I wrote some weeks ago, in this blog, that I was going to install Gentoo and Arch Linux side by side, because I the Gentoo installation for gaming and Arch Linux on another hard drive for all my other works. This idea came to me when Enemy Territory: Quake Wars released its Linux demo. Because of Gentoo’s reputation, a well earned one, for the fact of customization and performance.

Before this, I was a Gentoo user since 2004, and has always enjoyed using it, until now. This time, although being my first Gentoo Linux install in months, almost a year, it didn’t even lasted a week on my system, I  came to realize that, my once beloved Gentoo had dumped all its quality at once, and there is not much that remains of what a good distribution it once were.

Gentoo is divided in two branches, stable and testing. But, between this branches there are some problems worth noticing. The recent problem with the stable branch is the outdated applications, and even though they are outdated they are not stable enough, as one would expect. And the problem with the testing branch is that though it is a bleeding edge branch, some applications I use are outdated, packages fail to compile often, and most are unstable once they do compile. I think that above all the biggest problem in Gentoo is the lack of direction, and I feel this is hurting the community in a big way.

Because of this and some other issues, I have decided since  October 21, 2007, that this only Operating System I have installed, Arch Linux, is going to be definitively my main Operating System for everything I need. I know this is a challenge , even more when you are studying at University and most of the work they ask of you have to be done in a Windows machine, but is possible, I just do that work on the University machines to make sure mine doesn’t get contaminated.emoticon