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.
What is the value proposition of Gentoo over, say, something like NixOS?
Actual USE flags I guess? If you ultimately want these is a different question though
USE flags and profiles.
I have one old laptop where I decided to test some more obscure Gentoo setups. I chose musl as libc and took llvm toolchain to compile stuff. (All experimental)
It’s honestly cool stuff, but I don’t think a lot of people actually actively want that.
I tried something similar with Exherbo once but couldn’t get it to boot after installation, I don’t remember the specifics but I tried using libressl instead of openssl.
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
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.
Everyone should do this at least once
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.
I installed LFS that on my Dell Latitude 13 (Core 2 Duo SU7300) in a 3 month on and off operation, with packages compiling (and failing) overnight all the time.
Dont want to offend, but this is the most environmentally harmful OS on this planet probably. Except maybe BitcoinOS or something XD
Might as well call linux the most polluting OS. It props up old inefficient systems with high TPW and takes longer to complete tasks. Whereas microsoft and apple makes sure their users are on the latest efficient hw. Maybe a bit offset by the ewaste but who cares, Apple and MS are out savingy the earth.
What?
To show how moronic your claim was to term it as “most environmentally harmful OS” on one single factor(cpu time).
And I dont believe in the efficiency advantages or selfcompiled software vs. immense compiling power needed especially when rolling. On ESR maybe you got me. I really believe code thats made for one platform can be faster. But then you have MacOS which is slower than Arch on their own damn M1 hardware.
I think its better to have older machines that use more energy, than to have new ones that need resources, are worse repairable and all.
Could you explain “TPW” and “hw” in your comment? I read it as hardware, and having an OS force you to buy new (of their own) hardware is not sustainable at all. Its basically planned obsolescense.
Proove me wrong, but cant you securely boot a BIOS on any PC using their old TPM and a security key? I am in the procees of installing Heads on my T430, which is pretty old, but I think this will be very secure even without the new TPM standard.
I am in agreement with most if not all the above points. Didn’t agree with terming a distro the worst of anything based on a single metric.
~~ TPW~~ CPU TDP to use it as a rough efficiency metric. Probably not very accurate but roughly representative. HW meant hardware.
Maybe in many cases repurposing hardware makes sense but based on the source and cost of electricity, hw process generation it might not even be feasible to run compared to modern hw. Might be better to recycle them responsibly than keep those running.
In end I guess you realise there are many factors to consider to determine something good, bad.
Of course, hats why I said bad for the environment. If it was not rolling, maybe. But if you do updates at least twice a week it will consume lots or energy. If you use old hardware or not I think its independend from that.
Even assuming all other factors remain same sure it uses more power but by how much? Best case by how much do you expect the increase to be ? 5-10% of their daily electricity consumption ?
And when you consider the power source, hw efficiency and so on theres no way to assess what the environmental effect an OS has.
Also you are assuming behavior of the person remains the same when using a precompiled packages v. compiling their own. I’ve installed many sw just to try for a few minutes and remove just to try various options. If it takes hours to compile I’d be very picky on what I install.
