Why is Gentoo a meme?

Newfag here, is Gentoo really bad or just really user-unfriendly?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=sJwwcw56d6c
wiki.voidlinux.eu/Display_manager
gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/amd64/autobuilds/current-stage3-amd64/stage3-amd64-20170525.tar.bz2
liquorix.net/sources/4.9/config.amd64
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

it is good if you are an autist, bad if you arent.

Neither.
Install Gentoo

>Implying it's a meme

You don't know poop from apple sauce, stranger.

Its very user friendly as long as you are not a idiot.

It's the squats and oats of Linux distros.

Gentoo is a great distro but it's a meme because compiling your OS from source is a huge waste of time.

This will give you some kind of idea.

youtube.com/watch?v=sJwwcw56d6c

Gentoo stage 1 installation is a great way to learn "Linux". I'm a professional linux sysadmin and the one thing I can trace a lot of my knowledge back to was the 3 days I spent bashing my skull against my computer to get that fucking shit installed when I was like 15 years old.

After that it's a meme. I use Debian sid/experimental for desktop and Ubuntu LTS for servers.

I still install via Stage 1.
Yeah, I'm that HARDCORE

Gentoo is not bad, it's really good actually. We're talking overwhelmingly good. It's also very user friendly, unless you're a complete retard who insists on doing everything his way.

both actually

It isn't bad, it just has a very steep learning curve, not much unlike other advanced linux distros. Also, like other advanced linux distros, once you get over the learning curve, it's much more user-friendly than your typical distro.
It can do a lot of things that are unnecessary in most ordinary cases. While this is great since it allows for great flexibility, using it, and maintaining your installation, can be more effort than it's worth, depending on how it's configured.

It most definitely isn't a meme, but just not worth it for people not interested in making a heavily customized linux distro. So, unless you have a specific use-case for your custom gentoo build or ricing your installation for the sake of it, I guess you could classify it as a "meme".

The lead developer forked the project to make the more user friendly variant, Funtoo, which he uses himself

That probably gives you a good idea

It's better than void if you don't know what you're doing, I can tell you that much. I decided to try void as my first distro install ever (after messing with various boxes, usually debian-based, in various vms for various purposes) and every time I want to find out how to do something I have to find out how to do it in like every other distro and then guess and interpolate how void does it because there's no fucking documentation ANY FUCKING WHERE.

The downside is that it's source-based so you have to compile everything. Though another upside (other than the documentation) is that it's source-based so you can compile everything.

Void isn't really that hard, you can use the documentation for other distros for most stuff, the only part where you'll meet roadblocks are stuff related to runit. But even that's not too hard to get used to once you learn the basics.

Gentoo's meme power comes from being customisable, but if you just have a normal computer, there is no point in using an operating system that is this much hassle to set up but which works slightly better than others if you're installing it on an ATM or some shit.

>tfw used stage3 for install
I'm still cool, r-right guys?

Anyway, after installed it's surprinsingly stable and easy to keep running, but if you're going for "muh 10% speed gains" for compiling, stop - most software shipped with modern distros is already -O2, and you will have minimal gains or even losses by trying to compile it with more aggressive settings.

I use it, personally, because it's really customizable, portage is an amazing package manager (the best available on Linux imo), and, well, it just works (after the install).

>there is no point in using an operating system that is this much hassle to set up but which works slightly better than others if you're installing it on an ATM or some shit.

This. I'm sure it's worth it if you're installing on a supercomputer cluster with a new experimental CPU architecture but on an x86 desktop with all the standard stuff, it's pretty pointless.

This. The whole point of the meme OP is that Gentoo either forces you to learn or fail and leave.

It's essentially a way of saying: get good or go home.

You can just do LFS if you want to learn everything.

Runit itself is pretty easy (I love it), it's when things go wrong that it starts being annoying.

>xbps-install lightdm, some minor greeter configuration
>register lightdm service
>reboot
>nothing happens
Like, where do I go from here? Arch wiki says sometimes starting the service with systemd doesn't work, and gives a few systemd commands to fix it. I don't know how I'm supposed to do that, or if it even applies to me at all. Maybe I missed something obvious? Well, I have no way of knowing, because:
>other distros' lightdm docs: "To run lightdm, start the service!"
>runit docs: "To start a service, make a symlink to /var/service!"
>void-specific lightdm docs: ...nope
>googling the problem: gives stuff for other distros
>googling the problem for void specifically: nothing
That's my problem. When you get that weird issue that SHOULD work but doesn't, if you're not already experienced enough to know exactly where to start looking and solve it by yourself, you're basically going to be stuck.

By contrast, something with more documentation is going to have targeted troubleshooting for YOUR system, and if that fails, you can usually find people who had your problem and solved it. Since nobody uses void, that's not an option here, so you're left on your own.

