Screenshot of QEMU VM showing an ASCII Gentoo Logo + system info

I followed Mental Outlaw’s 2019 guide and followed the official handbook to get up-to-date instructions and tailored instructions for my system, the process took about 4 hours however I did go out for a nice walk while my kernel was compiling. Overall I enjoyed the process and learnt a lot about the Linux kernel while doing it.

I’m planning on installing it to my hardware soon, this was to get a feel for the process in a non-destructive way.

  • REdOG@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    My first Gentoo install took a weekend and about a week later I had a desktop. KDE took me like 2 days to compile. p3 800mhz Toshiba with maybe 256MB RAM I forget actually…version was 1.2 alpha I wrote 1.too on the CD

  • Pantherina@feddit.de
    64·
    2 years ago

    Dont want to offend, but this is the most environmentally harmful OS on this planet probably. Except maybe BitcoinOS or something XD

    • H2207@lemmy.worldOP
      7·
      2 years ago

      How exactly? On idle Gentoo uses almost no resouces comapred to Windows 11 for example. If you’re on about needing to compile every package, then think how often is someone actually installing a new package and for how long is the processor working to do that? Also on a binary distro, then large servers are used to compile every last package, no matter how big or small, in that distro’s repos, then more machines are used to provide those binaries to the users.

      The whole pipeline for Gentoo is much simpler, the end user’s system is a lot simpler and uses far less resources.

    • Laser@feddit.de
      1·
      2 years ago

      Actual USE flags I guess? If you ultimately want these is a different question though

      • beteljuice@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 years ago

        Interesting, looked at the Gentoo docs to understand USE flags. Nix has similar capabilities, where some packages expose configuration options that apply to the build, but it’s not a overtly named feature consistently applies across all packages. It seems that something like USE flags could be implemented rather easily by Nix but was either deemed not necessary or was an oversight. You can still change the build for any package but it might involve introspecting the package definition to figure out what to change so not meant as a first class mechanism like USE flags.

        Edit: found this: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/12877

        • Laser@feddit.de
          1·
          2 years ago

          USE flags have some inherent “issues” or rather downsides that make them non-options for some distributions.

          First, they create a much larger number of package variants, simplified 2^(number of USE flags applicable to package). This is fine if you don’t want to supply binaries to your users. Second, the gain they bring to the average workstation is rather insignificant today. Users usually want all functionality available and not save 30 kb of RAM and then suddenly have to rebuild world because they find out they’re missing a USE flag that they suddenly need. Also, providing any kind of support for a system where the user doesn’t run the binaries you provided and maybe even changed dependencies (e.g. libressl instead of openssl) is probably impossible.

          It’s very cool stuff if you want to build a system very specific to your needs and hardware, and I do believe that NixOS could have profited in some parts from it, but I don’t have specific ideas.

          • beteljuice@lemmy.ml
            1·
            2 years ago

            Yeah that thread i linked does talk about combinatorial explosion that would result in either a unmaintainable cache size or basically no caching at all of binaries. Your point about premature optimization is good. It makes me think that the seeming ignorance of USE flags by Nix was intentional.

  • spagnod@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 years ago

    Hehe… I installed Gentoo last year and I was thrown in the deepest of deep ends after having to set up a custom initramfs for my LUKS setup… took about a week to get it running…

    • khannie@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Agreed. It’s such a great learning process. I ultimately gave up on Gentoo but learned a lot by using it for about 2 years way back in around 2005.

      Linux From Scratch brings a huge leap in understanding too.