Facing reality- a short story about Linux, Gentoo, and me...

statikregimen

Hello! I am bored and wanted to type some thoughts about Linux and Gentoo to random people on the internet! And who knows: maybe this will help others come to the same realization that I did....

Around late 2010 / early 2011, I switched to Gentoo after a decade of Debian (and Debian-based distros). Learned more in my first week about Linux than I had in all my years of prior experience combined. Sadly, before my main machine was fully set up and usable, I was faced with a series of tragedies that forced me to switch back to an "easy-mode" OS (Winderps, as much as I hate to admit it) while I rode out the storm.

Well, finally after 6-ish years, all the storms have passed, as well as several advancements made in the Linux world that have now made it a viable option for ALL of my computers and applications (no more need to dual boot -- yay)! This is largely thanks to Valve's efforts in bringing commercial gaming to the platform (as much as I hate and avoid closed source as much as possible).

So a few months ago, I started back down the Linux path again, defaulting to Debian and Ubuntu, at least to get my chops back. However, as much as I love Debian, the stable release requires too much effort to bootstrap on bleeding edge hardware, and testing/sid have caused me too many tears in the past. Then there's Ubuntu, which is just a complete disaster right now with bugs on a scale I'm not sure I've ever seen from the team. And well, let's be honest: Ubuntu has always been a little hit-and-miss anyway....

That lead me to exploring other Debian-based distros, just because I do love me some apt, am generally familiar with the OS, and like the convenience of binary distros. All the while, there was this still small voice that kept whispering in my ear, "Gentoooooooo", which I adamantly ignored, continuing instead to spin my wheels on what would ultimately prove to be a circular quest. Had I continued, it would have certainly lead to madness. So, why not Gentoo you may ask? Very simply because it is a huge PITA to install. It's not something you can do in 15 minutes after pressing enter for defaults a few times.

So after a few weeks on that quest, logic finally started to kick in. I suddenly realized that I could have installed Gentoo 100 times over, in the time I spent searching for fixes, workarounds, and/or alternative distros....not to mention all the down time that came with it....and the fact that in the end, my system would have been a chaotic mess of hacks that would require an entire wiki site just to manage 1 machine.

That pretty much brings us to now. I am back and ready to dive in again. The Gentoo Live iso is in my Downloads directory, and I am hoping being switching all of my machines over within the next couple of days!

Cheers, and thanks for reading, if you made it this far. I certainly value feedback and love to read about others' experiences so please do share if you feel so inclined!

AJM · Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 8:28 pm Post subject:

It really doesn't take all that long to get a Gentoo install up and running these days, with a reasonable spec of machine at least. I personally have never got on with Debian at all - for that kind of "set up and minimally update for the next five years" server RHEL / CentOS have been vastly better for me (although RHEL7 with SystemD is out of the question for me so I'll probably end up using Deuvan for new builds before too long.)

For most purposes though nothing comes close to Gentoo for flexibility - you end up with exactly what you want, no more and no less. It's well worth the little bit of extra initial effort investment!

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3137

statikregimen · Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2017 8:59 pm Post subject:

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2017 4:38 pm Post subject:

A word of warning: If your machines use UEFI rather than PC BIOS, don't use the Gentoo Minimal Installation CD; use SystemRescueCd instead. The Gentoo Minimal Installation CD does not currently support UEFI.
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Fitzcarraldo's blog

statikregimen · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2017 4:46 pm Post subject:

Fitzcarraldo - Many many many thanks!! I can't begin to speculate how much time and frustration you just saved me.

statikregimen · Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2017 2:30 am Post subject:

First victom: Lenovo Yoga 2 11" laptop

Getting it to boot from my USB flash drive proved to be a challenge, and ultimately I'm still not clear what went wrong. Somehow the drive's partitioning/imaging got super messed up, leading me down some very dark roads. In the end, I had to let it auto-mount on an Ubuntu machine, then dd some arbitrary bunch of zeros (about half the capacity of the drive, as it turns out). Again: this had to be done while it was in whatever state the auto-mount put it in (I was not able to mount it manually). After that, I was finally able to unmount it and run fdisk to partition it normally, and subsequently format it and install systemrescuecd to it as prescribed on their site. The prior result of trying to run fdisk, dd, or cp was something like "no medium found" unless it was auto-mounted.

Anyway, with that finally resolved, I'm taking my time on this first install...On day 1, I partitioned, unpacked stage3 + some steps, and now I'm configuring the kernel. This is a step I'm always meticulous about and try to make the most informed decision I can on each option. I've compiled many kernels and my methodology has never lead me wrong, though I feel like there's probably a faster way. I'd feel pretty comfortable downloading a config made by someone more experienced, for my specific machine, then doing a much less stringent and rapid evaluation of their options. However, I'm not sure if such things exist or how to find them in any reliable form that is faster than just doing it manually myself.

I have 2 more machines after this, and possibly my main home server (tho it is an older laptop that is running Debian quite happily, so I don't know if I care to disturb it right now).

Cheers!

mrbassie · l33t Joined: 31 May 2013 Posts: 772 Location: over here

statikregimen · Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2017 11:24 pm Post subject:

mrbassie - thank you! When I wrote my last reply, I think I was operating on assumptions from 2.6 kernels. There are vastly more options than I remember. Giving pappy's config a try as-is and will evolve from there if I need changes.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2017 11:53 pm Post subject:

statikregimen,

It won't work as is. You need the instructions.
The concept is the same as the original kernel seeds.
The site has not been updated in nearly four years but the methodology it provides is sound and Pappys preconfigs continue the idea that kernel-seeds started.
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NeddySeagoon

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

statikregimen · Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2017 11:18 pm Post subject:

josephg · Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 2:56 pm Post subject:

have a look at sys-kernel/kergen
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"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Edward Abbey

statikregimen · Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 7:39 pm Post subject:

statikregimen · Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 5:04 pm Post subject:

After a few more derps, I finally got to boot my new kernel. Got a blinking caps lock light. Further investigation revealed that it did not read my config. I had saved it to a specific file name and made a sym link to it at .config but for some reason that failed or I failed somehow. Now I've directly saved to .config and rebuilding again....

EDIT: I think what may have happened is that I ran make clean (because I had compiled one before). Which I just did again.....Crap.

EDITAGAIN: It boots

josephg · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2017 7:41 am Post subject:

always backup .config before you run "make clean"
always run "make menuconfig" (i prefer nconfig) to validate your .config and save it, just before you run make..
_________________
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Edward Abbey

statikregimen · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2017 7:23 pm Post subject: