6 ms·

Gentoo linux is essentially made specifically for people like this, to be able to optimize one’s own linux rig for one’s specific usecase. After initial setup,

Gentoo linux is essentially made specifically for people like this, to be able to optimize one’s own linux rig for one’s specific usecase. After initial setup, it’s pretty simple and easy to use, I remember making a ton of friends at matrix’s Gentoo Linux channel, was fun times. https://www.gentoo.org/ https://www.gentoo.org/ Fun fact, initial ChromeOS was basically just custom Gentoo Linux install, I’m not sure if they still use Gentoo Linux internally.

shanemhansen 2y ago
So ChromeOS and also the OS for GKE are still basically built this way.
6SixTy 2y ago
Afaik the Gentoo based ChromeOS is being replaced by Android.
- mycall 2y ago
  It will be interesting if Gentoo supported Fuchsia next.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    Gentoo already has prefix support for non-Linux systems and used to have at least some interest in a full Gentoo/kFreeBSD, so it's plausible.
  - surajrmal 2y ago
    What would that even mean?
    - sham1 2y ago
      Portage on top of Fuchsia, probably. There's not all that much more to Gentoo all things considered.
      - nickysielicki 2y ago
        Zircon is miles apart from linux. It’s like saying you’d run Portage on top of Windows. You and what army?
        chasil 2y ago
        Windows was built with a POSIX subsystem from the very beginning. WSL 1 uses something analogous. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem The Zircon kernel does not support signals, so basic C is not going to work well. "It is heavily inspired by Unix kernels, but differs greatly. For example, it does not support Unix-like signals, but incorporates event-driven programming and the observer pattern." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)#Kernel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)#K...
        6SixTy 2y ago
        As long as there's Bash and Python support, Gentoo Prefix could as well. That's kind of the only things that are hard needed for Gentoo as Portage is written in Python and Ebuilds are Bash scripts. Bigger issue would be that the Fuchsia kernel likely isn't POSIX complete.
        ryao 2y ago
        Gentoo Portage had support for running on top of Interix, so it did run on Windows at some point (over 15 years ago).
eru 2y ago
I used Gentoo for a while, but the temptation to endlessly fiddle with everything always let me to eventually break the system. (It's not Gentoo's fault, it's mine.) Afterwards I moved to ArchLinux, and that has been mostly fine for me. If you are using a fairly standard processor, then Gentoo shouldn't give you that much of an advantage?
- ryao 2y ago
  Gentoo lets you do all of the tweaks mentioned here within the system package manager, so you still get security updates for your tweaked build. You can also install Gentoo on top of another system via Gentoo Prefix for use as a userland packages manager: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Prefix https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Prefix
  - eru 2y ago
    > Gentoo lets you do all of the tweaks mentioned here within the system package manager, so you still get security updates for your tweaked build. Yes, Gentoo is great. I'm just saying that for me it was too much of a temptation.
- serbuvlad 2y ago
  I'd like to bring attention to the ALHP repos[1]. These are the Arch packages built for x86-64-v2, x86-64-v3 and x86-64-v4, which are basically names for different sets of x86-64 extensions. Selecting the highest level supported by your processor should get you most of the way to -march=native, without the hassle of compiling it yourself. It also enables -O3 and LTO for all packages. [1]: https://github.com/an0nfunc/ALHP https://github.com/an0nfunc/ALHP
  - eru 2y ago
    Nice, I'll try them out! LTO is great, but I have my doubts about -O3 (vs the more conservative -O2). UPDATE: bah, ALHP repos don't support the nvidia drivers. And I don't want to muck around with setting everything up again. Another update: I moved to nvidia-open, so now I can try the suggested repos.
donio 2y ago
> Gentoo linux is essentially made specifically for people like this, to be able to optimize one’s own linux rig for one’s specific usecase. That's true but worth noting that "optimize" here doesn't necessarily refer to performance. I've been using Gentoo for 20 years and performance was never the reason. Gentoo is great if you know how you want things to work. Gentoo helps you get there.
- kennysoona 2y ago
  If it wasn't for performance, what was gained in using it over something like Slackware and building only the packages you needed to?
  - xlii 2y ago
    Long time ago when I was using it I preferred Gentoo because of ergonomics and better exposition to supply chain. Slackware was very manual and some bits were drowned in its low level and long command chains. Gentoo felt easy but highlighted dependencies with a hard cost associated with compilation times. Being a newb back then I enjoyed user friendliness with access to the machinery beneath. Satisfaction of a 1s boot time speedu, a result of 48h+ compilation, was unparalleled, too ;)
  - CamouflagedKiwi 2y ago
    USE flags. You can build packages with specific features enabled or disabled, which can further reduce your dependency tree.
