Gentoo experience?
Hi, i am thinking of switching to gentoo, and wanted to ask if its a good idea. Anything i should look out for?
Btw im coming Form arch
Thx :3
like this
⇧
Hi, i am thinking of switching to gentoo, and wanted to ask if its a good idea. Anything i should look out for?
Btw im coming Form arch
Thx :3
like this
INeedMana
in reply to da Tweaker • • •I loved how tailored to me was Gentoo. But as time passes and your hardware gets older, the compilation times get longer and longer. That's what made me to do the hop
I've heard some time ago that now Gentoo is offering more pre-compiled packages. But I don't know the extent. libstd, gcc and libreoffice were the worst offenders in my time
If you're going to be compiling your own kernel (or now Gentoo ships with pre-compiled ones too?) my word of advice would be "don't forget to compile in the filesystem support"
u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)
in reply to INeedMana • • •INeedMana
in reply to u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org) • • •thingsiplay
in reply to da Tweaker • • •da Tweaker
in reply to thingsiplay • • •thingsiplay
in reply to da Tweaker • • •rozodru
in reply to da Tweaker • • •if you have the time for it, then go for it.
Keep in mind and i'm sure you already know this but you have to compile everything yourself so it WILL take time. I have it on a sort of hobby machine and I remember just getting Firefox to compile/install took awhile. The benefit of this is you get an extremely custom tailored system for yourself. But like I said it's going to take you awhile to get to that point. If you want something immediate to daily drive and want more of a custom system as opposed to Arch then maybe give NixOS a shot. I switched from Arch to NixOS on my main machine and I love it, won't use anything else. But if you're patient and have the time to dedicate to Gentoo then go for it, it's fun to play around with on a Saturday afternoon.
INeedMana
in reply to rozodru • • •IMO the main customization part of Gentoo is that you can compile the world without the libs you don't want to have. With NixOS (AFAIK) being also package-based, how can it offer more custom system than Arch?
mumblerfish
in reply to da Tweaker • • •da Tweaker
in reply to mumblerfish • • •mumblerfish
in reply to da Tweaker • • •like this
eshep likes this.
communism
in reply to da Tweaker • • •just_another_person
in reply to da Tweaker • • •da Tweaker
in reply to just_another_person • • •Im not, arch is a nightmare for me. I try to installiert something over pacman: ERROR. I try to fix the error, doesnt work because it needs certain shared library files... That i can not find.
But thats not the only thing, somehow the Servers are allways down and its not a nice little challange anymore. More like a piece of code designed to make me miserable.
I hope thats different in gentoo :)
communism
in reply to da Tweaker • • •just_another_person
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Well, to be honest, you're choosing the two most difficult distros to manage.
It sounds like you're kind of new to the area...why not just use Fedora?
da Tweaker
in reply to just_another_person • • •just_another_person
in reply to da Tweaker • • •That's...an opinion that is not backed by any facts at all. What in the world are you talking about with "bloat" 🤣
So you're a newbie, and making lots of wild claims and taking awfully opinionated positions in this thread all over the place. I don't think you want help, so just be on your way 👍
da Tweaker
in reply to just_another_person • • •Why do i need bluetooth compatibility if i dont usw it, why wifi?
If i dont want help, why would i ask?
Nibodhika
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Because they occupy so small disk size that they don't matter and it's easier to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. I wouldn't call hardware support bloat ware.
Also, just so you know, Arch has Bluetooth and wifi compatibility even if you don't install the packages, Gentoo does not. You would need to recompile your kernel with the correct configuration to enable those for your specific card.
Arch is just as bloated as Fedora, Mint or Bazzite. Hell, my Arch is a lot more bloated than any of those. This is Linux, the system is as bloated as you want it to be, but also having stuff installed doesn't necessarily causes your computer to be slow, programs only execute when you tell them to.
da Tweaker
in reply to Nibodhika • • •Bluetooth is a fucking security risk, wifi too.
I dont care how bloated your os is. Also BLAOT IS WHY IM SWITCHING
Do you know about limited disk space? Cuz that doesnt seem to be a problem for you, maybe it is for tho? Who knows?
Nibodhika
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Sure pal, big security risks. You should learn about cyber security before regurgitating information. Having the chip is not a security risk, having the open source driver isn't either, the security risk is 99% between the screen and the chair.
My point is that Arch is not inherently unbloated, any distro can be bloated, any distro can be unbloated, you decide what's bloat and what's not.
