I stick with my original Shakespearin question in that case
But BSD isn't linux.
also @omega_alpha_psi arguably FreeBSD is a lot better for learning how to operate in a standard unix environment than either of those choices
Gentoo is a timesink. No one uses it in production, and Arch is a pure desktop OS at best
owow rude
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I'd suggest Gentoo.
You'll get a better understanding of components from using Gentoo.
Contrary to what @tkoham said, Gentoo is used in production. Definitely not to the extent of rhel etc. But it has is uses, it's powerful because you can built very specific and specialised systems from it easily.
It also has better support, it has great tools for managing the system, it can be very stable if you do it right.
It can be a little hard to get it right if you've never used it before. But it's very flexible and very well supported.
Interesting. Do you have any articles or mailing lists discussing recent use of gentoo in production? I'd be interested to see exactly what people find it most appropriate for.
I've never personally seen it used, but it'd be educational to see that side of things, I'm sure.
I've seen some small scale uses in the past, but nothing major.
Google also use it for chromeOS, this is the main one I know of.
Chrome OS is probably a decent example of exactly what Gentoo can be good for, specialised deployments.
You don't hear about it often, but every now and some there's a bit about some company using it on hundreds of machines.
The problem with Gentoo is it is a bit specialist, and does require a different approach to maintenance, so you can't exactly just hire someone who knows Linux and expect them to maintain Gentoo systems from the get go.
Gentoo was one of the best learning the OS installs I have done. It was a long time ago but you basically start with a minimal binary boot to get to a console with networking stored in a ram drive.
The documentation will walk you all the way from that to a working booting linux system.
I picked arch because it seems more practical but to learn gentoo will walk you through everything. The most difficult thing for me was understanding the flags to set for the compiler. Everything else made sense and was straight forward.
yeah, the burden of knowledge and trouble that can arise over long periods on multiple machine deployments makes me think it'd be best for prototyping or niche applications in the first place.
I'll definitely have to look into this, but I still don't think it's wrong to characterize Gentoo as more hobbyist/desktop oriented, especially in relative terms.
Oh christ, I have run into my first problem with the arch install, how do I reformat a harddrive from the last installation?
The great thing about Arch is that it has an awesome wiki. Check it out. @omega_alpha_psi To reformat your hdd use https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide#Format_the_partitions
I think start with arch but never forget to go into gentoo. I still don't feel brave enough (or don't have enough time). I've been on Arch for about a year and a half.
most of us would pick arch in reality, gentoo is good for a dank meme
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Oh fuck, just ran into my first problem, when I was partitioning the hard drive I attempted to make a partition, but any time I did it just said value out of range, any thoughts on what is happening? The disk is formated
What are you using to partition?
fdisk
What parameters are you giving it when making a partition that says its out of range?
I create the first partition and then I go through the partition number and range, and once I put in how many gigabytes I want, no matter what it returns, "Out of range" And I know that the disk is not up to capacity
You really need to just stop man.
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What do you put in as the end range? Should be something like +60G
End range? I just go and set up my linux install, my swap, and then the storage
I just keep my /home on a separate drive and if a drive dies oh well lol.
Put /home in another system, doesn't matter.