    - kennysoona 2y ago
      For building specific packages with particular flags, wouldn't slackbuilds have been sufficient?
    - stakhanov 2y ago
      Reducing the dependency tree gets a bit more complicated once you consider that now you have to satisfy not only runtime dependencies for all packages but also build-time dependencies. There may be ways of cleaning that up after a build, but next time you want to emerge a new package you'll just end up having to re-build the build-time dependencies, so in practice you'll just end up leaving them there. There is an ability to emerge packages to a separate part of the filesystem tree (ROOT="/my/chroot" emerge bla), so that you have one build-time system act as a kind of incubator for a runtime system that gets to be minimal. But you'll end up encountering problems that most other Gentoo users wouldn't encounter, having to do with the separation between build-time dependencies and runtime dependencies not being correctly made in the recipes. Personally, I had been relying on this feature for roughly the last 10 years, but there has been steady deterioration there over the years and I eventually gave up late last year.
vasco 2y ago
Never seen the HN version of the 'install gentoo' meme before, more sophisticated definitely. > The goal of Gentoo is to have an operating system that builds all programs from source, instead of having pre-built binary packages. While this does allow for advanced speed and customizability, it means that even the most basic components such as the kernel must be compiled from source. It is known through out the Linux community as being a very complex operating system because of its daunting install process. The default Gentoo install boots straight to a command prompt, from which the user must manually partition the disk, download a package known as a "Stage 3 tarball", extract it, and build the system up by manually installing packages. New or inexperienced users will often not know what to do when they boot in to the installer to find there is no graphical display. Members of /g/ will often exaggerate the values of Gentoo, trying to trick new users in to attempting to install it.
- toyg 2y ago
  Where does that blurb come from, chatgpt? I don't think it's true anymore, last time I checked I think Gentoo had a "normal" liveCD installation for the base system, which you could then recompile on your own if wanted.
  - Vilkku 2y ago
    Seems to be from https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/install-gentoo https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/install-gentoo
  - _joel 2y ago
    GRP (Gentoo packages) existed at least 20 years ago, from my memory, as that's the last time I really used it in anger. I remeber packages being available and not having to rice everything, for sure.
ndesaulniers 2y ago
They still use the build system. Woof.
stakhanov 2y ago
I had had Gentoo continuously in use since 2003, and only very recently moved off of it (late 2024) when I tried Void Linux. On Void, buildability from source by end users is not a declared goal nor architectural feature, but you have a pretty decent chance of being able to make it work. You can expect one or two hiccups, but if you have decent all-round Linux experience, chances are you'll be able to jump into the build recipes, fix them, make everything work for what you need it to do, and contribute the fixes back upstream. This is what you get from a relentless focus on minimalism and avoiding overengineering of any kind. It's what I had been missing in Gentoo all those years. With Gentoo, I always ended up having to fiddle with use flags and package masks in ways that wouldn't be useful to other users. The build system is so complex that it had been just too difficult for me, over all these years, to properly learn it and learn to fix problems at the root cause level and contribute them upstream. Void should also be an ideal basis for when you don't want to build the entire system from source, but you just want to mix & match distro-provided binaries with packages you've built from source (possibly on the basis of a modified build recipe to better match your needs or your hardware).
boobsbr 2y ago
Obligatory "Gentoo is rice" mention: https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Gentoo-is-Rice.html https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Ge...
_ea1k 2y ago
I tried that once, but it is still compiling. :) Kidding... honestly that was a pretty fun distribution to play around with ~20 years ago. The documentation was really good and it was a great way to learn how a lot of the pieces of a Linux distribution fit together. I was never convinced that the performance difference was really noticeable, though.
- wantless 2y ago
  Gentoo was the primary source of heating for my living quarters back in the early 2000s. My tower was highly constrained on memory, and I was on a relentless quest to pare out any modules or dependencies I wasn't actually using. Performance gains were primarily from being able to stay out of slow HDD swap space memory. I doubt there were any gains once amortizing the compilation times, but I ran my compile batches at night, and they kept me nice and warm.

shanemhansen 2y ago

So ChromeOS and also the OS for GKE are still basically built this way.

