• Górny: why Gentoo?

    From LWN.net@618:250/24 to All on Fri May 29 06:40:26 2026

    Gentoo developer Michał Górny has written a lengthy
    article explaining the philosophy and purpose of the Gentoo Linux
    distribution, in response to a
    thread on Mastodon:

    Gentoo is a source-first distribution, which means the primary
    method of installing software is to build it from source. Of course,
    that doesn't mean manually building stuff, following some kind of
    how-to: finding all the dependencies, installing them manually, going
    through a series of magical incantations, and eventually ending up no
    better than if we were installing a binary package. The package
    manager takes care of all the necessary steps and more, making package
    installs easy; well, at least unless something fails. But I'm
    digressing...

    [...] We try to build a friendly and welcoming community around Gentoo,
    and we truly want using Gentoo be an enjoyable experience. We want it
    to be a system that doesn't betray you.

    https://lwn.net/Articles/1075148/
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