Switched to Arch Linux from Gentoo

Time installing Gentoo: days

Time installing Archlinux: 30 mins.

I have an old Intel based Dell laptop with 1.8GHz single-core processor. I’ve had Windows XP on it for a couple years, then I switched to Gentoo for the past 5 or 6 years. Well, it’s really not the kind of laptop that you should be compiling everything from source on. I’m tired of going through the “everything’s broken, hook it the ethernet cable and start fixing it” routine after I’ve left it alone for months at a time.

I just use it to tune my car, it’s the “Garage Laptop”. So, Gentoo isn’t a good fit. And Gentoo seems to be becoming this bloated mess of package mismatches. Since I leave my laptop alone for a while, I end up not being able to install a package I want since the version my portage tree has is no longer in the main tree. So, ‘emerge -sync’, and now I have to update 50 packages just to get the one I want.

No thanks.

I’ve got a working system with XFCE4 in 30 mins. Plus, it takes only about 2 GB of my 32 GB SSD. Restoring my home folder puts the total at 6 GB, which is more than 4 GB less than my Gentoo install.

This is a decision I needed to make a long time ago.