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Comment by krutzger | Hacker News Reader

Seriously, you went from osx to Gentoo? It's like going from using computers to designing your own cpus...

Just install Ubuntu and be done with it

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

AFAIK, Gentoo is the best full-control Linux distro out there, possibly only rivalled by arch. It's not for everyone, but I do want that level of control. Using OSX I constantly run up against annoying irritations and have to spin up special VMs, which is tedious. I gave it a good go - almost seven years. Enough. IMHO ZFS root (snapshots and rewind) goes a long way towards resolving the worst irritations in using Gentoo as a desktop OS.

Unfortunately, with Linux "full control" usually means "you'll have to manually edit every single configuration file before your computer becomes barely usable"

That's why I prefer distros that work out of the box, like Ubuntu, or Fedora.

It's a matter of perspective and goals. If I just wanted a browser and access to VMs or cloud environments I'd use a tablet and a bluetooth keyboard. You can't learn things like changes in kernel configuration options, boot processes, graphical environments, etc. simply by using someone else's default configuration, only by reading and configuring yourself. Are these things critical? Not for most people, but they certainly inform my work in many ways and I would not consider time invested since the 1990s to have been wasted. Many people enjoy learning and are able to leverage knowledge for creativity, I am merely one of them.

Along those lines the recent ChromeBooks are also worth consideration. You can even run full Linux using Crouton if you are willing to make a small compromise on the highest levels of security.

I have tried using tablets and BT keyboards, it works well, but I prefer the all in one form factor of a simple notebook. BTW the Lenovo tablets with the flip out stand are terrific on the desk and to hold. That rounded battery compartment makes it feel like a spiral bound book when using it with Kindle.

OT but I used Gentoo since about 2003, the issue for me anyways was Q/A of the packages and migration when updating old systems. I was constantly fixing or working around issues.

Yeah. Often a gentoo root system becomes inoperable because it's out of date or has some weird package configuration. Using a snapshot-capable root allows you to easily swap it out to something known good or freshly installed and keep running.

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