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It's funny. Laugh. Software Linux

Gentoo Ricer Comparison 573

Posted by michael from the did-you-set-your-clocks-back? dept.
Dozix007 writes "The folks over at Funroll-Loops have created a funny comparison between the Ricer fad gripping the US, and Gentoo Linux. In a quote from the site 'Like the annoying teenager next door with a 90hp import sporting a 6 foot tall bolt-on wing, Gentoo users are proof that society is best served by roving gangs of armed vigilantes, dishing out swift, cold justice with baseball bats...'"
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Gentoo Ricer Comparison More

Gentoo Ricer Comparison

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  • Old.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:05AM (#10677393)
    Jesus Christ, is there a /.er who hasn't been here? I've seen it linked dozens of times, just about any time there's a Gentoo story. Old news.

    • Re:Old.. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Japong ( 793982 )
      It's sunday, which means slow news and lots of old recycled stuff. Don't get too down, it's still Saturday night, go out and party with you friends and have a good time. Anyway, the "Ricer" comparison is a little off - there really is no vigilante force as far as I can tell, people do what they want, when they want, and no matter how odd or strange they are they still get kudos from someone and shrug off the criticism - if not, we'd have been out of trolling ACs on /. a long time ago. This post written

    • Ricenix (Score:4, Funny)

      by harikiri ( 211017 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @04:18AM (#10677790)
      Ricenix: Too fast, too optimised!

    • Re:Old.. (Score:3, Funny)

      by CaseBlack ( 805254 )
      A classic expamle of "Silicon is cheaper than Carbon!"...if you want more speed, buy more Silicon, don't have the Carbon Units spend hundreds of hours tweeking up the software...

  • Older then the oldest? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:06AM (#10677399)
    WTF? This is so old... is an editor cranky and want them slashdotted? :(
    • Slashdotted or not I emailed them

      "I dont agree with your premise that Gentoo users are foolish and to be mocked.

      You have a point that male youngsters tend to perform rutting ceremonys where they wave around the size of their arcane technical knowledge rather than their penis or fists. However this aspect of Gentoo as a phenonemon is applicable to any activity that male youth engages in. So yes, some Gentoo users are embarassingly funny, but only because we adults have to mock this sort of behaviour i

      • Re:Older then the oldest? (Score:4, Funny)

        by losinggeneration ( 797436 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @07:14AM (#10678202) Homepage
        Maybe you've just never talked to a Gentoo user before.....

  • I've seen this before... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KrispyKringle ( 672903 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:06AM (#10677402)
    ...and it's stupid. It's insulting to the hard work by the Gentoo folks, and ignorant to imply that a) Gentoo is the only distribution that has a few vocal-but-clueless users mixed in with the friendly, intelligent, and helpful ones, and that b) just because these vocal-but-cluesless users don't have a good reason for using Gentoo means that there is none.

    This is just great evidence for how far downhill Slashdot's gone.

    • Re:I've seen this before... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PhrostyMcByte ( 589271 ) <phrosty@gmail.com> on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:10AM (#10677416) Homepage
      The website is a joke, don't take it so seriously.
      • Sorry. It's late and I was out drinking.

        To clarify, I don't find it offensive. I just think it's silly, not the least bit funny, and I think distrowars are stupid as fuck.

        Flame on. I'm going to bed.

        • Re:I've seen this before... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by batkiwi ( 137781 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:25AM (#10677468)
          Have you been to a generic techie forum where gentoo zealots (different from regular gentoo users) abound?

          It's hilarious. People will discuss opt flags like it's gospel when they don't even know what they mean or do.

          • Re:I've seen this before... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            yep. it annoys me that people think gentoo is somehow superior because everything is compiled. Funny how they think gcc is optimized for their precise machine and haven't the slightest clue about compiler optimizations, but have no qualms about the speed of the Python-based portage system (my gentoo install has passed the 2 year mark and "emerge" is incredibly slow now).

            There will always be clueless people using Linux. Slashdot is proof of that.

            • Re:I've seen this before... (Score:4, Informative)

              by JDevers ( 83155 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @10:14AM (#10678790)
              I run Gentoo, but don't really give a rat's ass about most compiler flags... It's just the first distribution I installed where I was able to setup the system EXACTLY how I wanted it and be able to easily maintain it. I know there are others out there that do it fine, but this is the first one I found and so I never uninstalled it.

              Now, the reason I replied, you should update to the newest version of Portage. It is MUCH faster, an emerge -Dup world took me 10-12 minutes to calculate last week and now it is about 2 minutes after upgrading.

