On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 18:22:51 -0700
William Morder <doctor_contendo@...> wrote:

> If I can ever find a publisher to give me enough money to live in the regal 
> style that deserve (and if I should live long enough to complete the Great 
> Work, and if they are still actually publishing books written by human beings 
> at that time), then maybe I can afford my very only reliable Internet 
> connection, and I would be glad to try out Gentoo. 

Your techie friend would probably look at you funny if you suggested installing
it, anyway.  There's an old humour piece about operating systems as airlines
that you can find kicking around the internet, and the Linux segment includes
something along the lines of, "Upon boarding the plane, you're handed an
uninstalled seat, a handful of bolts, a wrench, and a copy of seat-HOWTO.
Once you get it installed, the adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane
takes off and lands on time, and the in-flight meal is just perfect, but whenever
you try to discuss the experience with someone, all they ever say is, 'You had
to do *what* to the seat?!'"

Gentoo is very much a "You had to do *what* to the seat?!" distro.  The 
install process is command-line oriented and hands-on, installing a new
package can take some time because it (usually) needs to be compiled, and 
you're expected to put in a bit of work in terms of untangling your own messes 
with the aid of the (usually pretty good) documentation.  In return, it offers a 
knowledgeable community, complete control of every optional dependency 
on the system, and programs that run slightly faster and install less cruft
because they're tailored for your machine and not some generic abstraction.

I like it, but then I code for a living, I'm a control freak, and I'm willing to put
in a little more time when I have to (to avoid having to put in a lot more time
down the road).

E. Liddell