Should I Get Into Gentoo? (x-post from /r/Gentoo)
I've been using Linux for the past 5 to 10 years. I'm not a developer, but a mid-to-advanced user. I don't really know bash (or any programming language for that matter), but I got a folder with 100 bash scripts I wrote myself. I compile my own Emacs (which I configured from scratch and contains more than 200 crudes functions of my own), Neovim (also configured from scratch) and other programs such as suckless terminal. I'm an i3wm user and currently use MX-Linux. I'm very good at Googling and pattern recognition.
I got a brand new AMD desktop with a Ryzen processor (no dedicated graphics, wifi works fine with a USB adapter). Should I try Gentoo, or maybe I should study more (maybe with something like Linux Journey)in order to get a better experience?
Reasons to install Gentoo:
- Learning experience
- A completely customized desktop experience
- Never having to reinstall my operating system again
- Masochism
- Putting my powerful processor to work
- It seems cool (and less painful than LFS)
- Some hypothetical performance gain
Hey, I was wondering why this seemed familiar!
Tbh, if it's not critical for work at the moment, I'd absolutely suggest giving it a shot. You'll learn a lot by doing it and if the level of control that Gentoo offers is important to you, you won't find that much competition out there in the Linux world - however, definitely give FreeBSD and its expansive ports system a look, or at least once it gains integrated Ryzen graphics support if it doesn't already.
Even if you later decide you don't like it, getting through a Gentoo install is an excellent learning experience that will help you understand how other distros work too. I used to use a complicated combination of hard drives where some were encrypted and some weren't, and I had to share the encrypted contents with other OS' non-encrypted contents. Even though I wound up not using Gentoo, figuring out how to set it up let me do it manually on Debian and smoothed the process greatly.
I used Gentoo for more than 5 years as my main distro and i loved it. Once setup everything works wonderfully and the maintenance is not that hard. You just need to read the news if it comes up after an update (eselect news read or something like that).
It's highly customizable and if you like suckess software (dwm, st, etc) it's easy to configure and patch it with the -savedconfig use flag.
You don't need to study more. If you can read and use the command line, you can install Gentoo. You will learn things, but the installation process is mostly following a guide.
That said, you seem to be all over the place. In another topic you want a distro that works like a refrigerator and give no headaches, now you want to customize everything and build from source.
For me, Gentoo is fine, but it is a LOT OF WORK for day to day use. Way more if it's your first time using it. You'll spend hours fiddling with use flags, trying, disabling, configuring, managing keywords (~amd64, etc), configuring and compiling your own kernel.
I loved it, but when i lost my hd i switched to Void (Alpine seems to be a good alternative too, but it's not desktop oriented) and i think it's way less hassle for the same (if not more) benefits.
You need to figure out what you want from a distro first.
Edit/Update: your performance gains on Gentoo will be near zero. It doesn't work like that anymore. Use Gentoo for the customization and DIY, but not to squeeze more performance or put your processor to work. You will not feel any difference.
Honestly? Go for Alpine Linux. It's still a "build it yourself" operating system. But the build tools are better maintained, as far as I can tell. All of the times I have tried to install Gentoo (upwards of 5 times), the installer broke halfway through due to an obscure bug.
Thank you for answering.
In which aspects is Alpine similar to Gentoo?
muslandBusyBoxwould make Alpine Linux a harder experience for a semi-noob like me?I mean, nothing in the linux world does, does it? I don't know of any place I could direct a total beginner to that they wouldn't bawk at. Even the arch linux wiki (which just describes configuration and some problems you might encounter with solutions), that I believe is pretty clear, is not suitable for beginners (I have had several people have difficulty reading it).
I think only Gentoo and GUIX (and maybe stali,morpheus,oasis) has those. You can fork aports and customize stuff though.
You have to pull some things from source and build them from scratch. You can't just grab binaries off the internet and expect them to run. At least not without a chroot.
Probably?
Based on your answer I don’t think Alpine is for me then...
And being musl you can't use most proprietary drivers out there. Nvidia and Netflix are out of question unless you make a chroot.
Check Void, it has musl and glibc and it's less time consuming than Gentoo. And you can install it via installer or by hand from another distro live usb.
Ubuntu isn't bad on that front. I've put muggles onto ubuntu and they've managed just fine.
It's not remotely what OP is looking for, but it is a very beginner friendly part of the linux world.
Yeah... There are many friendly distros with great documentation out there.
Actually, I just posted a comment about this yesterday, but yes, go for it. I would actually recommend Funtoo over Gentoo. Also, it's worth setting up binary packages from the go, to save time if you need to reinstall.
I think it's really easy to setup. I've never had an install fail; I've only ever broken things down the road by doing something silly.
Performance gain may be measurable but is insignificant. The advantage is in customisability. Do give yourself time to compile everything. Your first stop for help should be man pages or official Wikis, both of which are excellent.
Oh, and have fun!
I which ways Funtoo provide a better experience?
I’d want to build something really minimal, not even X or anything like that.
You can make *too as minimal as you'd like.
The big difference is ego and epro, which managing overall system configuration. It's a little hard to explain what makes them better; essentially they replace some cumbersome configuration files and scripts used in Gentoo.
There's a few other things here and there e.g. Binary kernels, better grub configuration, git by default for updating repos (rather than rsync).
technically epro is part of ego; see wiki
Well, I got a new Ryzen desktop about 3 months ago and had a similar thought. I haven't been using Linux as long as you, ~3 years, but I thought trying Gentoo would be fun. Also, it was one of the easier distros to get the lts kernel in the iso. It took me five full restarts to get a functioning install, but each time I fucked up I knew what I did wrong and how to fix it. I learned a lot from those mistakes. Then, I somehow broke glibc completely, and I gave up and went to Nixos. Then 3 weeks later Arch was updated with the new systemd and I returned to my true love.
Why make a whole new thread when you already had one discussing your desire to try out a new distro?
Because I value your opinion.