Products · Product
Gentoo Linux
Raised as a usability problem by 29 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 22 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Packages take hours to compile locally, making features slow to enableUnreviewed
20082026- Installing a Python library takes hours to compile, and dependency problems make deployments hard to control2023-05-19
- Installing packages takes hours because everything compiles locally, making enabling features slow2015-10-07
- Slow compilation and a manual install process that was hard to get through2015-08-18
Installing every system part by hand is painfulUnreviewed
20082026- Installation was painfully slow and full of conflicts needing resolution2024-06-28
- Installing every part of the system by hand is painful and horrendous to work with2017-05-31
- Installing required manual partitioning, chroot, compiling and kernel config, with easy-to-make fatal mistakes2014-09-05
Demands too much technical knowledge to useUnreviewed
20082026- Gentoo is a major pain to install and use, requiring mastery of portage and options2022-10-02
- Gentoo is hard for users because it demands too much technical knowledge2021-02-05
- Updating Gentoo on a slow machine is so painful the author only updated when mother was away2014-09-05
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 30 complaints
- Site was unusable for people, so the maintainer took it offline2026-08-11
- Frequent updates broke the system and required manual intervention2026-01-11
- Endless compilation cycles make updates painfully slow to live with2025-04-28
- Installation was painfully slow and full of conflicts needing resolution2024-06-28
- Can't install it without knowing fstab, grub and user creation2023-12-29
- Updates often fail to build, so machines need manual intervention to finish2023-12-29
- Installing a Python library takes hours to compile, and dependency problems make deployments hard to control2023-05-19
- Too many scattered config files to manage and restore after a disk failure2023-05-19
- Upgrades become nearly impossible after years of neglect; updating portage can break the system2023-05-19
- Falling behind on updates causes unsolvable dependency conflicts with long, useless error output2023-05-19
- Updates and package conflicts are hard to resolve; user repeatedly struggles and must ask IRC for help2023-05-18
- Updates like X.org or GCC compile for hours, making the computer unusable overnight2023-02-11
- Upgrades fail because required package versions are no longer in portage after a long gap2023-02-11
- Gentoo is a major pain to install and use, requiring mastery of portage and options2022-10-02
- Losing 30 minutes or whole days fiddling with things that shouldn't need setup2022-02-18
- Gentoo is hard for users because it demands too much technical knowledge2021-02-05
- Can't find a good resource to learn which make flags to set2020-07-10
- Everything was hard to get running, forcing constant reboots and forum searches for answers2020-04-12
- Dependency conflicts take forever to resolve and happen whenever updates are not frequent2020-01-12
- Cannot get PDFs to print correctly2019-05-02
- Installing every part of the system by hand is painful and horrendous to work with2017-05-31
- Slow Gentoo rebuilds force long waits and risk accidental interrupts2015-11-26
- Installing packages takes hours because everything compiles locally, making enabling features slow2015-10-07
- Slow compilation and a manual install process that was hard to get through2015-08-18
- Installing required manual partitioning, chroot, compiling and kernel config, with easy-to-make fatal mistakes2014-09-05
- Compiling large packages takes over a day on slow hardware2014-09-05
- Updating Gentoo on a slow machine is so painful the author only updated when mother was away2014-09-05
- Takes too much research to tell which options are useful or safe2013-12-31
- Easy to break servers with misconfiguration, causing confusing errors blamed on the vendor's UI2008-10-19
- Installing software requires compiling from source and many manual decisions, making it hard to use2008-06-03