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Add to SafariWhen comparing Elementary OS vs Gentoo Linux, the Slant community recommends Gentoo Linux for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux distributions for desktops?” Gentoo Linux is ranked 3rd while Elementary OS is ranked 28th. The most important reason people chose Gentoo Linux is:
You build the package from a source you can see and read. You decide which features you want to build in and which aren't needed. You can choose build options, optimisation and whatever else fancy stuff you want modified. With a binary distribution this simply isn't possible.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro UI design consistency
Excellent uniformity between all the stock application and an overall extremely clean design with simple animations.
Pro Lightweight & fast
Runs well on limited-resources hardware, including netbooks or chromebooks.
Pro Built on Ubuntu
Built on Ubuntu LTS with all its qualities and support.
Pro If you like MacOSX the UI/UX is similar
Pro Extremely user-friendly
This distribution promises you a very tailored user experience and it does deliver on that promise. The developers provide you with a custom desktop environment and a set of neat programs. And the whole desktop looks simply gorgeous.
Pro Active Google+ community
There is a place where Elementary users can ask their questions and usually get answers pretty quickly. Not only by the other users, but the devs are pretty active themselves, often engaging in the discussions on the hows, whys, and plans of the OS.
Pro Simplicity, limited configurability
Sane defaults with less confusion for new users.
Pro Consistent development practices
All Elementary apps are written in Vala and hosted on Launchpad, and there are standard APIs such as contractor for applications to interact with one another. This is different from most distros, in which apps are written in a variety of languages. This design decision makes it easy to get started developing for Elementary and to understand how the various pieces fit together.
Pro A dedicated StackExchange site
Elementary OS has a dedicated StackExchange site where users can easily find answers to common questions.
Pro With new tweak tools customisation is not a problem
Now the OS is amazingly customisable
Pro Full control of the software
You build the package from a source you can see and read. You decide which features you want to build in and which aren't needed. You can choose build options, optimisation and whatever else fancy stuff you want modified. With a binary distribution this simply isn't possible.
Pro Portage's emerge is powerful
Portage is a package management system with a huge amount of options and features.
Pro Fully customizable
The usage of advanced features like USE flags makes it more customizable than any binary distribution.
Pro Freedom
You are free to do whatever you want with it. As a result, its configuration reflects your unique taste and personality.
Pro Great for anyone who is serious about learning the intricacies of Linux
It's useful for both beginners and professionals. For the installation, Gentoo offers various types, which are referred to as stages. Basically meaning how in depth you would want to go into the process of installation. For beginners it's useful to choose for a starting distro due to its various stages that can be very time consuming but beneficial as you learn the composition in general of Linux.
Pro Can by optimized to any given CPU by using proper compile flags
Since everything is being built on your PC you can fine-tune the code to make use of your CPU. And all it requires is two lines of string variables in a global config.
Pro Portability
There are many architectures available for Gentoo : i386, x86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC 64, sparc, DEC Alpha, ARM, MIPS, PA-RISC, S390, IA-64, sh, m68k.
Pro Can be officially systemd-free
Gentoo's default init system is OpenRC. Gentoo also officially supports systemd-free Gnome and udev. Users are free to choose any init system they want.
Pro Documentation and community are second to none
Provides a whole handbook to refer to during setup and usage.
Pro A very large collection of software is available
There are more than 19.000 packages available in the official repository. And even more with overlays.
Pro Gentoo does not impose a standard look-and-feel
Pro Superiority and smartness
You get superiority and get called smart daily for going through the processes of punishing yourself to a compile install you also get a cool neofetch logo.
Pro Live USB installation
Installation via a Live USB allows you to go back and fix mistakes from it without having to restart the whole installation process.
Cons
Con UI doesn't let you change anything
Every installation of elementaryOS looks exactly like the same.
Con Old base and applications
The slow release schedule makes the applications outdated. It drags behind Ubuntu LTS (on which it's based) which itself drags behind Ubuntu which is often still quite far behind Arch for example.
Con Outdated or bad default applications
Con Poor Linux community reputation
The devs of elementary OS feel anyone not paying for their Ubuntu respin are not worthy of using it. Which upset a good bit of people. Obviously the core dev team have issues with their community outreach and PR.
Con Quite buggy
Con Very slow development cycle
Elementary does not offer any release date for their stable releases going more with an "it's done when it's done" attitude. Making depending on newer apps a difficulty as well as a poor choice for those that need consistent release schedules for their OS.
Con Not very configurable
Con The desktop doesn't let you to put icons by default
Con Limited and outdated packages
Packages can be very outdated, and many can't be installed from official repos.
Con Doesn't support 32-bit hardwares anymore
One can install pantheon DE from new ubuntu's repo but Elementry OS is not making new ISO's nor is it supporting them. It makes confuzzled to new users.
Con Upper panel requires extra spaces
The upper panel in Elementary OS requires more space. This can be a problem for computers with small monitors.
Con Emacs doesn't work
Emacs crashes due to a partial gnome library update.
Con Heavy animations
It has some animations that don‘t run well on older hardware.
Con Window control button placement may be unintuitive to some
elementary OS has window controls on the left side of the window. It may be less intuitive to users coming from other operating systems that put window controls on the right.
Con No proprietary driver installer
Elementary OS removed the driver installer of Ubuntu.
Con Problems with basic functions
Problems often arise with functions like keyboard layout and touchpad.
Con Boring UI
It can be very boring.
Con Not beginner-friendly
You have to read a lot of instructions to start, even if you are familiar with Linux. Furthermore, as you have to configure the kernel and init system, expect some boot failures at beginning.
Con Since everything must be compiled it takes a lot longer to update
And if you have to update the kernel or some heavy software like Chromium it can takes hours if not more on weaker hardware.
Con No default installer
Installation must be done manually by following instructions in the handbook.
Con Customized package installation can take a long time and cause installation failures
The Gentoo package management system allows you to configure what compilation flags packages should support - i.e. specific processor flag support (SSE, SSE2, etc.), -O1, -O2, -O3 optimization, etc.
If you accept one of the default flags, Gentoo downloads binaries from the server. However, if you decide to optimise, it can and will download all source packages and start compiling allthe programs and libraries on your system. If your chosen flags don't work with a particular library, installation will fail.
Con Somewhat outdated solutions
While being outdated per se is virtually impossible for a rolling-release distro with a large community, a large portion of said community sticks to outdated solutions. For example, Gentoo's primary init system is OpenRC, which is cumbersome and awkward to use and provides little control over the system. While you can just choose systemd, it will require some tinkering. Other examples include stubbornly declaring an initramfs a last resort and an "oh my god 1337 H4XX0RZ surely have nothing better to do than trying for a month to exploit some vulnerability to steal my pony art, I have to fortify so hard my performance and ease of use will suffer" 90s security mentality.
Because of just how much freedom Gentoo provides you with, this usually isn't a big deal though.
Con Too hard
