User:Maffblaster/Drafts/Gentoo Primers/The Gentoo Primer

When comparing Gentoo to other free and open source distributions, Gentoo is a different beast. Why? Because Gentoo is among only a few  actively maintained distributions that are entirely source based. There are many children distributions based off Gentoo, however Gentoo may be the only parent

Choice
Gentoo is the distribution of choice in almost every sense of the world. Developers have dubbed Gentoo a meta-distribution because of its near-unlimited adaptability. It is one of the only distributions that allows the end user to choose between:


 * Several init systems (notability OpenRC and systemd).
 * Per-package specifics on build options (called USE flags) which are broken into two categories:
 * Global build options (see )
 * Local build options (see )
 * C-compiler optimization (see GCC optimization).

Rolling releases
Gentoo Portage developers tend to be far ahead other Linux distributions on both the addition of new packages and bumping version numbers for new package releases. For those that want the fastest way to have access to the newest software packages, Gentoo is the way to go.

Instructional
One of the stronger "Pros" of Gentoo is the available documentation.

Power
The phrase "Knowledge is power" makes a lot of sense in the Gentoo world: in order to use a "power-user distribution", knowing exactly what is necessary for the system to operate is necessary. Because there is so many options available, using Gentoo can be tricky. of the documentation available on the Wiki and the forums.

Choice
When you don't what you want, choice can be a bad thing. Gentoo is primarily limited by the knowledge of the end user. Those just as those who do not understand what is going on beneath the hood of car should not probably not try to repair a head gasket, those who have no prior knowledge of how Unix/Linux operating system's work should probably be careful when using Gentoo.

Manual installation
For now, and in most cases, Gentoo has to be manually installed. Because of the nature of Gentoo being a meta-distr complexities and the number of choices available, there

Difficulty updating
Due to the nature of Portage tree development, Gentoo needs to be updated regularly. If a Gentoo system is not updated for an extended period of time, especially after major changes to the Portage tree (in the form of Profile updates), it can be very difficult to update by hand. This is an known issue and is the reason behind the special Upgrading Gentoo article. If a system has set for over a year without updates, rather than spending time updating the system by hand, it may be faster to migrate a Gentoo installation to a new stage tarball base.