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Comment by kornakiewicz | Hacker News Reader

I know something about Linux (can build a package, set variables, do some configs and simple stuff in terminal/vi/emacs), is weekend enough to install Gentoo?

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Putting cm-t's words nicely, the Gentoo Handbook is fantastic!

I first built a Gentoo install maybe around 2007, and had no problems up until the Grub install (however, I had done kernel compilations before). With Gentoo, the two hardest problems you arrive at _during installation_ are kernel configuration, and grub configuration. The former has now been solved with having great prebuilt kernels, or even just a way to use their configs. The latter may still be an issue, but once you wrap your head around it you'll be fine.

I haven't done a new install in a couple years - it just keeps running as-is, so I don't know about the state of affairs, but I would hardly doubt they got worse! I'm sure it's even easier than before.

A weekend is certainly enough time to build a base Gentoo system, and get enough packages installed to be able to use it for daily work.

If you have any problems I would be happy to help someone with a *ntoo setup! My email is in my profile if you run into any issues :)

I'd like to know how you deal with qt version bumps. It drives me crazy to see that every time kde is upgraded the qt dependencies are bumped with previous versions removed.

I don't remember last time I did an emerge world because of this. It's insane.

Regarding grub, 2.x is torture. All hdd's with even traces of its code should be collected and shot to the sun to make sure noone would ever recreate something as painful to use as grub2. Even more, samples of their configs should be posted on the walls of every CS class, together with charges of crimes against humanity against all developers responsible for that abomination - as a warning to anyone thinking of going their road.

Most systems these days have EFI bioses, just create a 512M EFI partition[1] and put your kernel(s)(with a set kernel-command line) to EFI/Boot(bootx64.efi is usually the default being loaded). You don't need a bootloader at all(+you'll get a few s off of your boot time too). Many bioses let you choose a kernel at boot time, so you don't even have to play with efibootmgr[2] if running multiple kernels/OS's.

It gets more tricky if you want LVM root fe(which I'd recommend) - in that case genkernel[3] may make your life a lot easier, but even here you don't require a boot loader.

If you do want a nice(er) boot menu, just copy refind[4] to your EFI partition, configuration takes seconds and you can tune it very - VERY - easily

Also, folks @ #gentoo are very helpful, feel free to give them a visit if you are stuck.

And the last thing I want to add - you don't have to compile your binaries on your nb/slow hw, just setup a binhost[5] and compile your tailored packages on your beefy PC/server@work - you can then share them with your devices via http for example

Ok, last one - if you like elementary os, you can get the same look&feel running on gentoo, although it may take some hacks at this stage

[1] http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/EFI_stub_kernel [2] http://linux.die.net/man/8/efibootmgr [3] http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Genkernel [4] http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ [5] http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Binary_package_guide

..a buildroot micro-system running other distributions as overlays is also a nice time-waster and only a step away from gentoo(+ with lxc/docker there is a lot of long-hanging fruit to collect)

I would say so. Gentoo's package manager is a bit different from some others (dpkg, rpm, etc) in that it will build from source instead of installing binary packages, but all in all I would say it is worth it. It will be more difficult than just running the graphical Ubuntu installer, but hey, that's how we get better, right?

The big thing is to make surr you have reasonably modern hardware. Installing on older systems could take a week or more for all the builds.

AMD FX-8350 and 8gb shall be enough, I suppose.

The issue is that I used a lot of Fedora, but it works surprisingly slow on my machine, but the support for developers' tools was awesome (never had problem with old versions). After that I tried ElementaryOS, which is beautiful and fast, but Ubuntu-based so every compiler I need to build from scratch (I'm testing new languages recently) so started thinking about something still nice and fast, but with recent stuff. Now i have a two days of continuous spare time and maybe will try Arch or Gentoo, which I know what's about, but not tried ever.

I personally have not used Gentoo on the desktop, but I have friends & coworkers who have, and they have been generally happy.

Arch is awesome, I am not currently using it but have used it before.

Another possibility you could look into is Debian Testing. Debian has the reputation of including "old" packages for the purpose of stability, but the "testing" version of the OS is much more up-to-date, and if you need something even newer, and are feeling adventurous, you can install specific packages from debian-experimental.

I'm a heavy Gentoo user and a weekend should be enough. Especially if you've compiled a kernel before (do this btw, don't use genkernel). As for speed, I doubt you'll really doubt you'll notice much. Memory usage and installation size is way more noticable. If you need a speed boost I suggest not using a Desktop Environment, but using a simple lightweight window environment (I use Awesome, some friends of mine use i3) in combination with xfce4 utilities, since they don't have a gigantic amount of dependencies and are very nice to use.

My dotfiles repository also contains my gentoo config files: https://github.com/JelteF/dotfiles/tree/master/etc/portage Don't copy paste all of it, but it might be nice to see what a config aquired over a couple of years looks like. And some stuff is just nice to have for a desktop/laptop that you regularly use.

You can just follow handbook and get a workable system within a few hours. The real question is: what do you want it for? If it's just for the kicks, you probably want to spend some more time exploring what you can break. You'll probably find out that, other than outright breakage, nothing you do has as much impact as you expected to.

I'd say that there are only two valid non-educational reasons to use Gentoo: getting a stripped down (for security or embedded) system or to alpha-test a lot of the free software ecosystem at the same time (e.g. build all your system out of repositories HEADs, a friend was doing that for a long time).

I managed a stage 2 install in a long afternoon 10 years ago knowing basically nothing about Linux, so yeah, you'll be fine.

A weekend is definitely enough time to learn how to install a Gentoo system, and it's a good experience.

Whether you'll really want to keep with it in the long run is another question. The level of control is awesome, but it is high maintenance. Expect it to break in interesting and surprising ways during updates.

Use genkernel instead of configuring the kernel by hand. That will save you hours of time. ;)

Oh, and this guide: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinstall.xml

Genkernel has never worked for me and configuring a kernel is a really good learning experience. Which is probably what you want if you install Gentoo.

That's your experience. genkernel has always worked for me and I use Gentoo because I think the rest of distros are worse. (Last one to fall was Arch Linux after systemd)

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