6SixTy 2y ago

Afaik the Gentoo based ChromeOS is being replaced by Android.

mycall 2y ago
It will be interesting if Gentoo supported Fuchsia next.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  Gentoo already has prefix support for non-Linux systems and used to have at least some interest in a full Gentoo/kFreeBSD, so it's plausible.
- surajrmal 2y ago
  What would that even mean?
  - sham1 2y ago
    Portage on top of Fuchsia, probably. There's not all that much more to Gentoo all things considered.
    - nickysielicki 2y ago
      Zircon is miles apart from linux. It’s like saying you’d run Portage on top of Windows. You and what army?
      - chasil 2y ago
        Windows was built with a POSIX subsystem from the very beginning. WSL 1 uses something analogous. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem The Zircon kernel does not support signals, so basic C is not going to work well. "It is heavily inspired by Unix kernels, but differs greatly. For example, it does not support Unix-like signals, but incorporates event-driven programming and the observer pattern." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)#Kernel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)#K...
      - 6SixTy 2y ago
        As long as there's Bash and Python support, Gentoo Prefix could as well. That's kind of the only things that are hard needed for Gentoo as Portage is written in Python and Ebuilds are Bash scripts. Bigger issue would be that the Fuchsia kernel likely isn't POSIX complete.
      - ryao 2y ago
        Gentoo Portage had support for running on top of Interix, so it did run on Windows at some point (over 15 years ago).

eru 2y ago

I used Gentoo for a while, but the temptation to endlessly fiddle with everything always let me to eventually break the system. (It's not Gentoo's fault, it's mine.) Afterwards I moved to ArchLinux, and that has been mostly fine for me. If you are using a fairly standard processor, then Gentoo shouldn't give you that much of an advantage?

ryao 2y ago
Gentoo lets you do all of the tweaks mentioned here within the system package manager, so you still get security updates for your tweaked build. You can also install Gentoo on top of another system via Gentoo Prefix for use as a userland packages manager: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Prefix https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Prefix
- eru 2y ago
  > Gentoo lets you do all of the tweaks mentioned here within the system package manager, so you still get security updates for your tweaked build. Yes, Gentoo is great. I'm just saying that for me it was too much of a temptation.
serbuvlad 2y ago
I'd like to bring attention to the ALHP repos[1]. These are the Arch packages built for x86-64-v2, x86-64-v3 and x86-64-v4, which are basically names for different sets of x86-64 extensions. Selecting the highest level supported by your processor should get you most of the way to -march=native, without the hassle of compiling it yourself. It also enables -O3 and LTO for all packages. [1]: https://github.com/an0nfunc/ALHP https://github.com/an0nfunc/ALHP
- eru 2y ago
  Nice, I'll try them out! LTO is great, but I have my doubts about -O3 (vs the more conservative -O2). UPDATE: bah, ALHP repos don't support the nvidia drivers. And I don't want to muck around with setting everything up again. Another update: I moved to nvidia-open, so now I can try the suggested repos.

donio 2y ago

> Gentoo linux is essentially made specifically for people like this, to be able to optimize one’s own linux rig for one’s specific usecase. That's true but worth noting that "optimize" here doesn't necessarily refer to performance. I've been using Gentoo for 20 years and performance was never the reason. Gentoo is great if you know how you want things to work. Gentoo helps you get there.

