What do you use Gentoo for?

[roboto]

I use it as the OS for my workstation, mail server, print server, normal gaming rig, a normal computer (web surfing), and FTP server all in one on my Dell OptiPlex GX520 with the CPU upgraded to a Pentium D, and the RAM to 4GB.
_________________
Answers please.

The true hater of man expects nothing from him and is indiscriminate to his works.
-Ayn Rand

[NeddySeagoon]

roboto,

In two physical systems, Gentoo supports running KVMs.
One physical system is my mail server, router/firewall, media server and random short lived other KVMs.
The second system runs my webserver and a few other odds and ends. The webserver hosts a mirror of kernel-seeds.org, My quassel core is there somewhere too.
There are a few BINHOSTs thrown in and some images for 64 bit Raspberry Pi 3.

My GPS timeserver on a Raspberry Pi runs a very old Debian. Converting it to Gentoo has been on my todo list for several years. Its a 256MB Pi B.
I have a Pi 3 running 64 bit Gentoo too.

My main desktop runs Old Fashioned Gentoo so I don't depend on udev and friends.
Other desktops around the house are a bit more conventional.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

[Telemin]

Roboto,

Everything. I have a gentoo machine at work running a dual socket Xeon E5-2690. 24 cores, 48 threads with 128GB RAM. I use it to run physics simulations for my day job in academia, we have a 400 node HPC cluster at my work as well, but this thing is as good as 8 HPC nodes

At home, I have the fileserver which hosts my various nfs shares for documents and media, and also serves the (gentoo) boot image to the RPi (original 1st batch) that I use as a dedicated firewall.

At my Mum's place there is the hardened machine that hosts a couple of win 7 vms that I use to run my mums accountancy business servers.

And finally there is my desktop, a now nearly decade old AMD Phenom XII machine that I have coerced into hosting a windows 10 vm that I use for my gaming with GPU passthrough.

[fturco]

I use Gentoo on both my desktop and laptop computers. I also have a Vultr VPS instance with Gentoo.

[NeddySeagoon]

Telemin,

The page I followed has been updated.
I'm fairly sure the GPS board I have has been discontinued too.

The original page is still online.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

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

[tld]

I use it on my everyday workstation that I'm on right now, on which I do LAMP development. Also using it on my MythTV frontend and backend, which have been cranking along happily for an astonishing 10 years on the same x86 hardware.

Tom

[leifbk]

I've been running Gentoo as my main system since 2003, when I had a Pentium 3 with 512 MB RAM. Nowadays I have an insanely overpowered rig with a quad-core i7 Skylake @ 4 GHz and 32 GB RAM, 2 2 TB disks in Raid-1 for / and 4 2 TB disks in Raid-5 for /home. As the disks are growing old (5 years this summer) I'm going to swap the system disks for SSDs soon, but I'll probably stick to spinning rust for the /home raid for now. Soon after the latest mobo/CPU/RAM upgrade I ripped out the fanless Geforce graphics card and I'm now running my 32" screen right off the mobo HDMI outlet.

I'm not using the system for particularly heavy tasks, just an Apache/PHP/postgreSQL stack running my genealogy database, and then the usual KDE desktop mixture of mail, browser windows, consoles, documents, Clementine playing old jazz music, and a couple of games, namely Pysol and OpenTTD. I'm running gkrellm on desktop 6 along with the root terminal window I'm using for systems administration, and the krells usually idle in the lower left. The heavy work is of course compilng new packages, and It's nice to be able to build Libreoffice in 40 minutes
_________________
Grumpy old man

[devilheart]

First day in the office: "This is your Ubuntu box. You are root but, if you touch things too much, you will have to support yourself"
Second day: I was installing Gentoo

Now I use Gentoo for all my work activities, and I convinced two colleagues to switch. They didn't like systemd afte the update to ubuntu 16.04
During my previous job, I managed to switch the whole computer farm of my former research group to Gentoo
Home, I have been using gentoo since 2002

[luiztux]

I use it for everything, the same installation for 8 years...

[Hieronymus Bosch]

I was introduced to Gentoo on a class about robotics in 2014. Since then, my gentoo box is for programming purposes and daily use . I tried Ubuntu and Debian but is not the same feeling.
_________________
Details fueled any investigation ...

[depontius]

It's on all five computers normally used in my home. (Two servers, two desktops, and a laptop)
After that, it's whatever anyone normally does on a computer.
_________________
.sigs waste space and bandwidth

[figueroa]

Everything: home computer (with mail and web server), laptop(s), servers and desktops at supported school.
_________________
Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi

[Aries97]

I have Gentoo running on a cute little Asus laptop (Broadwell CPU). I've used Gentoo on a number of machines; it seems every time I move all my computers break and I have to start over. ;-( Hopefully as I switch to SSD's and doing more backup images I won't have as much trouble with that.

