Gentoo (was Re: strangest systems I've sent email from)

On Fri, 29 Apr 2016, alexmcwhirter at triadic.us wrote: Other than the swapping init systems, many OSS OS distributions have the ability to choose what you want to run. Not all are as granular as Gentoo (but some, say embedded distros, have even more control). There are dozens of Linux distros as you know, and this degree of control & granularity is one of the main variable. Ubuntu users want "just-worky-ness", Gentoo users often want tweakability in the extreme. It all depends on your needs and value system. I guess there is no accounting for taste. I would not call USE flags a feature, my opinion is that they are painful in implementation (dragging around a list of way-too-many little keywords is not fun, IMHO), nasty to work with and have to look at (some giant wrap-around variables in the conf file), and make me feel dirty and disorganized. Plus, in my experience, if you accidentally put in two mutually exclusive or not-very-well-tested USE flags you are in for a hard time that might be difficult to track down (ie.. if the effects don't immediately surface). Cross compiling is neat, for sure. However, Gentoo doesn't have any unique claim on that (not that you implied that). Many other OSs have used the same methodology since long before Linux, much less Gentoo. -Swift