9 ms·

For me, the most underrated takeaway here is the state of RISC-V support. While other distributions are struggling to bootstrap their package repositories for

For me, the most underrated takeaway here is the state of RISC-V support. While other distributions are struggling to bootstrap their package repositories for new ISAs and waiting for build farms to catch up, Gentoo's source based nature makes it architecture agnostic by definition. I applaud the risque team for having achieved parity with amd64 for the @system set. This proves that the meta-distribution model is the only scalable way to handle the explosion of hardware diversity we are seeing post 2025. If you are building an embedded platfrm or working on custom silicon, Gentoo is a top tier choice. You cross-compile the stage1 and portage handles the rest.

cb321 9mo ago
While I was always a sourced-base/personalized distribution personality type, this is also a big part of why I moved to Gentoo in early 2004 (for amd64, not Risc-V / other embedded per your example). While Pentium-IV's very deep pipelines and compiler flag sensitivities (and the name itself for the fastest Penguin) drove the for-speed perception of the compile-just-for-my-system style, it really plays well to all customization/configuation hacker mindsets.
- Fiveplus 9mo ago
  That is a fantastic historical parallel. The early amd64 days were arguably Gentoo's killer app moment. While the binary distributions were wrestling with the logistical nightmare of splitting repositories and figuring out the /lib64 vs /lib standard, Gentoo users just changed their CHOST, bootstrapped and were running 64-bit native. You nailed the psychology of it, too. The speed marketing was always a bit of a red herring. The ability to say "I do not want LDAP support in my mail client" and have the package manager actually respect that is cool. It respects the user's intelligence rather than abstracting it away. Since you've been on the ride since '04, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. How do you feel the maintenance burden compares today versus the GCC 3.x era? With the modern binhost fallback and the improvements in portage, I feel like we now spend less time fighting rebuild loops than back then? But I wonder if long time users feel the same.
  - plqbfbv 9mo ago
    > Since you've been on the ride since '04, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. How do you feel the maintenance burden compares today versus the GCC 3.x era? With the modern binhost fallback and the improvements in portage, I feel like we now spend less time fighting rebuild loops than back then? But I wonder if long time users feel the same. I'm another one on it since the same era :) In general stable has become _really_ stable, and unstable is still mostly usable without major hiccups. My maintenance burden is limited nowadays compared to 10y ago - pretty much running `emerge -uDN @world --quiet --keep-going` and fixing issues if any, maybe once a month I get package failures but I run a llvm+libcxx system and also package tests, so likely I get more issues than the average user on GCC. For me these days it's not about the speed anymore of course, but really the customization options and the ability to build pretty much anything I need locally. I also really like the fact that ebuilds are basically bash scripts, and if I need to further customize or reproduce something I can literally copy-paste commands from the package manager in my local folder. The project has successfully implemented a lot of by-default optimizations and best practices, and in general I feel the codebases for system packages have matured to the point where it's odd to run in internal compiler errors, weird dependency issues, whole-world rebuilds etc. From my point of view it also helped a lot that many compilers begun enforcing more modern and stricter C/C++ standards over time, and at the same time we got Github, CI workflows, better testing tools etc. I run `emerge -e1 @world` maybe once a year just to shake out stuff lurking in the shadows (like stuff compiled with clang 19 vs clang 21), but it's really normally not needed anymore. The configuration stays pretty much untouched unless I want to enable a new USE for a new package I'm installing.
    - redeeman 9mo ago
      > so likely I get more issues than the average user on GCC. its been years since I had a build failure, and I even accept several on ~amd64. (with gcc)
    - cb321 9mo ago
      I am replying here as a kind of "better place to attach". Anyway, to answer grandparent, I basically never had rebuild loops in 19 years.. just emerge -uU world every day or sometimes every week. I have been running the same base system since..let's see: qlop -tvm|h1 2007-01-18T19:50:33 >>> x11-base/xorg-server-1.1.1-r4: 9m23s I have never once had to rebuild the whole system from scratch in those 19 years. (I've just rsync'd the rootfs from machine to machine as I upgraded HW and gradually rebuilt because as many others here have said, for me it wasn't about "perf of everything" or some kind of reproducible system - "more customization + perf of some things".) The upgrade from monolithic X11 to split X11 was "fun", though. /s I do engage in all sorts of package.mask/per-package use/many global use. I have my own portage/local overlay for things where I disagree with upstream. I even have an automated system to "patch" my disagreements in. E.g, I control how fast I upgrade my LLVM junk so I do it on my own timeline. Mostly I use gcc. I control that, too. Any really slow individual build, basically. If over the decades, they ever did anything that made it look like crazy amounts of rebuilds would happen, I'd tend to wait a few days/week or so and then figure something out. If some new dependency brings in a mountain of crap, I usually figure out how to block that.
ltbarcly3 9mo ago
All distributions are source based and bootstrapped from source. They default to binary packages by default (while offering source packages) whereas Gentoo defaults to source packages (but still has binary packages). There's literally no advantage to Gentoo here. What you're saying doesn't even make logical sense. Other distros don't support Risc-V because nobody has taken the time to bother with it because the hardware base is almost nonexistent.
chungy 9mo ago
Fedora and Debian have been shipping RISC-V versions of stable releases for a while. I don't think anyone is really struggling.
- SSLy 9mo ago
  arch is, but arch also has some woes making even amd64_v3/v4 builds, arm64 aside.
irishcoffee 9mo ago
Embedded usually uses yocto or buildroot or whatever it’s called. Never seen anyone use gentoo. I can speak for yocto being completely built from source and has a huge variety of BSPs, usually vendor-created.

cb321 9mo ago

While I was always a sourced-base/personalized distribution personality type, this is also a big part of why I moved to Gentoo in early 2004 (for amd64, not Risc-V / other embedded per your example). While Pentium-IV's very deep pipelines and compiler flag sensitivities (and the name itself for the fastest Penguin) drove the for-speed perception of the compile-just-for-my-system style, it really plays well to all customization/configuation hacker mindsets.