PS: Happy 4th of July everyone.

[Myu]

Regular Internet browsing Linux machine as well as Linux Gaming machine and virtualization host for Windows gaming (KVM + VFIO)

Works beautifully since years !
_________________
Gentoo stable with bits of ~amd64 // Xfce 4.13 + Compiz Reloaded.

[Tony0945]

Web surfer, e-mail, workstation (C++ development) and DLNA server. The DLNA server machine also supports portage for the other machines via http-replicator. It's a low power (65W) Kaveri APU that's on all the time. Measured power (via Kill-A-Watt) at the wall is 30W most of the time. My k10 workstations draw 4 to 5 times that, but luckily Gentoo boots fast compared to the lethargic Windoze.

I still have a Win7 machine used exclusively for TV recording via SageTV. The card is supported by the kernel and SageTV has a Linux version, but it will only build on Ubuntu.

I still have a Win XP dual boot on one workstation used for MsMoney 2000 and VideoRedo. I used to be able to run those on Wine but not since v 1.6
Alternatives exist like Kmoney and Handbrake but I prefer the two I've got. MsMoney has 18 years of data in it.

EDIT: The win 7 machine is in the basement and exclusively accessed by rdesktop from Gentoo. Rdesktop works better than Win XP "remote desktop".

[ShadowHawkBV]

The main Gentoo almost stable workstation is a file server/print server for the house as well as my main web and work machine. Gamer laptop has Gentoo and virtual box with windows 7 and 10 for course development and business. Ultrabook is Gentoo unstable for travel. Gaming machine is dual-boot Gentoo and Win 7. Mac-mini is for feeding videos to the TV from the file server. Running Mint because the POS is too antiquated to build anything in a reasonable time, and I can"t wrap my head around making a chroot to do it on the other machines. Haven't broken my better half of her windows addiction.... yet.
_________________
This space for rent... Well maybe to give away.. Heck.. i'll pay you to take it.

Lost Linux Neophyte

[beandog]

I dual-boot my laptop with Windows 7 (SWTOR, yo), and do mostly just development on that or need to work on a client's stuff.

Two headless servers, one 4-core for doing all my encoding / multimedia heavy lifting, and a tiny low powered one for Plex.

znurt.org runs on Gentoo of course donated by another dev, and then lastly there's my own VPS of which I'm super proud -- runs 14 websites on a dual-core i686 install with 512 MB of RAM.

Gentoo rawks.
_________________
If it ain't broke, tweak it. dvds | blurays | blog | wiki

[statikregimen]

This is an encouraging thread (and others like it that are popping up lately)...So many people now able to use Linux exclusively makes me think maybe there's hope for this world after all!

Anyway, add me to the "use it for everything" camp - couple servers, gaming, programming, cat memes, porn...You know: the usual stuff.

Winderps has been banished to the land of VMs in my world. Nothing pleases me more than the ability to just minimize it when I've had enough of it's nonsense.

[cyberhoffman]

I use only Gentoo on all my machines:

1. Home desktop computer: for gaming, web surfing etc.
2. Home server (Rpi2): NFS-server, DLNA-server (minidlna), torrents (transmission-daemon).
3. Desktop computer at work: office, web, mail, android development for fun etc.
4. Server at work: NFS-server, lighthttpd, print-server.
5. Laptop (DELL Vostro 15 5568): web surfing, gaming etc.

And it's pity my knowledge isnt enough to install Gentoo on my smartphone Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro

[mimosinnet]

This thread reminded me of updating the machines registered in my linux-counter account, where you can find my boxes. I use gentoo for everything (server, desktop, laptop,...). I have:

- A laptop for travelling (Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU N3700 @ 1.60GHz)
- One laptop for watching tv (Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 540 @ 2.53GHz)
- Two desktops (home and work)
- Two working servers (web applications and system backups, binhost) (AMD)
- Two servers for testing purposes and binhost for laptops.

Gentoo shines!

(and yes, it is a pity I am unable to install gentoo in my android phone :O )

[monkeygirl]

I use Gentoo for almost everything I usually do a computer, viz. work and play. I don't use Gentoo for word processing, spreadsheets or presentation slides. And to be fair--that has nothing to do with Gentoo itself. If there were anything more useful than LibreOffice or OpenOffice, I'd be using Gentoo for that too. Also, I couldn't use Gentoo for online classes due to not being able to run webex on it.