We're talking less than 100MB here, if your disk space is that limited you should really consider upgrading. Especially if you're going to try Gentoo, because not only it requires more disk space but if you can't afford a cheap 1TB drive chances are your CPU will take a week to install Gentoo since you need to compile everything.
da Tweaker
in reply to Nibodhika • • •Nibodhika
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Nibodhika
in reply to da Tweaker • • •I'm sorry for being blunt, but Arch is very easy and plug-and-play like, if you're having these sorts of issues my guess is that you're not familiar with Linux and are doing stuff "wrong" (e.g. installing drivers from a website). Gentoo is a LOT more complicated and will hold your hand a lot less than Arch, I recommend you try something more beginning friendly like Mint, Fedora or Bazzite, learn the basics, learn the "Linux way" of doing stuff, then try Arch again, then, when you have a better reason than because I broke it, you can try Gentoo.
This is not a "you're too dumb to do it" answer, but imagine someone who's having issues driving a shift stick car asking how it's like to rebuild the engine. You're capable of rebuilding the engine yourself, you're able to use Gentoo, just not now, learn to walk before you try to bungee jump.
da Tweaker
in reply to Nibodhika • • •Nibodhika
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Why do you think Mint/Ubuntu/Fedora/Bazzite are not that though? It seems you don't know how to ask your system to do stuff because otherwise your Arch install wouldn't break. Plus I bet that the default installation of any of those distros occupies around the same disk space than what you have now.
Honestly you read like an angsty teen who read Arch is advanced and wants to be 1337 by using it, a few years back you would have been using Kali. Let me tell you a secret, Arch is not advanced, it's a very easy straightforward distro, it just starts from a mostly clean slate, but if you're using gnome/kde/cinnamon or any DE that distros come prepacked with its just as bloated with extra steps.
da Tweaker
in reply to Nibodhika • • •I know, that arch isnt hard, its too easy. I installed Linux to challenge myself. Arch WAS a callange. Now i want something New. And harder.
Btw. You can choose what bloat you want to have in your system (only DE vor goodies too)
Nibodhika
in reply to da Tweaker • • •It's easy but at the same time your system is always broke? Either you were lying there or are now.
Precisely my point, you keep mentioning Arch as being Bloat free and complaining that Fedora or others are bloated.
da Tweaker
in reply to Nibodhika • • •lnxtx (xe/xem/xyr)
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Only if you need fine tuning compilation flags.
But if think it's easier to do with Arch's custom
PKGBUILDs.Otherwise too much work to keep it stable, waiting for a compilation to finish.
NorthWestWind
in reply to da Tweaker • • •All Gentoo users remember the pain of compiling QtWebEngine ;)
I used to run Gentoo on my old computer. Installing it was quite the experience. That was where I learnt about most of how Linux works thanks to the wiki.
I heard compiling your own packages with use flags can improve performance, but honestly it was not worth it for the compile time.
When I switched to my new PC, the Nvidia GPU doesn't work and I could not figure out why. I also don't have the time at that moment so I installed Endeavour instead, which I'm still using.
mumblerfish
in reply to NorthWestWind • • •da Tweaker
in reply to mumblerfish • • •mumblerfish
in reply to da Tweaker • • •wewbull
in reply to da Tweaker • • •No advantage over Arch IMO.
If you want to play with it, setup a VM.
geneva_convenience
in reply to da Tweaker • • •MidsizedSedan
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Its fun to learn how the system works, but after the 4-5th time trying to install something real quick, and there's an error in your package.use or something, it gets a lot less fun.
If you have the time and patience, its really cool. But I just want a web browser without having to edit 3+ text files to allow it to work.
mmmm
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Comments complaining how everything takes time to compile in Gentoo are kind of funny, do you really need everything to be installed asap?
That being said, Gentoo indeed is not for everyone. I've been using it for +15 years and am really happy with it - almost zero maintenance and it's super stable. The crux is the time it takes to be installed and people hold a weird grudge against it just for that.
But at the same time there are more distros oferring pretty much the same, i.e. your own arch.
ChojinDSL
in reply to da Tweaker • • •It's thanks to Gentoo that I've been a Linux sysadmin for over 20 years.
That being said, I've since moved to Arch and then Debian.
Some points:
On modern systems you won't really notice any speed improvements from custom compiling the packages. Apart from maybe some numbers in articial benchmarks.
On old systems with very limited resources, you can eke out a bit of more performance.
Back when I was still using Gentoo, my proudest moment was getting a Pentium 1 with 96MB Ram (Yes, MB!), which was a gift of a colleague to his broke brother, into quite a useable little machine. Browsing, listening to MP3s, email, some simple games.
I also noticed a noticable improvment in performance in a 400mhz Athlon I had setup for my mom.