This, I don't really understand the gentoo meme when LFS exists

I guess it's because gentoo can actually be installed using only moderate autism, whereas almost nobody on Sup Forums has the time and patience for LFS. So since they can't jerk off to it in desktop threads there's no point memeing about it

Try sv status /var/service/* to see if the lightdm service is actually running. If not, try sv up lightdm and let me know what it tells you.

It says something like "down, wants: up"

Which is obviously a problem but what the fuck does that mean and how do I get it up

Here's the exact output of sv status lightdm:
>down: lightdm: 0s, normally up, want up
sv up lightdm does not saying anything and returns success

You probably need to an entry for your xsessions directory

wiki.voidlinux.eu/Display_manager

it's unfriendly a la other bare bones distros (like arch or minimal netinst distros) but there's nothing wrong with this if you know what to expect, it's compile from source which again isn't bad if you know what you're getting into

the issue comes when you have someone that doesn't understand either of these things and tries gentoo and their first month of use is constantly compiling because they don't have enough deps/libraries/frameworks/etc on their system that every time they want a package they're waiting forever for it to compile because portage has to pull in 20-30 other things

I'm on a decent enough system but firefox still takes 40 mins to compile (with pgo enabled, 20 mins if not) with around 8-10gb ram requirements (compiling in ramfs so I don't thrash ssds) and emerging something like *just* dolphin and not any other kde desktop nonsense required 40 mins because of all the other deps and qt stuff it had to pull in, around 110 'packages' in all, but this is usually something you do once

once you have the full system setup it isn't going to be too bad and doing it a second time around isn't going to be nearly as much of a learning curve or timesink, and while updates can be slower (especially if you're compiling large packages instead of using the binary versions) it's not a huge issue if you know what to expect - the jist I'm getting around 3 months in is you find things you can do better a second time around like most other distros but like other rolling release distros (hi arch) are you really going to be reinstalling that frequently to bother?

that said ymmv if you are on a laptop or a weaker desktop, I tried gentoo on muh 8 year old thinkpad for shits and giggles and that is not something I'm ever going to do again

Oh and make sure you actually have xorg installed and can run startx

I do have a session .desktop for xfce4 in xsessions/, which I believe was probably created when I installed xfce4 (at least that's the most reasonable assumption).

That article mentions sourcing /etc/xprofile or ~/.xprofile though, and I have neither of those files. Could that be a problem?

And yeah I run startx just fine, I just wanted to rice a bit more and use a display manager for that

That's because Gentoo is a legitimate operating system, not a learning book. Gentoo is designed to be pretty flexible. You can use package managers concurrently, run different compilers, quickly modify configuration options, optimization options, etc. Gentoo is meant to blur the distinctions of Linux distros while making it painless.

services are in /etc/sv. you just symlink /etc/sv/lightdm it to /var/service.

all this said, some major gripes that I've had mostly extend to gripes with using such a minimal distro: if I'm ever doing something that I want full support in (i.e., laptop or desktop I never want to touch outside of installation) I'm just going to install fedora/ubuntu with gnome/xfce where everything is setup out of the box for me and preconfigured (for the most part), again, if I want a sever it's going to be centos/ubuntu server so I don't have to spend a week finding all the issues I'll run into when using a barebones sytem - for some reference I dislike debian for its spartan configuration and in some cases the way it messes with packages

I find myself frequently having to reconfigure/recompile and install the kernel but I'm configuring the kernel manually rather than using genkernel or some huge preconfigured kernel which might be more typical in other distros, which lends itself to a barebones kernel, the latest issue I've had was not having tun support for openvpn so I needed to add tun support as a module and compile that so I could load it

generally if I have to mess with config files, configure the kernel, etc, it only takes maybe 5 minutes to figure out what I need to do if I have access to google - without google it's obviously going to take a little while reading through man pages and documentation swhich should be pretty universal (if you can't use google to figure out your gnu/linux problems don't use arch/gentoo/minimal netinst distros, this should go without saying)

as far as waiting for things to compile, if I'm not emerging something I need it's no extra time compared to using something like dnf, sure, pulling in a large amount of deps can take a while but waiting longer than 5-10 mins is an exception, updates can take upwards of an hour (mostly thanks to firefox) but this is something you initialise, emerging smaller packages is really quick (but again ymmv on older laptops etc)

>services are in /etc/sv. you just symlink /etc/sv/lightdm it to /var/service.
And when that doesn't work? See on what it's doing right now

It's possible. If that doesn't work, then it could possibly mean that lightdm relies on another service that you haven't enabled yet though I have no idea what that would be.

dewd

it's great and very stable once you get everything setup (DE, USE flags, portage) etc.

give it a shot I say

Well that's just swell (pic related)

Any tips on what should go in there, or am I off again googling and trying to pilfer stuff from other distros in the hopes of ending up with something that works?
At least I know what I could be looking for now, which is great, thanks for that user.

