I've been using Gentoo since 2003, and I don't really plan on changing any time soon...
> We don’t go out of our way to tell you how to use your system
I'm not really sure I believe this, because the default profiles do exactly that. One day you'll be happy with your pam config, then bam, package updates and you're forced into passwdqc and faillock.
I think it's time to use an LLM to rewrite portage in C. Might be one of my next projects. Should not take long and the result will be easy to deterministically test side by side.
Never used Gentoo, but what is its advantages over, say, Guix? I don't actually use guix or nix as a daily driver, although one year ago I did install Guix on a separate partition of my desktop PC and I use nix via Home manager to install various cli-based tools.
They solve some of the same problems. I wanted to say the project is not focused on being stateful or reproducible, and it isn't, but honestly all the tools are there if you want to craft your install like that.
Portage is reminiscent of BSD ports, and features like USE flags are where it really shines. It's designed to be super flexible. Roll your own distro basically.
You can just drop a patch into a folder, and every time you re/install or upgrade a package, it'll get applied!
You know that weird thing that bothers you in that specific software? That random popup when you start it? That additional, unneeded "ok" prompt? That donation-begging screen? That stupid checkmark checked on/off by default when it should be off/on instead?
Well, make a patch to fix it, drop it into /etc/portage/patches/<category>/<packagename>/ and it'll get applied automatically every time! And if it's truly a minor thing that bugs you, that patch will work for many new versions too!
(no, i'm not being paid by gentoo to promote them)
I have fond memories of spending long nights recompiling with new flags to try and get slightly better FPS in games... this was over 25 years ago so not in the proton heyday we have now.
These days I'm a fair bit lazier, throw Fedora on and use it happily. update frequently and it almost never causes me any issues.
The Gentoo Forums were a super fun and friendly place back then, I hope they haven't lost that spirit.
I agree 100% with this article. However I switched to NixOS several years ago.
On the axes I most care about, NixOS is better than Gentoo. In particular, managing configurations in NixOS is really a breeze. No more merging diffs of random files in /etc.
On one hand, you could say that Nix has more magic than Gentoo, but on the other hand, the online nix option search links directly to the source code implementing the option.
Gentoo wins on documentation and supporting more than one init system. It probably also wins on security; I haven't dug recently, but NixOS doesn't have a great story for e.g. Mandatory Access Control. Also the nix store is world-readable, so it is much easier than it should be to accidentally spill your secrets to the entire system.
> For example, we are probably one of the few distributions that do not amend our bzip2 package with a nonstandard pkg-config file; so if you develop on Gentoo, you won’t make the absurdly common mistake of publishing a package that requires that file.
As a long-time Gentoo user and supporter, my main issue is the time investment. Not the investment in installing and initial setup, not compilation in the background (binary packages make things much easier today), but staying up-to-date with software upgrades and changes. I did not mind it before the "life happened", but now when it takes even one available night in a month or two, it seems a lot.
Other issue is when you need something promptly, if nothing else to test it out or one-use only and you either have to wait or use something like official binary/flatpak...
I have not had the, ahem, privelege yet of installing Gentoo. I gave up on Linux a while back after I bricked my computer because I missed an update on Arch Linux (no joke). Got a macbook and I’ve been happy ever since…well, at least until I was trying to shareplay Mulholland Drive with my girlfriend while she’s out of town and discovered that the only way to manually adjust audio levels of facetime vs, say, the movie we were trying to watch, which was nearly muted because of the call, was to purchase and install a $20 piece of software. Now, I could go ahead and buy a windows machine which comes preloaded with this feature, but let’s be honest, windows sucks major ass and there is virtually no advantage these days to using it over Linux or a Mac. The software might be a little screwed up but Tim Cook really made some magical consumer grade hardware that outperforms virtually all its possible competitors…still, the audio levels.
I don’t have time to futz around installing Linux distros instead of getting laid like I did as a teenager. I have a job and a girlfriend and more than enough of a social life to keep me busy day to day. But something keeps nipping at my heels, telling me to return to the pen—-the sun is setting on my long sojourn in the warm fields of average life, the long night of idle tinkering approaches once more, that I might sooner forget the morning before it ends.
> I gave up on Linux a while back after I bricked my computer because I missed an update on Arch Linux (no joke)
if you did not want a high maintenance distro why choose Arch? Its meant for the opposite of a Mac user - people who want to control everything, vs people who want it all taken care of for them. There are lots of things in the middle.
> I don’t have time to futz around installing Linux distros instead of getting laid like I did as a teenager.
Install one and resist the temptation to distro-hop. Even better, buy a machine with Linux preinstalled.
26 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 41.4 ms ] thread> We don’t go out of our way to tell you how to use your system
I'm not really sure I believe this, because the default profiles do exactly that. One day you'll be happy with your pam config, then bam, package updates and you're forced into passwdqc and faillock.
Exactly the same is true for me.
Codex has really helped my fix and tighten up my AUR PKGBUILDs.
I was thinking about trying Gentoo in the future, but not being able to contribute because I use LLMs in my workflow sucks.
You can just drop a patch into a folder, and every time you re/install or upgrade a package, it'll get applied!
You know that weird thing that bothers you in that specific software? That random popup when you start it? That additional, unneeded "ok" prompt? That donation-begging screen? That stupid checkmark checked on/off by default when it should be off/on instead?
Well, make a patch to fix it, drop it into /etc/portage/patches/<category>/<packagename>/ and it'll get applied automatically every time! And if it's truly a minor thing that bugs you, that patch will work for many new versions too!
(no, i'm not being paid by gentoo to promote them)
These days I'm a fair bit lazier, throw Fedora on and use it happily. update frequently and it almost never causes me any issues.
The Gentoo Forums were a super fun and friendly place back then, I hope they haven't lost that spirit.
https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Ge...
On the axes I most care about, NixOS is better than Gentoo. In particular, managing configurations in NixOS is really a breeze. No more merging diffs of random files in /etc.
On one hand, you could say that Nix has more magic than Gentoo, but on the other hand, the online nix option search links directly to the source code implementing the option.
Gentoo wins on documentation and supporting more than one init system. It probably also wins on security; I haven't dug recently, but NixOS doesn't have a great story for e.g. Mandatory Access Control. Also the nix store is world-readable, so it is much easier than it should be to accidentally spill your secrets to the entire system.
I did think it was neat finding a memory leak in visual boy advance.
What's this in reference to?
With Gentoo you get to choose SystemD or no SystemD ;)
Other issue is when you need something promptly, if nothing else to test it out or one-use only and you either have to wait or use something like official binary/flatpak...
I don’t have time to futz around installing Linux distros instead of getting laid like I did as a teenager. I have a job and a girlfriend and more than enough of a social life to keep me busy day to day. But something keeps nipping at my heels, telling me to return to the pen—-the sun is setting on my long sojourn in the warm fields of average life, the long night of idle tinkering approaches once more, that I might sooner forget the morning before it ends.
if you did not want a high maintenance distro why choose Arch? Its meant for the opposite of a Mac user - people who want to control everything, vs people who want it all taken care of for them. There are lots of things in the middle.
> I don’t have time to futz around installing Linux distros instead of getting laid like I did as a teenager.
Install one and resist the temptation to distro-hop. Even better, buy a machine with Linux preinstalled.
Good news! These days, you can just buy a computer with Linux preinstalled, with support!
Just leave the distro it shipped with alone and live your life.