
Originally Posted by
Shining Arcanine
The original poster that made the first reference to Gentoo actually was talking about Sabayon Linux, which is a child distribution of Gentoo and the experience with Sabayon Linux is very different than the experience with Gentoo Linux because Sabayon Linux uses binary packages like Ubuntu. It does that by using a custom package manager that runs between Gentoo's package manager and you, allowing it to replace Gentoo's source-based packages with Sabayon's binary packages.
Anyway, Gentoo is a minimalist OS, so you cannot install it and just expect to use the system without needing to do anything else. You need to install it, use the system and then install the software you want/need via its package manager as you use it. Then after a few weeks, you will likely have found everything you want and you will have a nice list of the software in your /var/lib/portage/world file that will ensure that you never need to go through the same experience again, as the process of installing software after the OS is installed could then be done alongside the OS installation by copying that file to any new Gentoo Linux installation that you do.
Gentoo Linux users can configure MAKEOPTS in make.conf to have software installations use mulitple threads, install ccache to avoid having to do full compilations when installing new software that has minor changes, use the "--jobs" parameter when installing software/updates to do installations in parallel and configure Gentoo to build binary packages whenever it installs new software so you can upgrade/downgrade quickly.
I think that your frustration came from the fact that you did not understand Gentoo and had you been willing to spend a little more time to understand it, perhaps by asking people who use it, you would have saved yourself a great deal of frustration and been much happier with the result. Anyway, since you have forsworn Gentoo Linux and likely, all distributions like it, you can likely expect the Microsoft experience in your future, where things will attempt to work with minimal input from you and should it make the wrong choices, you will curse the day you started using computers because the system will resist every attempt on your part to correct its mistakes.