Fiveplus 9mo ago
That is a fantastic historical parallel. The early amd64 days were arguably Gentoo's killer app moment. While the binary distributions were wrestling with the logistical nightmare of splitting repositories and figuring out the /lib64 vs /lib standard, Gentoo users just changed their CHOST, bootstrapped and were running 64-bit native. You nailed the psychology of it, too. The speed marketing was always a bit of a red herring. The ability to say "I do not want LDAP support in my mail client" and have the package manager actually respect that is cool. It respects the user's intelligence rather than abstracting it away. Since you've been on the ride since '04, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. How do you feel the maintenance burden compares today versus the GCC 3.x era? With the modern binhost fallback and the improvements in portage, I feel like we now spend less time fighting rebuild loops than back then? But I wonder if long time users feel the same.
- plqbfbv 9mo ago
  > Since you've been on the ride since '04, I'm curious to hear your thoughts. How do you feel the maintenance burden compares today versus the GCC 3.x era? With the modern binhost fallback and the improvements in portage, I feel like we now spend less time fighting rebuild loops than back then? But I wonder if long time users feel the same. I'm another one on it since the same era :) In general stable has become _really_ stable, and unstable is still mostly usable without major hiccups. My maintenance burden is limited nowadays compared to 10y ago - pretty much running `emerge -uDN @world --quiet --keep-going` and fixing issues if any, maybe once a month I get package failures but I run a llvm+libcxx system and also package tests, so likely I get more issues than the average user on GCC. For me these days it's not about the speed anymore of course, but really the customization options and the ability to build pretty much anything I need locally. I also really like the fact that ebuilds are basically bash scripts, and if I need to further customize or reproduce something I can literally copy-paste commands from the package manager in my local folder. The project has successfully implemented a lot of by-default optimizations and best practices, and in general I feel the codebases for system packages have matured to the point where it's odd to run in internal compiler errors, weird dependency issues, whole-world rebuilds etc. From my point of view it also helped a lot that many compilers begun enforcing more modern and stricter C/C++ standards over time, and at the same time we got Github, CI workflows, better testing tools etc. I run `emerge -e1 @world` maybe once a year just to shake out stuff lurking in the shadows (like stuff compiled with clang 19 vs clang 21), but it's really normally not needed anymore. The configuration stays pretty much untouched unless I want to enable a new USE for a new package I'm installing.
  - redeeman 9mo ago
    > so likely I get more issues than the average user on GCC. its been years since I had a build failure, and I even accept several on ~amd64. (with gcc)
  - cb321 9mo ago
    I am replying here as a kind of "better place to attach". Anyway, to answer grandparent, I basically never had rebuild loops in 19 years.. just emerge -uU world every day or sometimes every week. I have been running the same base system since..let's see: qlop -tvm|h1 2007-01-18T19:50:33 >>> x11-base/xorg-server-1.1.1-r4: 9m23s I have never once had to rebuild the whole system from scratch in those 19 years. (I've just rsync'd the rootfs from machine to machine as I upgraded HW and gradually rebuilt because as many others here have said, for me it wasn't about "perf of everything" or some kind of reproducible system - "more customization + perf of some things".) The upgrade from monolithic X11 to split X11 was "fun", though. /s I do engage in all sorts of package.mask/per-package use/many global use. I have my own portage/local overlay for things where I disagree with upstream. I even have an automated system to "patch" my disagreements in. E.g, I control how fast I upgrade my LLVM junk so I do it on my own timeline. Mostly I use gcc. I control that, too. Any really slow individual build, basically. If over the decades, they ever did anything that made it look like crazy amounts of rebuilds would happen, I'd tend to wait a few days/week or so and then figure something out. If some new dependency brings in a mountain of crap, I usually figure out how to block that.

ltbarcly3 9mo ago

All distributions are source based and bootstrapped from source. They default to binary packages by default (while offering source packages) whereas Gentoo defaults to source packages (but still has binary packages). There's literally no advantage to Gentoo here. What you're saying doesn't even make logical sense. Other distros don't support Risc-V because nobody has taken the time to bother with it because the hardware base is almost nonexistent.

chungy 9mo ago

Fedora and Debian have been shipping RISC-V versions of stable releases for a while. I don't think anyone is really struggling.

SSLy 9mo ago
arch is, but arch also has some woes making even amd64_v3/v4 builds, arm64 aside.

irishcoffee 9mo ago

Embedded usually uses yocto or buildroot or whatever it’s called. Never seen anyone use gentoo. I can speak for yocto being completely built from source and has a huge variety of BSPs, usually vendor-created.