kennysoona 2y ago
If it wasn't for performance, what was gained in using it over something like Slackware and building only the packages you needed to?
- xlii 2y ago
  Long time ago when I was using it I preferred Gentoo because of ergonomics and better exposition to supply chain. Slackware was very manual and some bits were drowned in its low level and long command chains. Gentoo felt easy but highlighted dependencies with a hard cost associated with compilation times. Being a newb back then I enjoyed user friendliness with access to the machinery beneath. Satisfaction of a 1s boot time speedu, a result of 48h+ compilation, was unparalleled, too ;)
- CamouflagedKiwi 2y ago
  USE flags. You can build packages with specific features enabled or disabled, which can further reduce your dependency tree.
  - kennysoona 2y ago
    For building specific packages with particular flags, wouldn't slackbuilds have been sufficient?
  - stakhanov 2y ago
    Reducing the dependency tree gets a bit more complicated once you consider that now you have to satisfy not only runtime dependencies for all packages but also build-time dependencies. There may be ways of cleaning that up after a build, but next time you want to emerge a new package you'll just end up having to re-build the build-time dependencies, so in practice you'll just end up leaving them there. There is an ability to emerge packages to a separate part of the filesystem tree (ROOT="/my/chroot" emerge bla), so that you have one build-time system act as a kind of incubator for a runtime system that gets to be minimal. But you'll end up encountering problems that most other Gentoo users wouldn't encounter, having to do with the separation between build-time dependencies and runtime dependencies not being correctly made in the recipes. Personally, I had been relying on this feature for roughly the last 10 years, but there has been steady deterioration there over the years and I eventually gave up late last year.

vasco 2y ago

Never seen the HN version of the 'install gentoo' meme before, more sophisticated definitely. > The goal of Gentoo is to have an operating system that builds all programs from source, instead of having pre-built binary packages. While this does allow for advanced speed and customizability, it means that even the most basic components such as the kernel must be compiled from source. It is known through out the Linux community as being a very complex operating system because of its daunting install process. The default Gentoo install boots straight to a command prompt, from which the user must manually partition the disk, download a package known as a "Stage 3 tarball", extract it, and build the system up by manually installing packages. New or inexperienced users will often not know what to do when they boot in to the installer to find there is no graphical display. Members of /g/ will often exaggerate the values of Gentoo, trying to trick new users in to attempting to install it.

toyg 2y ago
Where does that blurb come from, chatgpt? I don't think it's true anymore, last time I checked I think Gentoo had a "normal" liveCD installation for the base system, which you could then recompile on your own if wanted.
- Vilkku 2y ago
  Seems to be from https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/install-gentoo https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/install-gentoo
- _joel 2y ago
  GRP (Gentoo packages) existed at least 20 years ago, from my memory, as that's the last time I really used it in anger. I remeber packages being available and not having to rice everything, for sure.

ndesaulniers 2y ago

They still use the build system. Woof.

stakhanov 2y ago

I had had Gentoo continuously in use since 2003, and only very recently moved off of it (late 2024) when I tried Void Linux. On Void, buildability from source by end users is not a declared goal nor architectural feature, but you have a pretty decent chance of being able to make it work. You can expect one or two hiccups, but if you have decent all-round Linux experience, chances are you'll be able to jump into the build recipes, fix them, make everything work for what you need it to do, and contribute the fixes back upstream. This is what you get from a relentless focus on minimalism and avoiding overengineering of any kind. It's what I had been missing in Gentoo all those years. With Gentoo, I always ended up having to fiddle with use flags and package masks in ways that wouldn't be useful to other users. The build system is so complex that it had been just too difficult for me, over all these years, to properly learn it and learn to fix problems at the root cause level and contribute them upstream. Void should also be an ideal basis for when you don't want to build the entire system from source, but you just want to mix & match distro-provided binaries with packages you've built from source (possibly on the basis of a modified build recipe to better match your needs or your hardware).

boobsbr 2y ago

Obligatory "Gentoo is rice" mention: https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Gentoo-is-Rice.html https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Ge...

_ea1k 2y ago

I tried that once, but it is still compiling. :) Kidding... honestly that was a pretty fun distribution to play around with ~20 years ago. The documentation was really good and it was a great way to learn how a lot of the pieces of a Linux distribution fit together. I was never convinced that the performance difference was really noticeable, though.

wantless 2y ago
Gentoo was the primary source of heating for my living quarters back in the early 2000s. My tower was highly constrained on memory, and I was on a relentless quest to pare out any modules or dependencies I wasn't actually using. Performance gains were primarily from being able to stay out of slow HDD swap space memory. I doubt there were any gains once amortizing the compilation times, but I ran my compile batches at night, and they kept me nice and warm.