That being said, I was only able to do this, because I was using distCC to distribute compiling across several machines to keep compile times to a somewhat sane level. Also, I was doing a unpaid internship at the time, so I basically had all the time in the world, so compile times didn't really bother me.
I had tried to use l
... Show more...It's thanks to Gentoo that I've been a Linux sysadmin for over 20 years.
That being said, I've since moved to Arch and then Debian.
Some points:
On modern systems you won't really notice any speed improvements from custom compiling the packages. Apart from maybe some numbers in articial benchmarks.
On old systems with very limited resources, you can eke out a bit of more performance.
Back when I was still using Gentoo, my proudest moment was getting a Pentium 1 with 96MB Ram (Yes, MB!), which was a gift of a colleague to his broke brother, into quite a useable little machine. Browsing, listening to MP3s, email, some simple games.
I also noticed a noticable improvment in performance in a 400mhz Athlon I had setup for my mom.
That being said, I was only able to do this, because I was using distCC to distribute compiling across several machines to keep compile times to a somewhat sane level. Also, I was doing a unpaid internship at the time, so I basically had all the time in the world, so compile times didn't really bother me.
I had tried to use linux before. After Windows XP crashed one too many times. I decided to see how things work on Linux. I initially chose a "easy to use" desktop distro. (Mandrake Linux). Got everything setup. Even 3D Accelaration worked. Everything was really nice and fun. Then I tried to tinker under the hood and I broke something that I couldn't figure out how to fix. So I thought, maybe I need to find something even easier, so I chose Suse Linux.
Same story. Set everything up. Desktop working, 3D working, etc... start to tinker, break something, back to square zero.
Then I decided to change my approach and choose the hardest distro. The choice was between Linux from Scratch and Gentoo. Linux from Scratch sounded waay to painful, so I chose Gentoo.
It took me 3 days until I had a somewhat working system without a desktop. Then another 3 days until I had a desktop running Fluxbox.
But the learning experience was invaluable. Being forced to use the CLI and not only that, but more or less configure everything by hand. It takes aways the fear of the CLI and you get a feel for where everything is located in the filesystem, which config files do what, etc... It demystifies the whole thing substantially.
You suddenly realize that nothing is hidden from you. You are not prevented from accessing anything or tinkering with it.
The downside is that Gentoo takes a lot of time and effort to maintain. But the learning potential is invaluable. Especially if you use it to also start doing little projects in linux. e.g. File server, router, firewall, etc...
Me knowing Gentoo, got my first real job as Linux Sysadmin and before long I was training rookie Admins. And the first thing I always did with them was to run them through the Gentoo bootcamp.
Once they go to grips with that, everything else wasn't that difficult.
nyan
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Take your time with the install process. It's possible that you may breeze through it. It's also possible that you may discover that, say, there's something wrong with the EFI implementation of the system you're installing to that you need to do some research to resolve. I've had both experiences.
Once installed, Gentoo is pretty much rock-solid, and almost any issue you have can be fixed if you're willing to put the effort in. Portage is a remarkably capable piece of software and it's worth learning about its more esoteric abilities, like automatic user patch application.
Do take the time to set up a binary package host. This will allow you to install precompiled versions of packages where you've kept the default USE flags. Do everything you possibly can to avoid changing the flags on webkit-gtk, because it is quite possibly the worst monster compile in the tree at the moment and will take hours even on a capable eight-core processor. (Seriously, it takes an order of magnitude more time than compiling the kernel does.)
Install the gentoolkit package—equery
... Show more...Take your time with the install process. It's possible that you may breeze through it. It's also possible that you may discover that, say, there's something wrong with the EFI implementation of the system you're installing to that you need to do some research to resolve. I've had both experiences.
Once installed, Gentoo is pretty much rock-solid, and almost any issue you have can be fixed if you're willing to put the effort in. Portage is a remarkably capable piece of software and it's worth learning about its more esoteric abilities, like automatic user patch application.
Do take the time to set up a binary package host. This will allow you to install precompiled versions of packages where you've kept the default USE flags. Do everything you possibly can to avoid changing the flags on webkit-gtk, because it is quite possibly the worst monster compile in the tree at the moment and will take hours even on a capable eight-core processor. (Seriously, it takes an order of magnitude more time than compiling the kernel does.)
Install the gentoolkit package—equery is a very useful command. If you find config file management with etc-update difficult to deal with, install and configure cfg-update—it's more friendly.
