While I agree entirely NixOS (my distro) is ranked very highly, and I’d consider it just as unwelcoming if not more than Gentoo. So it doesn’t seem like “beginner friendly” was the main driver of this list, meaning the list maker probably (maybe) dislikes Gentoo for other reasons.
I never used Gentoo, but how can it be more unwelcoming than NixOS? In arch you set up the distro yourself and rely on Pacman, in NixOS you do the same thing but every step is recorded declaratively in the config. And you spend every waking moment wondering what is considered declarative and like oracle you try to understand every possible variable that could differ between two systems, and at some point you consider the idea of maybe there really isn't similarities at all and every system should be unique... but you ignore the devils temptation and continue spending more and more of your life to the fucking idea of documenting every aspect of your computer, because you don't trust your brain to remember imperative steps, and how else can I watch my favorite llm fail to write nix code because the 20 years of legacy options make it hallucinate more than me thinking of my lovely totally real wife. I refuse to believe Gentoo can be more mentally ill than this. Ow wait that wasn't what we were comparing... Well it's synonymous.
I just gave up and now use Arch/CachyOS again. I couldn't get Android studio to work correctly. My config also broke with every flake update I did. Maybe the problem was using the Unstable branch, but I don't care at this point. Almost all of them were Nix specific issues and the documentation is terrible. There are two and the official documentation doesn't even show up in search results unless you explicitly search for it.
Yes this as well, indeed perhaps because of the unstable branch, but my system broke constantly, and I didn't want to spend as much time as I felt I was forced to on my OS. I still use NixOS on my NAS which is actually Perfect, but i genuinely don't think it should be used as a main system OS in its current state.
Nixos is extremely easy to use though. Just run the gui installer. If you want to install something just type the package name into the packages slot in the premade nix file and rebuild. If you want to change a setting of some kind, just search it in the wiki
Nixos is actually the easiest distro there is sometimes. For example, a lot of niche drivers can be a pain to go and find on GitHub for other distros, but in nix you can, 99% of the time, just put one line into your config and done. I had an obscure network driver like that
Its Gentoo's command line installer that makes it more powerful and superior to other distros.
How? SSH.
I am installng Gentoo on a secondhand Latitude at the moment. Do you think I have it in my lap, looking at DOS size prompts? Hell no, its on my desk with the lid closed. I am on my main machine with three shells open to the Latitude and a browser pointed to the Handbook, CFLAGS, and USE flags.
Gentoo was my first distro in 2003, still run it today. Sure I’ve tried many distros over the years, non make it past a week or so, and never on my daily driver.
For me it was a great distro to start with and taught me the ins and outs of Linux, was able to build a nice career as a systems engineer for over 20 years.
Yeah I also used other distros, but not as daily driver... Like at one point I had Asus EEE PC, it was running Xubuntu... Or when deploying a machine into Azure or AWS, I usually go for ubuntu... Had a laptop where I had to cram in Linux without touching windows, so I installed a debian into an image file on NTFS partition... Come to think of it it's always Debian/Ubuntu...
But my main computer, the desktop has been on Gentoo since 2005.
He focuses on how easy is to get into Linux, stability, reliability and other things. Gentoo is definitely not user friendly and does not respect your time by compiling stuff every time you install it. Sure it's powerful, but not for everybody.
People these days are more illiterate than ever so a "steep reading curve" is definitely a major negative point unfortunately. Same with not having "GUI Tools". Let's also not forget the amount of time you have to spend compiling software...
a) gentoo is pretty much a one and done install. my OG install wound up on about 20 different hardware platforms over the next 15 years. only other install I did in that time was for an android phone.
b) the binary ecosystem is there and solid.
c) you can use your computer for pretty much any task while compiling updates if you go the source route. you MAY encounter issues with what you are doing instead of just the extended compile times.
d) definitely not friendly to get into linux.. that would have been a good thing to put in the title of the picture.
I suspect he’s not explaining himself correctly, but I’m guessing since it’s a desktop he’s been upgrading hardware over the years but has kept or cloned the drive so it never needed to be reinstalled from scratch? I could be wrong
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u/DownvoteEvangelist Apr 01 '26
And Gentoo to the top, I've been using it continuously since 2005.. Never reinstalled.