I Will Compile No More Forever

Item 1 A description of my attempt at being, hardcore:
I'm a big linux fan. I love the concept of an open source environment, free software, stability and being able to tell Steve Ballmer to suck it.

I started to say linux geek in the first paragraph, but I'm not up to that level yet. I've been trying to develop my chops as I go I've tinkered with the Ubuntu spin offs, Debain, Fedora, Suse, etc etc, each had something different to like and dislike and in the end taught me something new. I have learned the most I think though from my foray into Gentoo Linux. I have learned that I hate compiling from source.

Techs judge themselves by their skills, I have seen a phenomena several times where two techs meet. Like the samurai of old, there is always a showdown. One, usually the older tech will try to ascertain the younger ones level, and decide from there if he is worthy of their time. It can be scary to outsiders, but it is the natural order of things, much like the alpha male in a dog pack. So we seek to better ourselves so that when we run into an old master, we are not left lying on the ground with the other guys teeth at our throat... that only happened once... and I swear never again...

So to test my mettle, I dove headfirst into the Gentoo minimal install.

The beginning wasn't so bad, I jumped in made my partitions, formatted them, I was feeling good, halfway giddy... oh poor naive me. The horrors started when I read the next bit of instruction on compiling the base. YAY, I'd never actually compiled anything before this was going to be great, I'll be all hacking and stuff, hardcore style yo.

One command. Pretty much one command starts the entire process... This is about the same experience as double clicking the setup.exe in windows... To be sure it looks cooler, with all the text streaming on the screen, makes you want to bring some geek chicks in and say "Hey, check this out, yeah, I'm not doing anything right now, but I put the command in to start it." Now yeah, I understand the guys that say they want to make everything from source, so they know exactly what is inside the program, but honestly WHO THE HELL WOULD READ ALL THAT CODE???? I might run a search for "fubar this guys box lolzers" but other than that, eh.

So the compile began and ran for a while... a while being about ten hours altogether. It was slightly late when I started so I had the bright idea, hey I'll let it run overnight. I awake refreshed the next morning, ok, that's a lie, I wake my cranky morning self, look at the screen and nearly punch it. Apparently at random intervals I have to input whether I want the system to use gl support, or version 123.1234 versus 123.1235 (now with flouride.) At this point I realize, I really am expected to sit in front of the machine for hours, watching text stream by until the computer decides it needs me... aw hell naw.

About twenty four hours later, due to work, etc, I finally get the base finished. Excited I look through the next steps, ok now compile the kernel... Alright that can't be too hard, once again, type in my ONE COMMAND, I am so hardcore, walk away for a bit and it should be done... I miss my naivete. So yeah at this point I end up waiting a few more hours, least they could do is put a built in youtube streamer so I can watch something while compiling, but nooooo.

So eventually, after having wasted way more time than I would have preferred, I finally get the system installed and reboot. I was honestly surprised at the speed of the boot, until I realized, I hadn't installed the xserver yet, and was running in cli only. I won't share my experiences with the xserver, lets just say I'd had enough and ended up reinstalling xubuntu. Bring on the simplicity, bring on the packages, knock me down a peg on the tech scale, but, I will compile no more forever.

Item 2 list of offenders:
Gentoo Linux

Item 3 Suggested course of action:
Um, I'm still liking that Steve Ballmer line, I'll go with that.