At office: workstation
-- used for: programming, architecture component modelling and DB modelling, scripting, testing, RHEL and Solaris builds (VM host), remote system administration for servers, hosts my Windoows 7 VM for using MS Office and for webex sessions. I also run a tomcat server on my workstation.

At home:
--main computer used for: personal projects, linux 101 (mainly hacking Plasma), 3D modelling, multimedia, web stuff
--travel hybrid laptop used for: multimedia, web surfing, reading, hackathons
--mini laptop used for: writing, web stuff, cooking, reading

Because my favourite game is a PC game and I play and make CC for it, I have to have Windows as dual boot on any computer that has decent specs. I also have to have it on my travel laptop because most workshops that require user follow along are done on that platform.

At work where I have to work regularly with all flavours of linux, unix and windows, just running Gentoo with VMs suffice. For low-spec computers that supported versions of windows would destroy, just having Gentoo is fine.

[Tony0945]

[monkeygirl]

[nokilli]

I put Gentoo on everything. Or rather, I guess I should say I _try_ to put Gentoo on everything.

Two outright failures were the Asus Transformer Book T100TA and the HP ChromeBook 14 /w Tegra K1. Worked really hard on those and got nowhere. I'm not a hardware guy, but I am pretty good at the software, so I often make the mistake of thinking that because being stubborn and single-minded works with software that should work with hardware too. Well, it doesn't. Not for me at least.

I have two MacBook Pros. I had Gentoo running on them once upon a time but had to revert back to Mac OS X and Windows. Then trying to go back to Gentoo I experienced all kinds of problems. Both have Nvidia GPU's, and of course that's where the difficulties centered. I could get nouveau to run on one but I needed direct rendering so I went back to Mac OS X. Couldn't get nvidia-driver or nouveau to work with the other, so in complete exasperation I tried Ubuntu. It too failed. It's an older MacBook, and I read online that I should try older releases of Ubuntu. So I do that, and those fail as well. On a lark I try Fedora. And it works. Perfectly. A surreal experience even.

I have a Lenovo IdeaPad. One of the ones with the AMD APU, maybe six years old at this point. A perfect Gentoo install. Worked really hard on that though, I think suspend-to-ram was the big issue there. But so satisfying to get it exactly right. At one point it was my only system. If I had any other OS on there I'd have probably given it up by now, it is pretty old, the screen is dimming, the keyboard is small, the battery is fading. And if the building catches fire it's what I'm grabbing as I'm running out the door.

And of course, I have a desktop. My third attempt at building my own system, where every component was sourced with Linux in mind.

Radeon.

Radeon.

Radeon.

Of course it's Gentoo and it works perfectly and it was a very easy install. It's maybe four years old now but still beefy enough and I enjoy it immensely. _This_ is Gentoo.

Right now it's my primary system. I'm a month or so into awesome as my new window manager, replacing ratpoison because I have multiple displays and ratpoison works with that but not well. emacs, rxvt-unicode and firefox are usually what's running. tmux sometimes. mupdf when I have to. I should be banned from using gimp but there it is.

I boot from usb stick and root sits on top of bcache->lvm->dm-crypt. bcache because lvm is already too much, I have a simple system and only one physical volume. dm-crypt on top of lvm because I airgap with some logical volumes and connect to the net with others and like to use different keys for each after seeing how easy it was to extract the key being used for root if you got root.

Gentoo was my choice oh so many years ago because I was coming from LFS and had written my own set of script files to help automate that process and then discovered somebody else was doing it so much better. I like the control, I like being exposed to the OS, I like knowing what is running on my system. I was paranoid before Snowden. I was of the opinion that diving deep into Gentoo would give me both the OS I could use for development, play and hosting. I'm concerned now that hosting may not be something I get to do going forward owing to what I see as a very confused stance on security from the community.

I've been a Gentoo user for over a decade now and I've spent the past couple of weeks viewing new posts here to try to be helpful and maybe return the help I've received here and it turns out I have *nothing* to offer except feeble commentary I regret making as soon as I hit the enter key. It's humbling to have spent all of this time on this system and still be... what does it say? Tux's little helper? As if.

I am in awe of those of you who are able to dispense solutions with such ease and so regularly. I mean that. Dude over in the other thread is asking about why his HDMI don't work and I'm telling him to check his cable like this is a Windows forum. Ban me now.
_________________
We are the block device. The kernel is our client.

[Tom_]

@nokilli, could you tell us more about your lvm / disk setup ? How do you use isolate your data? I'm curious...