            • Re:I've seen this before... (Score:4, Funny)

              by Leffe ( 686621 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @11:34AM (#10679256)
              Portage is slow.

              Yep... but you can speed it up with the Python optimizer Psyco ;)
        • Thats right we should all be using FreeBSD, with the vim port installed of course.
          • No, fuck that. Straight up vi, it's part of the base system. It pwns vim.
        • I think distrowars are stupid as fuck.

          Yes they are. That's why I use Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org]
    • Every distro has its fanatics. People like me, we get our jollies out of poking fun at them. It's nothing personal. Besides, there's good reason to move on to making fun of Gentoo users, what with BSD dying and all. . . . ;)

    • Re:I've seen this before... (Score:5, Funny)

      by metlin ( 258108 ) * on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:22AM (#10677459) Journal

      Well, I'm a Ricer and a Gentoo fan, you insensitive clod.

      x-(

      Okay, am kidding. I just drive a rickety old Toyota and use Windows ME. :-(

    • Re:I've seen this before... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by flatface ( 611167 ) * on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:24AM (#10677464)
      It's just a collection of people saying stupid things on the the Gentoo forums. And for the record, I run Gentoo, but NOT for most of the reasons the people quoted say they do.

      For some reason I've liked Portage much more than Debian's apt-get, whatever Red Hat uses (the name escapes me now) is just broken, and as for the others, just about none of their package management systems are nearly as good as Debian/Gentoo's, so I won't be touching them for a while. For instance, I'd like to see a list of packages that need updating without going through all of them.

      Gentoo's Bugzilla (mainly for ebuilds) is awesome. Just about every time I've had a problem, I can find a solution there. Yes, I'm saying that Gentoo's not perfect. It isn't. But at least I know it's getting better. Not sure if Debian has one, but the mailing lists sure are a pain to sift through...

      Speed? I don't care. I've got a working system (AXP 2100+/512mb DDR333) right now. Sure, I have to wait for the new things I get, but I'd rather "emerge mplayer" instead of hunting for the binaries.

      Sure, you might say "Go back to Debian". I'm used to Gentoo now, though. I might give it a try again if I'm given a good enough reason, though. I sure as hell hope the installer isn't as bad now as it used to be, though.

    • ...and it's stupid. It's insulting to the hard work by the Gentoo folks, and ignorant to imply that

      From a gentoo user... Gentoo in theory is very nice, Gentoo in practice is a cluster fuck. I can't tell you how many times a package upgrade has broken something like a mail server. Fuck, seriously, get the permissions worked out before you let a package loose. Or not just dropping a kernel package because nobody knew how to maintain the previous gs-sources package when the original maintainer went "on leave

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I can't tell you how many times a package upgrade has broken something like a mail server

        Why not? Can you not count? :P

        Been running gentoo for ~a year, server and desktop, and I've had nowhere near as many packaging problems as I had with mandrake and suse... The only time I had problems was when I updated the base system and used the new fstab instead of keeping the current one :/

    • I find about two thirds of supposedly hillarious USE flags commentary serious, correct and insightful.

  • -O99 (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ZOMGbbq my code runs soooooooooo much faster then those stewped other n00bs who use binaries. they r teh missing out on all the gcc screensaver pwnage.

  • genius (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Stalyn ( 662 )
    lets offend as many people as possible... lets see.. dress up CmdrTaco in blackface with a bucket of chicken in his hand.

  • You know the only thing sadder? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:11AM (#10677422)
    Up tight morons who spend their lives getting so offended by these 'ricers'.

    I couldn't give a rat's arse about these people. If they want to spend weeks getting an imagined 1% performance improvement then great, I'm quite happy to ignore them.

    • Re:You know the only thing sadder? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wasted ( 94866 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:21AM (#10677456)
      It isn't the car or the money so much as the attitude. If you see someone driving like an idiot, being a hazard to themselves and all ground-bound life forms, it is more likely a kid in a Honda (or something similar) with a wing and oversized muffler than someone in a car with no wing and functional improvements.

    • What is so offensive about ricers.

      I for one find them hilarious.

      Who can take a civic
      A rusty old DX?
      Add a giant spoiler and some plastic ground effects?
      The ricer man can
      the ricer man caaaaan!

      My apologies to Sammy Davis Jr.

  • Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheKidWho ( 705796 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:12AM (#10677423)
    Seems like here we have a case where something is so good that people start to downplay it. I find gentoo to be a great distribution, while some people might say they are 1337 by installing it, its a rather simple installation where you just follow the instructions. And I love it because of how minimalistic it is, I install what I want and nothing that I don't want. That's what I love about gentoo!

