I used Gentoo for 3y. in hindsight I wasted so many CPU cycles just because I thought --march=native would make things faster.
nope.
you know what made things faster? switching to arch π
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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When CPUs were a lot slower you could genuinely get noticeable performance improvements by compiling packages yourself, but nowadays the overhead from running pre-compiled binaries is negligible.
Hell, even Gentoo optionally offers binary packages now.
Most of the reason to build your own packages is a form of runtime assurance - to know what your computer is running is 100% what you intend.
At least as a guix user that's what I tell myself.
Compiling your own packages only ensures that, well, you're running packages that you compiled. This definitely does not mean that your computer is running what you intend at all.
Half the time I don't know what my CPU is executing, and that's code that I wrote myself.
This definitely does not mean that your computer is running what you intend at all.
This is true of all programming
I like to imagine that the early heroes who programmed in punch cards and basically raw machine code knew exactly what the CPU was the computer was running, but who knows...
Do you audit all the code before compiling? Otherwise youβre just transferring your trust elsewhere.
This is my experience playing with FreeBSD.
"These ports are cool, I can compile all the software from source so I know exactly what I'm getting!"
[This software has 100 dependencies]
"Well I'm not reading all that, I'll just click Yes for all"
Yes, I tried it around 2002/2003, back when the recommended way was from stage1. I think I had a P4 with HT. It was noticeably faster than redhat or mandrake (yes, I was distro hopping a lot). Emerge gnome-mono was a night run. Openoffice about 24hrs.
Lots of wasted time but I did learn how to setup some things manually.
once there was a bug with dependencies of transcode and some other package (mplayer I think). it would ask to downgrade one and upgrade the other. then several hours of compiling later it would agree to upgrade both. then several more hours of compiling later it would again want to downgrade one again
I think there was a groove worn in my hard drive from this
Oh yeah, I remember those. My solution was to not emerge anything for 24 hours, by the next day usually they fixed the issue.
so even after 24h compiling ur not done! u need to dispatch-config through so many config files...
I did jump onto Gentoo ship chasing performance, but stayed because of USE flags.
You know what was even faster? Switching to something easier like Fedora/Linux mint/Debian
"Tell me one last thing", said Harry. βdid i install Open BSD for real? Or has this business, the dual boot failure , both computers damaged, the sharks, all been happening inside my head?β
Dumbledore chortled at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harryβs ears even though the bright ocean mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.
βOf course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?
OpenBSD is the easiest BSD to install and most things work right outside the box
Now imagine the same meme but with Gentoo and LFS
I've been thinking about it ...
I'm not even ready for Arch because I can't make decisions for myself.
That's easy, just pick btrfs, gnome, pipewire, systemd, gdm, grub, and add flatpak in your additional packages.
Every other configuration is wrong.
/s
Newfangled bullshit! Choose ext2, twm, alsa, sysvinit, xinit, and compile additional software from source.
Only 3/7 correct. It's almost like you wanted to be wrong π
I yearn for Fedora
ext4, sway, pipewire, systemd, just use the the standard vconsole, grub and use pacman/AUR/custom PKGBUILDs for everything
Mostly agreed except for grub. Systemd-boot ftw
I mean it used to be called gummiboot. What more do you want?
Friends.
But besides that, yeah, other bootloaders would probably be good for my use case, but ... I'm too lazy, especially because 3/5 of my machines are supposed to be always on (and 2/5 are remote), so changing bootloader will be a hassle.
Try endeavoros, it's an opinionated arch with a simple installer
I put Linux Mint on a thumb drive once a few months ago to try it. So, yeah, I'm pretty into Linux.
That's unironically why I like Manjaro π
CachyOS on my side. Lol. Decide for me. I'll change it if I hate it. ππ
Pepperidge Farms remembers compiling apps via the grimoire spells in sorcerer Linux.
I tried Gentoo recently and I really liked it when I finally figured everything out. I wanted the latest packages similar to arch, but I was basically spending at least an hour every time I started my computer updating. I still really like Gentoo, but it just isn't for me right now. I appreciate what it taught me about Linux though
Compiling dependencies for an hour or so every time I wanted to install something also got a bit old.
What did Gentoo teach you about Linux?
I main it (and am never switching again btw), but I learned absolutely nothing new. Packages build themselves, and everything works.
I was hoping to learn new things about compiling from source, but I guess I will have to make ebuilds for that.
I guess more about setup and what other distros do for you behind the scenes. Everyone always talks about how bare bones arch is, but it still does a lot behind the scenes with config and setup, especially with encryption
Eventually you'll come back to wanting a working easy to use system
I've become my dad. God damn you passage of time!
Back in the early 2010s, I had a friend told me that his computer crashed trying to compile all of Gentoo.
NixOS is the better source-based distro. Everything can compile from source, but you can also use the binary cache if you don't want to.
Nah, Fedora is better, because it has a nice looking logo in neofetch.
In my experience the only people who find the name Fedora fine are the ones who unironically wear trillbies
Well i didn't even know any other meanings to that word than the distro itself and is fine with it
I never tried gentoo cause i never liked the idea of compiling everything. I only compile if i have to because i always feel like it's a waste of time in general. I have used NixOS for the past 6 months though, but i didn't like how many issues it gave me when updating. Now i'm back on good old void linux.
so he got sent to nixos
Lolll. This is me exactly.
Did Gentoo ever untangle the NP-complete problems in its package manager?