If you're not gung-ho about Free Software, setting
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA"(which used to be the default up until a few years ago) in make.conf may make your life easier. Currently, the default is to accept only explicitly certified Free Software licenses (@FREE); the version I've given accepts everything except corporate EULAs. It's really a matter of taste and convenience.Lastly, it's often worthwhile to run major system upgrades overnight (make sure you
--pretendfirst to sort out any potential issues). If you do want to run updates while you're at the computer, reduce the value of-jand other relevant compiler and linker options to leave a core free—it'll slow down the compile a bit, but it'll also vastly improve your experience in using the computer.(I've been a happy Gentoo user for ~20 years.)
like this
eshep likes this.
eshep
in reply to nyan • •equery, this is an invaluable tool.Linux reshared this.
eshep
in reply to da Tweaker • •/etc/portage/make.conf, setup/etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo.confwithsync-type = git, and use/etc/portage/package.{use,mask,unmask,accept_keywords}as directories for individual packages. I tend to keep a/etc/portage/package.mask/failedfile for upgrade blockages fer me to unfuck after aemerge -avuDUN @worldsucceeds.Linux reshared this.
Steamymoomilk
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Gentoo is very much like an manual transmission. If you ask anybody that drives manual they will say 1 of 2 things "i like it because it gives me control" or "i use manual because i always have"
I love gentoo as playing around and trying stuff out. My personal recommendation is use ZFS or btrfs for a file system and have subvolumes. So if you get so lost in the rabbit hole you can climb back up.
If your philosophy is" stable and mine!"
Gentoo is for you.
You can build a distro, with all the packages you want and once your done if you decide to update every month and dont care a whole lot about bleeding edge. It will work really well, it you want bleeding edge, you can have portage use ustable packages with a stable system. But you really must know what your doing or you WILL BREAK STUFF.
I ran gentoo for 6 months then went to debian, its a great learning tool for understanding how linux works under the hood. I would also recommended systemd over openrc.
Its not that openrc is bad, its just alot of extra work for simple things to work.
Gentoo to me
... Show more...Gentoo is very much like an manual transmission. If you ask anybody that drives manual they will say 1 of 2 things "i like it because it gives me control" or "i use manual because i always have"
I love gentoo as playing around and trying stuff out. My personal recommendation is use ZFS or btrfs for a file system and have subvolumes. So if you get so lost in the rabbit hole you can climb back up.
If your philosophy is" stable and mine!"
Gentoo is for you.
You can build a distro, with all the packages you want and once your done if you decide to update every month and dont care a whole lot about bleeding edge. It will work really well, it you want bleeding edge, you can have portage use ustable packages with a stable system. But you really must know what your doing or you WILL BREAK STUFF.
I ran gentoo for 6 months then went to debian, its a great learning tool for understanding how linux works under the hood. I would also recommended systemd over openrc.
Its not that openrc is bad, its just alot of extra work for simple things to work.
Gentoo to me is more a messing around on a spare computer distro, than a production computer. Not that it cant be production, but im personally very lazy when i just want to use my personal pc.
Shimitar
in reply to da Tweaker • • •Gentoo user since forever.
The most consistent and long time solid distro, IMHO.
I use it everywhere I can, from servers to laptops. It's so flexible and predictable that I simply love it.
Nowadays emerging stuff is so fast that I wonder why bother with binary packages at all. Once, when compiling Firefox took DAYS well.... But in today's hardware, meh.
;)
mvirts
in reply to da Tweaker • • •kittenroar
in reply to da Tweaker • • •da Tweaker
in reply to kittenroar • • •undrwater
in reply to da Tweaker • • •If I could give only one reason to use Gentoo, it would be the community.
Anyway, if you choose this route, read the handbook through like a book first. Get an idea what you want your endpoint to be, then start.
like this
eshep likes this.
bbwolf1111
in reply to da Tweaker • • •steeznson
in reply to bbwolf1111 • • •bbwolf1111
in reply to steeznson • • •CarrotsHaveEars
Unknown parent • • •CarrotsHaveEars
Unknown parent • • •I mean, you can cross-compile to generate a Gentoo rootfs for the embedded system.
I worked on embedded systems for audio devices. I of course endorsed Alpine as well, but with musl as the C library I got weird bugs of stuttering audio output.
With Gentoo I get the option to build my entire system with musl as well, but I would rather have that bug not in my system. That's what Gentoo offers: options.
By "LFS", I think you mean Buildroot, practically. Buildroot is also highly customisable, but Buildroot isn't a distro. Like LFS, there is no way yo update a system, only rebuilding with latest packages. It also does not have flags for the whole system, so you're on your own if you want to disable, say IPv6, in the whole system.