    • Re:Hmm (Score:2, Funny)

      by FuzzyBad-Mofo ( 184327 )
      Methinks some Debian users are jealous.. I recently migrated my relatively ancient MDK 9.1 workstation to Gentoo, and have found it a pleasure to work with. It has all the goodness of Apt, with the bonus of USE flags (I know, the article.. but you really can do neat stuff here).

      If you halfway know your stuff regarding Linux, it can make a very nice workstation. I don't know if I'd recommend it for servers though, since having a compiler installed on a server is just asking for trouble..

      • Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)

        by andreyw ( 798182 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @04:10AM (#10677773) Homepage
        Some of us don't have a Cray around to help with the compile-times... or even a distcc cluster devoted just to upgrade that Gentoo box in a reasonable time.

        I *like* Gentoo. I *understand* why the Gentoo-people want to go with a BSD-ports-like system. Fine. But for the love of God... if your answer explaining Gentoo's greateness is "recompiling everything from scratch to update", then you didn't understand the question.

        That said, it tooks me 13 minutes to bring up my Debian system up to date... which I haven't updated in 3 months now. 10 of those took downloading the 300MB of packages.

      • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dead sun ( 104217 ) <aranach@gmail. c o m> on Sunday October 31, 2004 @04:10AM (#10677775) Homepage Journal
        Gentoo is a pleasure to work with. Absent from installing massive packages that aren't installed in some incarnation already I have no issues with it. Big builds can be relegated to the background in a desktop environment and I haven't noticed a big hit to moderate desktop usage while doing so. It's when you want to install a new package that's huge that causes a problem. Huge packages with a prior version installed let you use the older version while you're compiling away. I'm surprised by the number of people who speak of it like it's a huge issue. I mean, I can wait half an hour longer to use the newest, shiniest version of an app while I'm using a version that I've been using for the last X months.

        On the topic of servers, it can be done if you're smart about it. Gentoo allows for installation from binaries, really it does. It just so happens that you have to download the source, compile it to a binary, and then point portage at the binary to install from.

        Given that, if you're running a smart development and production server setup that are exactly the same, maybe sans some insecure stuff on the production environment machine, you can compile for your given target to binary on the development machine, test your packages for stability and overall goodness, and then migrate the binaries over to production, install, and be happy. It doesn't have to be built from scratch on the server.

        On the otherhand, if you're dumb about it and don't do something like that, you're just screwed. You end up having a bunch of mess around on your production machine, driving up the processor and RAM usage anytime you want to upgrade something even slightly, and it's just generally a mess. Even then, Gentoo is a bit bleeding edge in many package instances, which may not make it the best server platform without semi-intensive testing on the admin's part. It's really just a tad easier to install something like Debian stable and not worry so much about it.

        Dismissing Gentoo out of hand because there are some clueless people that are vocal about it is pretty stupid and close minded.

    • Exactly speed has little to do with it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @03:43AM (#10677700) Journal
      RPM based distro's have one slight disadvantage. They tend to lead to dependency hell. Although mandrake is a doddle to install upgrading it with software that has not made it into their releases is not. Maybe I am doing it wrong but I often have to install a lot of stuff from source to get all the header files I need for additional software.

      Gentoo of course has all the header files as everything is compiled from source. this doesn't make it faster, it just makes it a lot easier to install a new app wich hasn't yet made it into an rpm.

      Yes mandrake is easy to use, far easier to use in fact then windows thanks to its very nice installer BUT it was so easy to use that I could learn all kinds of advanced stuff on it. Like compiling my own kernel to take advantage of my own hardware. I have a rather crappy Asus Dual P3 wich for some reason never works in dual mode with stock kernels. I always have to mess around with boot parameters until I roll my own.

      If you then roll your own php and mysql because you want to see the beta's and be prepared with knowing the new features when they reach production well. It is just a short step to just roll your own.

      There are probably other distros out there that I could use but I will probably never go back to RPM, it is nice if you never want to bother with compiling but to me that is not a bother.

      But making harmless and not so harmless fun of other distros is all part of the fun of using linux. There is so much choice available and people have this in build need to defend their own choice that conflict is inevitable. Some people take it to far but that is just part of it.

  • Shamelessly ripped... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:12AM (#10677425)
    ...from this [slashdot.org] recent comment.

  • It is just me... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:14AM (#10677435)
    ... or does entire article deserve a -5 for Troll, and Flamebait? This isn't informative, enlightening, or particularily funny whatsoever. Slashdot is supposed to be 'News for nerds. Stuff that matters.' What some kids do in their spare time to flip off an entire community of hackers, users, and people has no place on a site like this. I've learned more about Linux hanging around in #gentoo and being apart of the forums these short six months than I have anywhere else in the last two years.

