Can you use Gentoo without compiling much?

MatthewRock · n00b Joined: 27 Jun 2015 Posts: 14 Location: Poland

Hello,

I am a Gentoo user. I'm not "power-user", in the sense that I don't know many of Gentoo functionalities yet(unfortunately I have other priorities then learning them).
My gf has a PC with Ubuntu on it. Currently we're checking out if Debian does it for her, but I've also been thinking of Gentoo, since it's such a nice distro. However,
there's a one problem: compilation. It's both time-consuming and sometimees not straightforward(when collisions appear). I haven't heard much good about binary distributions of the Gentoo
programs. Is there some way to get Gentoo and not compile too much? Funtoo looks like one way to do it, but I'd like to know the alternatives.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 1:24 pm Post subject:

MatthewRock,

The simple answer is no. That's because Gentoo is a toolkit you use to design and build your own distro.
Every Gentoo install is in effect, a different distro.

A more complete answer is maybe.
If you have a number of systems based on similar hardware, its possible to build packages that will work on them all.
You build once, then install the binaries on the other systems.

When all these similar systems are on the same LAN, you can use distcc so they all contribute to building, then you distribute the binaries.
Its even possible to use a more capable system to build for a completely different system, to make it bearable to run Gentoo on say a Raspberry Pi.

One way or another, you need to do the compiling but it need not be on the target install system.

There are a few Gentoo BINHOSTs scattered around the internet but they all have Gentoo built with their owners USE flags, not yours.
That link is to my BINHOST, by way of an example.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

MatthewRock · n00b Joined: 27 Jun 2015 Posts: 14 Location: Poland

Thank you, NeddySeagoon.

Actually, my gf has a similar PC to mine - I believe our Graphics card is the same, and architecture of CPU as well(I've got intel i5, she got i7, but they're from the same generation I believe), so it should actually be possible to go with "maybe" option. I could compile on my PC and ship it to her somehow. I would like to explore this idea - could you please refer me to some tutorials, wikis, documentation, or provide some keywords that should yield plausible search results?

Thanks in advance.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 2:36 pm Post subject:

MatthewRock,

You need to look at lspci from both systems and discover what -march=native does on both systems.
You must compile support for all the hardware present on either system but only using CFLAGS that are on both.

On the master (the box that does the builds) set FEATURES="buildpkg" in your make.conf.
By default, this saves all of your packages into /usr/portage/packages eveg time you build something.
It would be a good idea to move /usr/portage/distfiles out of /usr/portage but its not essential.

Set up your USE and CFLAGS to suit both/all systems and run

Jaglover · Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 3:22 pm Post subject:

With her i7 you can ssh into her box and compile with MAKEOPTS=-j3 and she will even not notice the compilation.
_________________
My Gentoo installation notes.
Please learn how to denote units correctly!