full plasma+kde environment in some more 10 hours (all compile time in background, while using the laptop on LXQT).
The biggest downside of Gentoo is being so niche, i always fear that some day it will be abandoned due to too few people maintaining it. I had this fear for the last 10 years, and never happened, so.
There are no real downsides to Gentoo IMHO, except becoming too expert with Linux :)
Like with inetd, httpd, smtpd and so on it's systemd (system daemon) with a lowercase d. SystemD looks like D is the name or version of the system.