    My morale with this is the same when playing Unreal Tournament - Don't bash the newbies. We were all newbies once.
    • Ironically, when I said the same thing yesterday [slashdot.org] I mentioned the Gentoo / Ricer site; I mean, at least yesterdays mediocre "news" was at least new. This has been there for months...

    • It is -- and it isn't (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @04:36AM (#10677822) Homepage Journal
      Well yeah -- if you remember how often one Slashdotter's flamebait is often another's plain truth. In this case, the point of comparison is the Ricer -- an exercise in pure technological ego. A lot of people (including me) find that sort of thing supremely irritating. But the suggestion that many Linux diehards have the same mentality is not far off the mark. Linux nerds (and other kinds of techno-nerds as well) often seem to like the technology for its own sake. Nothing wrong with that, but that means accepting that the picture the nerd projects to the outside world is just a little weird. Worth remembering, no matter what drum you march to.

  • Quotes from actual Gentoo users (Score:5, Funny)

    by benjamindees ( 441808 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:15AM (#10677438) Homepage
    ahh, this is golden:

    To me, an extra 0.1% performance increase, even if I am only imagining it to be faster, is certainly worth one day a week recompiling all of the latest packages from source code. Even if I do occasionally get my CFLAGS in a muddle! I think I speak for Slashdot when I say that Gentoo is the only sane option for getting the most from your hardware!

    • Re:Quotes from actual Gentoo users (Score:5, Funny)

      by marsu_k ( 701360 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @03:38AM (#10677688)
      How about this one then?

      "I don't think that Debian can really compete with Gentoo. Sure it might be okay, but when it comes to dependencies, you probably are still going to have to get them all on your own. Or is there something like portage in the Debian world as well?"

      Just amazing :-) (for the record, I have nothing against Gentoo. It's the very vocal fanbase I have issues with)

      • Re:Quotes from actual Gentoo users (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Kristoffer Lunden ( 800757 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @08:06AM (#10678306) Homepage
        I have nothing against Gentoo. It's the very vocal fanbase I have issues with

        What vocal fanbase? Really, looking around here and on other places on the net, Gentoo is constantly attacked and bashed by people from all over, but I have almost never seen a "vocal fanboy" going on about Gentoo.

        It is very strange that it is being attacked so vehemently, when Gentoo users do not attack others. Usually - everyone has their share of pimply teenagers that thinks it makes them alpha males to do such. But in Gentoo community, they seem very, very rare.

        You must be thinking about Debian and Mac users. Great distribution and OS, but the people using them... I'd use either in a blink, but I don't really want to be connected to those people. Sadly, as especially Debian might really be the best distro around.

        As for having a *big* fanbase, Gentoo has that. Which is one of their real strengths, really. You always get help, are never ever flamed for being a newbie or anything, just friendly helpfulness. Elitist fanboys take note.

  • Sad (Score:5, Funny)

    by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:17AM (#10677444) Journal
    I saw one of those oversized wings on a 2002 Mustang today. Nice car, kept clean, but with this ragged looking elevated flap marring the back like a vast plastic hangnail. It wasn't even the same color. I swear, I wanted to make a citizen's arrest. Then I noticed it was a V6, so I let the loser off with a warning.

  • I'll be honest with you... (Score:5, Informative)

    by rpdillon ( 715137 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:22AM (#10677458) Homepage
    ...I am a Gentoo user and fan.

    Gentoo is not necessarily good because of the product, but in large part because of the process. When you finish doing a stage whatever (especially 1) install, you end up learning an awful lot about Linux that someone that drops in a SuSe/RedHat/Fedora Core/whatever disk doesn't know. Most experienced Linux users will see that a user that understands whats going on under the hood will fare better than one who gives you a thousand yard stare when you mention the /etc/inittab file.

    I think the benefits of compiling from source on everything are varied at best, and only sometimes outweighed by the time necessary to do it. That said, in some cases it is a good thing - if used correctly, the USE flags are nifty and let you compile without support for features you don't need. This can be quite useful, and provide a modest speed up in some cases.

    Ricers aside, Gentoo provides a superb package management system in the spirit of apt/yum, and is also source based. It boosts users with moderate knowledge level to a better understanding of the architecture of a Linux system, and this can lead to some absurd enthusiasm about the distro for the younger/more impressioanable types, but I take it much the same way I take any fanboy mentality: you'll see the upsides and the downsides as time goes on. I happen to think Gentoo is great on the whole, so I use it.

