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I recommend anyone wanting to learn Linux to deploy a Gentoo machine. It gives you a crash course in all of the various components, allows you to hand roll/cust

I recommend anyone wanting to learn Linux to deploy a Gentoo machine. It gives you a crash course in all of the various components, allows you to hand roll/customize your kernel, and provides incredible granularity in tuning precisely what is on your system. No bloat. No extra dependencies. Apps compiled with support for "superfluous" features disabled, etc. I owe my love of chroot to Gentoo. The guide[1] is incredibly straightforward and easy to follow. 1: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64 https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64

yellow_postit 3y ago
Linux From Scratch gets even more into the weeds. My arc was gentoo -> lfs -> arch Linux when I realized I didn’t want to fiddle as much.
- yellowapple 3y ago
  Slackware comes pretty close, too. Yeah, you can use the TUI installer... but Slackware packages are pretty much just tarballs that you could extract directly onto / (plus an extra folder for metadata and post-install scripts). Starting with a bare-minimum Linux install and extracting enough packages one-by-one to get slackpkg working is a fun exercise (one which I've indeed done on everything from various LXC-based budget VPSs to old thin clients with disk space in the hundreds of MB at best).
  - fouc 3y ago
    my arc was slackware -> gentoo -> arch. very similar vibes across them all I thought.
    - yellowapple 3y ago
      That's indeed why I lump them together as the "SAG Trifecta".
- nickstinemates 3y ago
  Similar arc, but have fiddled with them all. These days most of my machines are arch(btw) or Alpine.
- leidenfrost 3y ago
  My experience with LFS is checking a few makefiles, the doing ./configure && male && make install because I got tired os checking everything by hand. Personally, gentoo is nice because, once you know your way, you can do a big emerge and go get a coffe while it compiles everything.
  - bigpeopleareold 3y ago
    I started to go through LFS, but with the intent of scripting it. What ultimately though slowed me down to a halt was a persistent VirtualBox issue I couldn't solve. But I think I just easily jump back into it now :D
Given_47 3y ago
Ah I’m actually mid gentoo install on an old MacBook of mine for that exact reason. Minimum cd from bootable usb stick altho I’ve currently approached a roadblock with getting the damn wifi set up lol. Ik I can ssh in, but since the goal is a learning experience it seems like kind of a cop out
chaxor 3y ago
It seems that pairing this with the original post, the best outcome is a single shell file, that takes a few arguments, such as device location (USB at /dev/sde) and username/password, etc, and compiles the bootloader, the kernel, etc from scratch using the most trusted basic sources, and then places that on the target device. Obviously it should also install any additional apps like vim, adjust terminal colors, create and copy your ssh keys to machines needed, and configure any windows managers, etc as well from the single shell command. Making that single shell command as small, reliable, readable, and maintainable as possible is the real challenge.
- nickstinemates 3y ago
  `archinstall` on a fresh arch iso gives you something similar in TUI fashion and can export a json output you can save to clone the install to additional machines.
jpmoral 3y ago
Why is 'superfluous' in quotes?
- nickstinemates 3y ago
  Whether something is superfluous or just complete/rounded out is in the eye of the beholder.
  - jpmoral 3y ago
    Yes but I read the sentence to mean that parent was talking about features they actually found superfluous.
plq 3y ago
Can't plus-one this enough. The Gentoo [installation] handbook is a true treasure for the linux newbie. Especially if you are the kind of learner who needs to be challenged to truly ingest the material at hand, just read every word and apply what you have learned. You'll be astonished by the distance that you covered in a month! Whenever Gentoo is brought up, somebody always brings up LFS. LFS becomes repetitive fast. I also don't think trying to use esoteric build systems that come with cryptic readme files is newbie-friendly. Just learn to read ebuild scripts if you are after that kind of skill :)

yellow_postit 3y ago

Linux From Scratch gets even more into the weeds. My arc was gentoo -> lfs -> arch Linux when I realized I didn’t want to fiddle as much.

yellowapple 3y ago
Slackware comes pretty close, too. Yeah, you can use the TUI installer... but Slackware packages are pretty much just tarballs that you could extract directly onto / (plus an extra folder for metadata and post-install scripts). Starting with a bare-minimum Linux install and extracting enough packages one-by-one to get slackpkg working is a fun exercise (one which I've indeed done on everything from various LXC-based budget VPSs to old thin clients with disk space in the hundreds of MB at best).
- fouc 3y ago
  my arc was slackware -> gentoo -> arch. very similar vibes across them all I thought.
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    That's indeed why I lump them together as the "SAG Trifecta".
nickstinemates 3y ago
Similar arc, but have fiddled with them all. These days most of my machines are arch(btw) or Alpine.
leidenfrost 3y ago
My experience with LFS is checking a few makefiles, the doing ./configure && male && make install because I got tired os checking everything by hand. Personally, gentoo is nice because, once you know your way, you can do a big emerge and go get a coffe while it compiles everything.
- bigpeopleareold 3y ago
  I started to go through LFS, but with the intent of scripting it. What ultimately though slowed me down to a halt was a persistent VirtualBox issue I couldn't solve. But I think I just easily jump back into it now :D

Given_47 3y ago

Ah I’m actually mid gentoo install on an old MacBook of mine for that exact reason. Minimum cd from bootable usb stick altho I’ve currently approached a roadblock with getting the damn wifi set up lol. Ik I can ssh in, but since the goal is a learning experience it seems like kind of a cop out

chaxor 3y ago

It seems that pairing this with the original post, the best outcome is a single shell file, that takes a few arguments, such as device location (USB at /dev/sde) and username/password, etc, and compiles the bootloader, the kernel, etc from scratch using the most trusted basic sources, and then places that on the target device. Obviously it should also install any additional apps like vim, adjust terminal colors, create and copy your ssh keys to machines needed, and configure any windows managers, etc as well from the single shell command. Making that single shell command as small, reliable, readable, and maintainable as possible is the real challenge.

nickstinemates 3y ago
`archinstall` on a fresh arch iso gives you something similar in TUI fashion and can export a json output you can save to clone the install to additional machines.

jpmoral 3y ago

Why is 'superfluous' in quotes?

nickstinemates 3y ago
Whether something is superfluous or just complete/rounded out is in the eye of the beholder.
- jpmoral 3y ago
  Yes but I read the sentence to mean that parent was talking about features they actually found superfluous.

plq 3y ago

Can't plus-one this enough. The Gentoo [installation] handbook is a true treasure for the linux newbie. Especially if you are the kind of learner who needs to be challenged to truly ingest the material at hand, just read every word and apply what you have learned. You'll be astonished by the distance that you covered in a month! Whenever Gentoo is brought up, somebody always brings up LFS. LFS becomes repetitive fast. I also don't think trying to use esoteric build systems that come with cryptic readme files is newbie-friendly. Just learn to read ebuild scripts if you are after that kind of skill :)