The hunt for an unbroken distro: Is Gentoo for me?

[pun_guin]

Hi, everyone! I could need your advice. But before I tell you what I'm after, it might be relevant to talk about my background a bit.

I was probably rather late to the game: Some time in the mid-90s, my first encounters with Linux was the mystic "geek" room in my school, mostly powered by S.u.S.E. Linux instead of the (well-matured) WfW 3.11 which dominated the rest of the school's accessible hardware. I was sufficiently interested in technology, so, since I was just starting with "computing" and I did not have an established workflow yet, I purged my own, still new(ish) Windows PC and tried a number of distributions myself until the 2010s.

My longest-lasting (and, overall, happiest) encounters on Linux desktops during that period were probably with S.u.S.E. Linux, Red Hat (later, Fedora) and Linux Mint. Although I think that I always had a soft spot for "KISS" principles, my experiences with Arch which was recommended to me by friends were horrible: Everything was or, at least, behaved like being broken after every second or third update. My only encounter with Gentoo itself was in the school to which I referred above: The administrator had tried to move the network from S.u.S.E. to Gentoo - it was rolled back after a short period because Gentoo seemed to have its problems. I was not knowing enough back then, so I did not bother to ask him why.

I usually don't stick with Linux for too long and I left the boat entirely just before the big systemd wave. In the time between, while doing most of my tasks on Windows, I dove into FreeBSD desktops and I finally started to understand the advantages of compiling everything according to my needs. This was when I finally understood Gentoo - but I already had BSD.

However, for a number of (mostly driver-related) reasons, I started to actively watch and poke into the Linux ecosystem again. Seeing that systemd has become a monstrosity by now and I should probably not even try to tame it (life is short), I spent the first three months of my part-time return to Linuxland with a dedicated laptop running Void. While I truly like Void and I am happy to know it (it just works), it feels like I'm missing some of the freedom to change things at their core. Sure, Void has sane defaults, but I am curious enough to not just live with what's there. A reevaluation of my options left me with two possible candidates which are promising enough:

• Slackware. There does not seem to be anything that could kill it - cockroaches and Slackware will probably survive a nuclear war. The obvious downsides to me: Package management (with actual management features - I can live with compiling ports, I do not want to live with hunting for several layers of dependencies) is a third-party thing on Slackware and SysV init might decrease performance. Void has runit which is plain awesome. Sure, I could probably replace it by something else with a lot of effort - but why? So I kept hunting... and I found:
  
• Gentoo. I don't know why, but Gentoo - pronounced dead for 12 years now - is still there and it is still taking refugees. Nice! It does not seem to have any of Slackware's relevant "problems", but it brings its own one to this very laptop: It is a budget Acer Aspire with a 256 GB SSD and an AMD A8 CPU. I can't decide between the fear of a quickly degrading SSD or the fear of having to wait two days before compiling is done...

The most obvious answer would be: "Try both!" - I know. But Gentoo does not seem to be something which can be "installed quickly". One does not simply...
So what would be your advice? I'll follow it blindly, I promise.
_________________
I already use the new Genthree.

[NeddySeagoon]

pun_guin,

Welcome to Gentoo.

Gentoo is more like BSD than any of the binary distros you named. The Gentoo Portage package manager name was borrowed from Ports.
Think of Gentoo like Linux From Scratch with a package manager and some get you going default settings.

Gentoo is the portage ebuild repository and the Portage package manager. Everything else is ${UPSTREAM}.
As a result, Gentoo is a toolkit you use to build your own distro, your way. With that freedom, you get a lot more control.
You must make all the decisions that binary distros make for you.

If you stay with all stable, it will mostly 'just work'. Likewise, all testing but expect some rough edges.
Mixing stable and testing is possible but leads to versioning issues.
If testing is not bleeding edge enough, the hemorrhaging edge is there too in the form of ebuilds that pull from the upstream repository.
You won't get the hemorrhaging edge by accident though.

Your first Gentoo install will take a few days. Once you have some practice, it won't need any more of your time than a binary distro.
There is rarely any need to reinstall Gentoo. It may be a faster way to fix an issue but you can always get from where you are to where you want to be.
That includes changing the hardware under the install.

Lastly, my advice is not to do anything in Gentoo blindly :)
Build on what you know works, so you can back out a change.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

[pun_guin]

Hey, NeddySeagoon,

[NeddySeagoon]

pun_guin,

There are a few rare cases when you need to rebuild everything.
When the C++ ABI changes, all the C++ code needs to be rebuilt, that's not really everything.

I make a distinction between your time to install Gentoo and CPU time.
Despite what you may have heard, you do not need to read the compiler output as it scrolls :)
It will be saved in case its needed.

I run Gentoo on Raspberry Pi (arm64) a 2008 Acer One (x86) an AMD Phenom II and a collection of servers.
The servers do not have a GUI. The others have MATE and Xfce4.
There is a distinction between run and build too. The Acer One has an 8G SSD. Its not enough to build Gentoo but its plenty for a stripped down binary install.
Even the Pi has Libreoffice and Firefox, more because I can than because I actually it there.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

[Naib]

the initial configuration may take a couple of days purely due to unfamiliarity. My 1st Gentoo install did take a weekend and this wasn't influenced as much by compiling. My most recent install (new PC build), I was booting within 30min and then the additional X all built within 2hours.

the time difference is mostly down to lack of familiarity with specific Gentoo tool but more importantly you realize you don't know much about how a Linux distro works & the needed configurations away from the upstream defaults.