    Its just as childish for the folks annoyed by the Gentoo zealots to turn around be be anti-Gentoo zealots, creating webpages and ranting on about how horrible a community it is. Stop by the forums and you'll see its a responsive, well informed group, the majority of whom are quite reasonable.

  • "Ricers" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 808140 ( 808140 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:24AM (#10677462)
    You know, I don't want to be always be the politically correct one, but the term ricer has always seemed inappropriate when coming out of a non-asian person's mouth.

    Now, it does so happen that many "ricers" are asian, that the practice probably originated in west-coast asian-american subculture. It is likewise true that East Asians consume large amounts of rice, although this is not necessarily true of Asian Americans (many of whom are sadly about as out of touch with their culture of their ancestors as that white guy who says he's German-Irish-Italian).

    But I guess it just seems crass to me to take a practice and associate it with the race that does it. It would be like calling Karaoke "Yellow Yodeling". Sure, it's funny, but I would imagine that for the vast majority of non-ricer Asian-Americans it might get tiring to constantly hear their ethnicity lampooned by non-asians who lack the sensitivity to seperate a culture from a steryotype.

    But maybe that's just me. Personally, I wouldn't use this term.

    After all, it really just is modding Asian imports. White americans have been modding American cars since the days of Henry Ford but we don't call them "potatoers" or whatever the staple white american food is.

    Oh, I hear someone say, "Potatoes aren't the staple of white america! It's not the same!" Hey, did you know that in the vast majority of northern China, people don't eat rice? They eat mantou, I kind of bread, instead. Why? Because rice doesn't grow in subarctic climates.

    Of course, they're all gooks and chinks to us, eh? Man I love ignorance.

    • Re:"Ricers" (Score:4, Informative)

      by Vegeta99 ( 219501 ) <rjlynn AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:33AM (#10677501)
      You missed the definition by a mile.

      If you buy a Honda, and spend a few thousand dollars building up the powertrain, you're not a ricer. If you take that same Honda, and spend all your money on rims, stickers, and a big-ass aluminum wing for downforce in the back when the drive tires are in the front, you're a ricer.

      If you buy a Pontiac, and spend a few thousand dollars building up the powertrain, you're not a ricer. If you take that same Pontiac, and spend all your money on rims, stickers, and a big-ass wing, then you're a ricer.

      See?

    • Re:"Ricers" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by UserGoogol ( 623581 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:37AM (#10677516)
      Certain phrases lose their attachment to racist expression. For example, it's quite probable that the phrase "what a gyp" was originally a slur against gypsies, but nobody really remembers that.

      Of course, "ricer" is not neccesarily in this catagory.

    • Re:"Ricers" (Score:4, Informative)

      by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:42AM (#10677532)
      it's got nothing to do with eating rice... it's a contraction of the original term "Rice Burner" as applied to Japanese motorcycles as a derogatory term from purists who'd rather ride some BMW or triumph or worse, from fat arsed yanks on overweight Harleys, who'd never be able to get their legs over a Japanese bike in the first place
    • Maybe my experiences are far different from yours, but I didn't think the term "Ricer" had anything to do with race anymore. Yes, "Rice Burner" was a racial slur coined long before my time and "Ricer" is a derivitive of it, but I don't think it inherited the racial aspect of its parent. Most people I know define "Rice" as being gaudy, nonfunctional, having bad taste, and/or lacking substance. In essence, being fake or putting on a display in an attempt to impress others. It never has anything to do with the
    • My friend calls the white version of ricers "bread boys" as in, look at that silly breaded out mustang. Mus' be a bread boy.

      No, I'm not racist (as in anti-white). I make fun of all races equally, including my own. ;)

    • Actually, the term "ricer" (Score:5, Informative)

      by barc0001 ( 173002 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @03:12AM (#10677633)
      White americans have been modding American cars since the days of Henry Ford but we don't call them "potatoers" or whatever the staple white american food is.

      According to american culture, at least, those whiteys would be referred to as "greasemonkeys", "gearheads", "rodders", etc. And, again according to American culture, it's becoming known as "pimping out" the car. Which is of course, very politically correct itself. Selling women as a commondity == improving a car.

      Hey, did you know that in the vast majority of northern China, people don't eat rice?

      Hey, did you know that the vast majority of Asian cars aren't from China? What the hell does that really have to do with anything? Do you even know where the motorsport slang term "rice" comes from?

      Of course, they're all gooks and chinks to us, eh?

      From the way you're flaming on, I am guessing you don't.

