Why I Use Gentoo

Gentoo has a slotting system, making it easy to switch between package versions, such as between PHP 5 and 7.

Gentoo's package manager, Portage, plus a number of accompanying tools, such as eix, equery, e-file, and layman, make it easy to manage packages, search for them, and add third party repositories.

I also occasionally use Arch Linux, which also uses a rolling release model, but it is a binary distribution. When installing a program in Arch, you are forced to first upgrade because the package version that is compatible with your setup no longer exists. In fixed release GNU/Linux distributions, forced upgrades may still be required, for the same reason. In Gentoo, the source code is pulled from upstream; so, as long as the source exists, you can install your desired program.

Gentoo typically gives you choices about which major versions of a package that you want installed. There are sometimes incompatibilities that occur between packages, but if you really need a specific version of some code to run a particular program, you might be better off creating a Docker container. Gentoo also allows you to control the compiler flags and configure options used when building a program. Gentoo is great for low power devices, so long as you can cross-compile it. I ran Gentoo on an EeePC 1000HE for a number of years and would upgrade by imaging the hard drive and upgrading the image on my desktop in a linux32, loop device, chroot environment. Initially when I got the computer, I installed EeeBuntu, but the Unity interface was slow and cumbersome. Installing Gentoo, which admittedly took a few days, ran much faster. Upgrade times can often be sped up by farming out the compilation; although, some programs will fail to compile when distributed.

Gentoo gives you a choice between OpenRC and the more popular Systemd for system initialization. I prefer most aspects of OpenRC over Systemd. Systemd's integrated logging is convenient, but its conveniences stop there. OpenRC does not do logging. You have a choice of which logging system to use. OpenRC's user interface is strait foreword and not overly verbose. I have not used both, extensively enough, to really form a good opinion as to which is better; but as a user, my preference is OpenRC.

If you want another user's experience, Randal Schwartz and Aaron Newcomb, in their FLOSS Weekly show, conducted an interview with Jeff Horelick about Gentoo.