Many people who use Linux have heard of Gentoo and might have some misconceptions about it.

Gentoo is much more than a regular Distro like Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. Gentoo is a distro within a distro. Most Linux distros are desktop OS’s, but Gentoo can serve a variety of different purposes, that’s why it can support different architectures.

The power of choice

The main reason most people claim they switched to Linux: more choice in software, customizability, and security. Gentoo takes all of that to an entirely different level.

On Gentoo, you can choose what type of INIT system you want to run. That on its own is a big deal. If you’ve been on Linux long enough, then you’re aware of the beef between systemd and other INIT systems. This article isn’t about that issue specifically, but if you don’t want systemd, then you can run open-rc.

Packages on Gentoo are also installed differently. Gentoo is a source-based Distro, you’re able to customize each package according to your needs and your computer’s hardware. Gentoo does this with USE flags. USE flags are commands you can use on a per package basis or on a system-wide config. Let’s say you don’t want anything systemd related on your machine, in your /etc/portage/make.conf, in the USE category, insert -systemd. That’s it. You can do the same or the opposite with anything else.

USE flags make your machine faster since applications aren’t as bloated as regular binaries that come with generic settings that are meant to work on all distros. And now your machine has a smaller surface area of attack, without unnecessary settings, even though Linux is still one of the most secure operating systems out there.

The con to all this customizability is that packages are compiled, which means they will take longer to install than a package from a binary distro.

The kernel rabbit hole

And lastly, the kernel. Many people’s favorite reason for running Gentoo is compiling their kernel. By compiling your kernel, you’re able to turn off countless settings that aren’t applicable or necessary for your hardware. The Linux kernel is bloated, since practically the world runs on Linux. If you have an Intel-based system, then there’s no need to have any AMD settings/modules built into your kernel. And when you compile your kernel, you get to learn so much about Linux and how it works.