      It came from some performance bike racers in Japan mixing their standard fuel with alcohol to help boost power in the small engines at high RPM. Some of them used alcohol distilled from rice wine, and thus caught the nickname of "rice burners". Because that's literally what they were doing. This was way more common 15 -20 years ago, these days it's fallen out of vogue as modern racing fuel mixtures either have methanol in them already, or are formulated to not need it.

      Man I love ignorance.

      To each their own. You certainly do seem to indulge in it, so...

  • Rice Rockets (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:26AM (#10677469)
    Some of the kids at my college got bit by that riceboy car culture fad. I remember strolling through the parking lot seeing the ridiculous looking Hondas and Acuras with those farty sounding large exhaust pipes that sound like a moose in heat.

    But hey, the tinted windows, exhaust pipe, and large Momo sticker across the top of the windshield must add at least 100hp right?

    • Hey, I'm a Gentoo user AND I drive a Subaru WRX with a 5" exhaust. (IMHO the only 4 cylinder car worth fitting a big pipe to, thanks to the boxer engine)

      I'm on a goddamn hiding to nothing, right?

  • Not Funny (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aws4y ( 648874 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:31AM (#10677495) Homepage Journal
    I am a debian user but I think this site is way out of line. All of our distros have a following. I like debian because I really like the dpkg system and an apt based distro. Does this mean that other distros are lame? No. There are stupid people in the linux community who like to diss on distros, and promote there own. These fuckers miss the entire fucking point of Open Source.

    Its not what distro you use. As I said I like debian. But stable is not a good desktop distro so I try out ubuntu and love it. Gentoo is awesome because it used one of the best things about BSD (source based distribution) to make linux better. OSS is more about a marketplace of ideas, where projects tinker. Just because someone likes gentoo dosent make them a performance whore, and just because someone likes distro X it dosent mean anything except that they are a member of the communtiy and are trying to do the best with the options that they are given. Lets not let our community be destroyed by idiots on websites or idiots on message boards.

    • Re:Not Funny (Score:3, Interesting)

      by joto ( 134244 )
      I found it very funny. If gentoo existed while I was in the "larval stage" of using linux, I would surely be a gentoo-ricer myself. Instead, I was mostly a slackware-ricer, with two or three extra partitions to try out a new linux distro a month.

      Then I discovered debian, and since it was the only system I could easily keep up-to-date (let's face it, in those days, most distros didn't easily upgrade), it kind of stayed on my HD. I don't know how many years passed (5-10?), and I'm still using debian, and I

    • >> These fuckers miss the entire fucking point of Open Source.

      Indeed. Personally, I'm into Open Source for the chicks.

  • Lame Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:34AM (#10677505)
    I use Gentoo Linux, and I'm anything from a hardcore user. I don't care about having the fastest most optimized packages. I use it because I find it the easiest distribution to configure, customize, and get working correctly. If I have a problem I can usually find an answer my searching. If not I can just ask a question on the forums. The Gentoo community is the friendliest, most responsive there is. I've never seen a touch of the inferred elitismm, and their accomplisments are amazing.

    I studied math in school, and the seemingly unimportant achievements of Gentoo users which they enjoy remind me of the satisfaction I got out of every proof I completed. They may seem unimportant and pointless to those not in the field. But real satisfaction and results follow from these activities.

    There are always people who can not understand intellectual achivement. But I had expected better of slashdot. I suppose I was naively mistaken.

    • Re:Lame Comparison (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @04:47AM (#10677842)
      Please mod up. The strength of Gentoo isn't in the (particularly good) package system or even the (even better) 'USE' flags thing, but in their community. The Gentoo forums is perhaps the last place where you can ask a "n00b" Linux question and be answered promptly, with zero elitist bullshit attached. I liked the source distribution idea beforehand, but when i witnessed this i was sold.

      For some reason it seems to draw in nice people...

  • While we're at it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by OldJohnno ( 545767 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @02:39AM (#10677527)
    You might as well check out the Gentoo OPTIMIZBATION Guide http://timedoctor.org/index.php?id=2183 [timedoctor.org]

  • Superb! (Score:2, Informative)

    by phaze3000 ( 204500 )
    My favourite quote from the site:

    "People, I am the only one who realise that binary packages are almost useless? Except a few basic packages (as in USE independent, e.g. gcc), the result depends greatly by the USE variable. Let's take for example the mod_php package. How useful a binary mod_php will be?"

    Oh my god, I've been wasting my time all these years! What was I thinking? All those websites running off binary mod_php packages were useless!

