Gentoo Linux

Reader supplied reviews for Gentoo Linux Average rating 8.7 from 88 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on Gentoo Linux? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- unstablestable2026011812.111.210.12008.02007.02006.12005.12004.31.41.21.1a1.0 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: stable Rating: 10 Date: 2026-01-22 Votes: 0 Gentoo has been my choice of distro for over a year and I have been very impressed with the amount of customization and choice. Portage (the package manager) has various features to help create the distro of your choice, as well as helping with diagnosing issues during an emerge (Portage terminal interface) making the issues clear and breakage free. A favorite feature of mine is USE flags, USE flags can be used to fine tune your system to your needs, don't use Bluetooth? Well you can either do it per package through package.use or make it system wide through the make.conf file. A few tips I would give to new or interested users are, - Stick to the Gentoo handbook, the popular installations on YouTube are outdated, I followed a video during my first install and it missed important parts (initramfs) causing my system to be unstable. - gentoolkit is a great utility to help keep your system clean of old packages, an eclean-dist -dp to view the old packages and followed with deletion with eclean-dist -d will help you storage wise. - If you don't want to update frequently make sure to check in with Gentoo Linux Security Advisories (GSLA) to see if you are vulnerable to any attacks. A glsa-check --test all will check the system for vulnerabilities followed by a glsa-check -f $(glsa-check -t all) to update those packages to a safe version. Overall Gentoo is an excellent distro which isn't as hard as people tell you and I will be staying here from now on. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: unstable Rating: 10 Date: 2025-12-25 Votes: 6 If you just want to use Linux, this is not for you. Try Mint or Fedora. But if you want to learn how Linux works under the hood and are willing to get your hands dirty and put in some effort, or if you have a special use case that requires a lot of customization, this is the ticket. You need to be very familiar with Linux and comfortable working on the command line before deciding to try this distro; otherwise, you'll be very frustrated and end up coming here to rate it 1. Don't be intimidated by people complaining about crazy compile times. Unless you're running a Pentium 4 from 2001, compile times are generally quite reasonable, and you can install a complete desktop system in a day. There are a few very big packages like gcc and webkit-gtk, but there aren't many and they will build in a couple of hours on a fairly modest system. The handbook is thorough and concise, but it won't hold your hand and it expects you to know some basics. And despite some comments to the contrary, you can install systemd just as easily as OpenRC, and frankly, it probably works a little better with systemd because so many packages look for it nowadays. Gentoo is an adventure, and if you have the wherewithal to get through it, you'll come out with a much better understanding of Linux. But if you're not experienced, stick with something else until you're ready. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: unstable Rating: 10 Date: 2025-12-09 Votes: 5 If you know, you know. This is one of the dristros you run if you actually know how your system works, beyond what kind of video card you have. With Gentoo, I have taken 12 year old MacBook Pros and gotten them to boot to Wayland KDE on the latest kernel in 5.5 seconds (EFI Stub). With Gentoo I've now rolled my own router OS that puts UniFi to shame, in both security and throughput. With Gentoo I've made my own personal distribution for my Thinkpad, served by binaries perfectly optimized for that machine, by a dedicated binhost. And with Gentoo, I get to use the best package manager on the planet: Portage. Make your system as stable or unstable, performant or safe, tiny or broad as you want. Pick any init system, any DE, any anything... You can do it with Gentoo. Is it built for people who just want a graphical installer to set up Fedora for them? Absolutely not. This is a know-what-you're-doing Linux distro. If you put in the effort to understand how computers actually work, you'll be rewarded. I loan out Ubuntu laptops to normies to introduce them to Linux, but what I use personally is Gentoo. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 88 reader reviews of Gentoo Linux...