Is Gentoo for me?

I've been using Arch with the additional OpenRC repositories for a while, but they seem finicky and I'm not having a great time.
I'm considering moving to Gentoo for the package manager and native OpenRC support.

My only issue is that I use one disk across multiple computers.
When I move from my desktop to my laptop, I pull the disk out and insert it into my laptop.
This saves a lot of time versus i.e. syncing.

Gentoo is supposedly "machine specific", but can this be disabled? If not, will I run into any issues moving the installation around?

Gentoo is not machine specific.

It just compiles as you tell it to. If you do x86_64 binaries with this and that CPU co-processor optimization, then you can't run that on CPU that don't have it.

If you want to reuse binary packages on multiple machines, pick the lowest common denominator and compile for that.

Alteratively there is also Sabayon. Or you can do distributed compiles with distcc or icecream.

So if I leave most of the compile flags default, It'll function the same way as a binary packaged distro?

It will still compile packages (you can instruct portage to also create binary packages as it does that), but if you use the same flags the resulting binaries will be the same way as on a binary packaged distro, yes.

Just with the dependency graph that you choose to use by compiling in features or not.

Why don't you just setup automatic syncing, that'll save you even more time + would also serve as a backup solution

Syncing is far from as convenient for me.

It's not files / videos / music I do this for, it's the entire system setup & configuration.

and that can't be synced because?

Don't switch to Gentoo for OpenRC, it's a piece of shit

Switch to Gentoo for portage

If you leave the compile flags default you might as well stick with arch

I bet you only want to use Gentoo because you're a stupid hipster who thinks systemd is bad

>Gentoo is supposedly "machine specific", but can this be disabled? If not, will I run into any issues moving the installation around?
As long as you make sure you have the appropriate kernel drivers for all devices, and that you only enable CPU features that are supported on both, you'll be fine.

if you don't use UBUNTU, even external hds won't work

Good luck recursively syncing the root of a live system.

I've been using OpenRC for a couple months by now, I'm pretty happy with it, except for the low quality unofficial Arch repos.
I haven't tried using portage yet.
I've been told pacman is really good, what features does portage have that pacman doesn't?

I've been using this setup for many years by now across many distros.

Yes, I am. OpenRC is much comfier to me.


Thanks fore the answers, anons.

>I've been using OpenRC for a couple months by now, I'm pretty happy with it, except for the low quality unofficial Arch repos.
I've been using gentoo for 5 years and I can promise you that you'll come to hate OpenRC just as much as everybody else who's had to deal with all of its quirks, bugs and design defects - let alone write your own service files (forget about it)

I converted my Gentoo install over to systemd about half a year ago and have never been happier with it

>I've been told pacman is really good, what features does portage have that pacman doesn't?
Too many to list, really. Package configuration (flags), epatch_user, slots, revdeps are the big ones that come to my mind. Another big draw is the huge amount of focus on command-line usage (all of the eutils used by portage/gentoo are), which is honestly one of the things that draws me to gentoo the most - its tools are all designed to be geared first and foremost towards hardcore CLI users who wouldn't touch a package manager GUI even if it was available.

In most other distros, the command line of apt, dnf, yum etc. honestly just feel like they're there for the purposes of scripting and nothing else. There's no element of human usability. Maybe I'm just too used to it, but I always struggle even reading the output of something like “apt search” because the “[installed]” is so easily overlooked. Meanwhile, on gentoo... well, pic related

I'll give it a shot before trashing OpenRC, at least.
I've had to write my own service files a couple of times already, weren't an issue.

I've never noticed how apt/yum/etc are designed for scripting, though I grew up with hosting servers on the command-line, so I've rarely had the choice to use a GUI in the first place.

Very useful information, I'll give Gentoo a shot (:

Easy on Linux.

You can even do a snapshot on the block device or filesystem level if you use one of the bunch of ways that exist.

>I can promise you that you'll come to hate OpenRC just as much as everybody else who's had to deal with all of its quirks
Says who? You? Don't think so.

>Using a snapshotting filesystem to synchronize the state of a running system
stop it, now you're giving me ideas

Feel free to use it and find out for yourself. Experience is the best way to learn these things

That's actually almost certainly what that feature was implemented for.

Businesses - or that guy who did it - wanted atomic snapshots. And you can have them.

I just use it for backups

>for a couple months

Yes. I've been using Arch with systemd for the longest time, and got fed up with it, so I installed OpenRC as a replacement.
I've been liking it so far, but the user-run repositories are shoddy, so I want to try a distro which supports it natively.

Well, you can also do stuff with chef or puppet, docker, your own scripts and rsync or git (git would be mainly for /etc), or whatever else you want.