  • heh. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by peatbakke ( 52079 ) <peat@noSpAM.peat.org> on Sunday October 31, 2004 @03:19AM (#10677645) Homepage
    It's easy to point and laugh at the neighborhood kid with a Neon equipped with spoilers and excessive stickers (or in this case, a computer with overclocked CPUs and case windows), but really, what's the point?

    Now, I can understand complaining about overly loud stereos booming down the street in the wee hours of the morning ... but bitching about someone's hobby, which they do for fun, is about as lame as you can get.

    Yeah, it may be "illogical." Yeah, it may be "a waste of time and money." But it's not your time, not your money, and quite obviously not your interest ... so what's the fuss about?

  • Ok, I'll bite... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by danielrm26 ( 567852 ) * on Sunday October 31, 2004 @03:49AM (#10677715) Homepage
    I hate to plug my own shit but here's [osviews.com] my whole take on the Gentoo-bashing stuff. To make a long story short, Linux distros are like punk bands - the hardcore (lame) punk fans only like a band until it makes it big. Once that happens they turn their backs on it and find a less paletable, more obscure group.

    Screw em'. Let them be fucktards if they want to. I use Gentoo because it's easy. I'm lazy and it works every time - in a predictable way. The product is great, the forums are great, and if I run any other distro it's because I am in a time crunch or because it's at work and people will only sign off on Redhat. To me, distros boil down to the package managment and the community support. Gentoo excels in both areas.

  • Abusive Humor (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nice2Cats ( 557310 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @04:06AM (#10677758)
    Yeah, haha. Funny as hell. A real joker.

    Probably one of the saddest developments in America in the last few decades is the way "abuse humor" has replaced the real thing -- more and more seems to be about making fun of other people, putting them down, and claiming this is funny. I realize that insulting people is easier than displaying real talent, but still. It is sad to me as an American that the best English-language comedians by far and wide today seem to be Brits, while we're paying "shock jocks" milions to spew garbage that wouldn't be allowed on any well-run playground.

    What is even more depressing is the complete lack of self-irony in these pieces. Take Monty Python's song "Never Be Rude To An Arab", where the singer makes fun of himself more than anybody else -- these are the masters, go snivel at their feet. "Fawlty Towers" has an episode where all they do is make fun of Germans ("Never mention the war!") but it is done so well that even my German friends can laugh, because John Cleese makes such a complete ass out of himself, too. Eddie Murphy has lots of abusive humor in his stand-up pieces, but he is the first to make poke fun of himself. At least the guy from Jackass is sticking his own tongue in drainage pipes.

    And sorry, I think "ricer" is a racest term. Obviously the Slashdot editors and a lot of people here don't agree, but I was pretty suprised to see this article promoted here. Hope they don't get into trouble with OSTG.

    So: It is not funny, it offers no insight, and uses racist language for what seems to be its own sake. Even if it has the word "Gentoo" in it and it is a slow day, I fail to see what this is doing on the front page of Slashdot. Me, I'll stick with reruns of the Soviet Russia jokes, and -- and mod the original article down as "troll".

  • Using gentoo, its the only option! (Score:5, Informative)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @04:06AM (#10677759) Journal
    Gentoo Sparc is the only sparc distro that is up2date on the sparc cpu/platform. SuSE/Redhat dropped support. :(

    So if you want Linux on your Sparc machine, Gentoo has the most up2date desktop and packages.

  • Old, but funny - Gentoo still rocks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrEcho.net ( 632313 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @04:16AM (#10677783)
    I've been using Gentoo Linux for 8 months now.
    I would just like to say that it made me switch from Windows XP Pro to Linux.

    I've used other linux distros over the past few years, but never really took linux to heart. I was able to compile programs and somewhat work with it and got around ok.
    The linux distros that I did were binary based systems, just a simple point and click option. This didn't teach me anything, when I did try to build my own app and "make install" it, most of the time it didn't work or broke another application. There is another point.

    When you build a app you have compile options "./configure". Lets take xchat for example. When you "install" xchat from a binary distro.. you get xchat, But with what options turned on or off? You have no idea what your getting besides the fact that its xchat.
    Now with source based distros you have the option of turning on or off build options. Here is Gentoo's build options for xchat "debug ipv6 mmx nls perl python ssl tcltk xchatdccserver xchatnogtk xchattext" That is a lot of control over what you build.

    Another big this is CFLAGS. These are very helpful for older systems, or you just want your programs to use every single feature of your 100-800$ cpu. With Binary distros most compile for i686. OK.. does that mean that gcc will use "mmx mmx2, sse sse2, 3dmow" ??? You have no idea what kind of optimizations you're getting.
    I know some Gentoo uses go all out on there CFLAGS, but from what I've notice it makes building the app a lot longer, it just makes gcc try more things to build the apps.
    I my self use "-O2 -mcpu=pentium4 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -ffast-math" I wouldn't call that "ricing" its just using all of what my system can do to make the apps run better.