Likewise when I did my 1st install the stage3 tarballs were only updated every few months, these days they are updated daily. Now this is key because once you have downloaded a valid stage3 tarball and lay this out onto your target harddrive, the packages contains are part of the @system set & they will not need updated (saves time). As a result the only packages you really need to build as part of a new install are the key but undefined components (your choice of logger, your choice of cron etc) as well as your custom kernel.

Then its a matter of adding the packages you want rather than just need (openbox etc...) to produce a custom setup.
The rebuild world is different from bsd. "rebuild world" to rebuild everything would be akin to emerge -e @world in gentoo where it means rebuild EVERYTHING. This is rarely needed and you would usually just use emerge --sync && emerge -uvDN @ world to sync the database & then build upgraded packages. If you run on stable you will go days sometime weeks without updates. If you run unstable there is usually updates daily... sometimes it is just one package & sometimes it is a massive amount (a qt bump)
_________________

[pun_guin]

[wpkzz]

Hallo pun_guin:

I think you are absolutelly NOT late in the game. I started to use GNU/Linux around 2003, in the faculty of sciences (Red Hat 7) and then I switched to Gentoo around 2007. The first time you install it will take like 6 days, not because compiling, but, as the other pointed, to n00bness. I see that that will not be your case. It seems to me that with your experience, you shall have it up and running after at most 2 days. And as it was also said: update world does not mean rebuild everything again: I use a unstable branch, and I do not have to wait more than some hours to finish with an update-upgrade to the world set. The only packages that I have seen can take a while to compile are the browsers, namely chromium and firefox. Everything else is pretty fast on my i7 at 2600Mhz with 8 GB Ram and a mechanical harddrive.

Do it, man. It is fun.

Also, greetings to NeddySeagon, he has helped me many times here in the forums.

[pun_guin]

Hey wpkzz (just imagine I wouldn't pronounce it as a word),

[Goverp]

[NeddySeagoon]

pun_guin,

Gentoo does not provide a binary install but once you have an install, you can reuse the binaries.
It helps if you know you want to do that ahead of time.

Don't worry too much about firefox, libreoffice and a few other biggies.
They are available pre built. That does mean you don't get to choose how to build them if you opt for the pre built versions.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

[pun_guin]

That's nice. How can I reuse binaries and how can I install/update a binary Firefox?
_________________
I already use the new Genthree.

[NeddySeagoon]

pun_guin,

When you install, set FEATURES=buildpkg in make.conf. That will save a binary package of everything you compile.
There is a utility called quickpkg too, that will generate binary packages from your installed system.
However, it either drops config files or includes them as they are on the live install.
That means a careless moment and you give away all your password hashes. You probably don't want to do that.

For a web browser, like firefox, you choose the right package at install time.

[C5ace]

I look after 21 local and remote Gentoo Xfce laptops and desktops . Using my "Cut & Paste" installation script allows me to install a system using about 10 to 15 minutes keyboard time. Compile time varies with the speed of the system. The most recent $450.00 Laptop took about 22 hours unattended time. This included Libreoffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Avidemux and Qbittorrent.

Updates are run once a week.

[pun_guin]

Thank you, NeddySeagoon!
_________________
I already use the new Genthree.

[szatox]

[pun_guin]

[szatox]

Pun_guin, no idea where they're coming from. Seems to be mostly Void those days, though I suppose a few guys had some previous experience.
There was a short increase in activity of people running form systemd just after Debian fell. I didn't really pay attention to the other distros.
A8 kinda is on the lower end. I have something similar, I think it's like 10 year old CPU by now, so nothing fancy given the progress that happened along the way. However, it does get the job done.
Sure, something new and shiny would get it done faster, but I also managed to hijack a small VPS. It is still usable on 1/1/20 (cores/RAM/disk) if you get creative. Now gotta see if I can keep it alive for an extended time, or maybe maintenance of that puny thing would overwhelm me after it stops being my new toy.

So, grab gentoo installation manual and give it a try. And then you can tell us whether or not Gentoo is good for you

[pun_guin]

[pun_guin]

I'll just throw in my experiences here.

Today's success:
Thanks to the awesome folks in #gentoo, I am compiling the Gentoo kernel as I am typing this. My poor little machine is making some noise. I heard that I could control the compilation priority over flags. I might experiment with that later. Right now, I am mostly sticking to the defaults from the Handbook, more or less doing some visual copy & paste (plus WiFi and SSD support).

I am not courageous enough to configure the kernel manually. Maybe when I have a running system...

Today's weirdness:
- The CD-R refused to boot. An USB thumbdrive saved the day.
- Gentoo has no vi but busybox vi? Not as intuitive but good enough. I don't like nano.
_________________
I already use the new Genthree.

[Naib]

[John R. Graham]

[pun_guin]

It is the minimal install CD ...
Thank you!
_________________
I already use the new Genthree.

[NeddySeagoon]

pun_guin,

The compilation priority is controlled with an entry in make.conf.
Read

[pun_guin]

vi is fine - Vim would be overkill indeed. Thank you for the NICENESS hint - I'll check that!
_________________
I already use the new Genthree.

[Proinsias]

http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/

Gentoo based, CD sized, vim & much more.