    And with Gentoo's emerge system, kind of hard to beat that. Yes apt-get is great, but there is alot of cool tricks that you can do with Gentoo's emerge system. http://gentoo-wiki.com/Emerge

    Need help installing gentoo just ask around. Or you can find me in the irc irc2.othersideirc.net #rantradio

  • Guide to Slashdot frontpage (Score:5, Funny)

    by boa13 ( 548222 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @04:19AM (#10677791) Homepage Journal
    1. Spot a funny website [slashdot.org] in the previous Slashdot frontpage funny story [slashdot.org]. Thanks to the Slashdot moderation system, it is easy finding one, since they are usually moderated +5, Funny.

    2. Send your "scoop" to Slashdot.

    3. Karma profit!

  • It isn't performance ! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kage.j ( 721084 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @04:30AM (#10677807)
    Gentoo is NOT compile-from-source for performance, it's for customization.
    I use it a lot and it has grown on me, although what does bother me is the mass amount of files in /usr/bin

    Oh well. :)

  • Legitimate value in being almost bleeding-edge (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KhanReaper ( 514808 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @05:27AM (#10677963) Homepage
    There is one value of Gentoo that I think many people tend to overlook. While many seem to focus on Gentoo's ability to let the user specify optimization flags and build a system from scratch for performance reasons, I adore Gentoo's ability to use packages that are plainly newer than what most other distributions could hope to offer, especially with what one can get from using breakmygentoo's packages.

    Unlike loading my system with an absurd quantity optimization flags, I run my system with just a stable "-O -g." This has allowed me to commit a large number of very complete bug reports--and I mean over one hundred--for many projects--e.g., Gnome, Mozilla, and KDE--in the past year-and-a-half.

    What's more is this: I cannot begin to describe how annoying it is on standard, binary-package distributions to go about using and developing for newer software suites and manually having to deal with bleeding-edge dependencies that these distros would never include end up including for a few months, due to their instability.
    I am fine with their potential instability on Gentoo; at least I do not have to go about uninstalling nearly all of distro's Gnome's dependencies and rebuilding them from scratch and dealing with very strange conflicts between the distro's older components and the manually installed newer packages.

    If I am not believed, wait two months from now, take a fresh Debian or Fedora install, and attempt to compile the development version of Gnome against it without seriously damaging or fudging the distro's packaging mechanism and dependency system. I can attest that this is one virtue that Gentoo has over nearly every distribution that I have used, in that it minimizes the aforementioned dependency and package hell; and believe me: I have used a wide variety of distros in the past seven years, and only Gentoo has pleased me so well. Granted Gentoo does have its problems, but I have not stuck with a single distribution like it for such a long time, since I had been using Slackware and god-forbid, FreeBSD.

    On another note, if some want to claim that the packages contained in Gentoo's portage tree are not bleeding edge, I can say that I personally maintain a rather large, manually created portage overlay that contains numerous unofficial packages. The fact that these packages can be compiled uniformally, installed consistently, and removed with ease is wonderful and something that I would dare not do with another distribution.
  • Those who mock Gentoo users like this are fools.

    It's a sad fact snobbery afflicts Linux geeks as badly as it does other people groups.

    Regarding that foolish article, other Linux newbies (that use distros) could easily have similar questions and flawed assumptions.

    The process of compiling software into a distribution used to be the last "closed" aspect of the Linux movement. Things like Gentoo helped solved that problem.

    Yesterday I was browsing for the source of some software I was trying to install (this was the "Ogg Vorbis Direct Show Filters" that allow Ogg files to play in Windows Media Player), and I found that the released binary was two point versions ahead of the CVS version. i.e. No source existed for something many people thought was open source. (As it turns out, the copyright owner may not have released the source for that version). If this had happened for Linux software, instead of Windows software, Gentoo users would be the among first to notice and discuss that.

    Go Gentoo!

    [I've never used Gentoo.]

  • If you're running gentoo and you're not recompiling your kernel at boot [bellard.free.fr] you're just a poser!

  • GIS for Ricer Computer (Score:4, Funny)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @10:46AM (#10679005) Homepage Journal
    http://wrongknowledge.com/computers/ricer/

    It's da shizzle

  • The only nut worth tweaking... (Score:3, Funny)

    by aquarian ( 134728 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @10:25PM (#10682678)
    ...is the one behind the wheel. This is just as true with computers as it is with cars.

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