Gentoo is a good distro, but unless you are crazy for optimization, a bloat-free Linux experience, choice and compiling software yourself, then you shouldn't user it. (I use Gentoo myself)

use arch installation media to install gentoo

>pic related
Fuck, second time today

Takes 5 hours a week to recompile your software for your specific hardware, 100% of users will never notice more than 5 seconds of saved time a week; and thus the premise of Gentoo will never pay off.

do you have xdm and dbus?

#voidlinux on freenode is 10x better than their doucmentation.

Do have dbus, but not xdm. I was under the impression that xdm is an alternative to something like lightdm though? Am I mistaken? The arch wiki certainly makes it sound that way.

Oh nice to know, I'll try that

Gentoo is a 100% meta distribution, you could write ebuilds that install binary packages

Dunno, desu I'm using Void on a headless machine so I never bothered with anything related to xorg but I did learn when tryng to get the NFS service to run, you need to manually enable other services that the service relies on or it just won't start.

Update, installed xdm just to see if it would do anything, the xdm service works fine, lightdm still says the same thing "down, want up".

Void is a meme

I recommend trying other display managers and seeing if you run into the same issue. If not, it could be just a lightdm bug.

OH SHIT

I noticed I didn't have the dbus service running
So I linked it
And IT WORKS

Thanks so much guys!

I'm pretty sure it's an alternative to xdm as well, but on my gentoo build it was a dependency and I had to add the lightdm greeter to xdm to get it to work (i don't use display managers anymore).

kek, I knew it was because of lack of a service

as far as benefits go, among other things, it's stupidly easy to add support for packages and much like the aur an official or unofficial ebuild probably exists for it and if not making them shouldn't be any more difficult than making an aur pkgbuild, and due to compiling everything else from source it's really nice to be able to compile things straight from github with no issues (usually) - same for adding external patches

in general with around 3 months under the bent I'm viewing gentoo as a really nice distro to tinker with absolutely everything from initramfs up to custom install scripts while learning a little in the process, I wouldn't like to use gentoo in a situation I haven't used gentoo in before if I didn't have a week to prepare (like putting it on a server) but in these cases if you use another distro you're taking for granted that they've done everything properly and everything is going to be preconfigured for you, which has almost never been the case for me (but I don't see it as being anywhere near as much of an issue as if you were using gentoo in that use case for the first time)

essentially, if you're coming from another bare bones rolling release distro the only difference should be you compile everything which mostly relates to initial setup more than anything else, if you're coming from a minimal netinst the differences mostly are rolling release and compiling everything which should be pretty evident, if you're coming from a full safe distro there's going to be a big learning curve

I don't think gentoo is a meme but I can see why someone that has only ever used something like fedora/ubuntu and only intends to use fedora/ubuntu views it as a meme (but that said I did come from fedora and will continue to use it on other machines)

tl;dr install gentoo

>is Gentoo really bad or just really user-unfriendly?

it's both kek

It's a meme that is actually good as a meme.
I mean, gentoo is actually best, most flexible and efficient and freaking beautyful operating system in universe, but it requires strong knowlege about how computer actually works to use.
And gentoo actually solves all problems. I mean, if you advanced enough to use gentoo on a daily basis, you automatically will laugh out loud at any "problems with computers" average user face.
So if anyone suggests you to "install gentoo", they basically tell you sort of "git gud". That's all.
Good meme. I'll vote fote for it on a next meme elections.

btw i use gentoo

time spent compiling which is done in the background, especially for updates, isn't equivalent to time spent using the system and programs

and if it really is 5 hours to update your system weekly make use of binary packages or switch to something like arch since your hardware is woefully underpowered for such a distro

t. never tried it

It's not hand-holdey like Ubuntu or Debian and you have to compile all packages that you get from the repos, so installing packages takes for ever.

It does not have systemd, which means is probably a good thing.

>muh gombiladion
>imblying
:DDDD

sudo su

mkdir gentoo

echo -e "o\nn\np\n1\n\n\nw" | fdisk /dev/sda
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
mount /dev/sda1 gentoo

cd gentoo

wget gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/amd64/autobuilds/current-stage3-amd64/stage3-amd64-20170525.tar.bz2
tar pxvf stage3*
rm stage3*

cp /etc/resolv.conf etc
mount -t proc none proc
mount --rbind /dev dev
mount --rbind /sys sys

chroot .

emerge-webrsync

echo -e '\nMAKEOPTS="-j8"\nEMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--keep-going=y --autounmask-write=y --jobs=2 -G"\nCFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=native"\nCXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"' >> /etc/portage/make.conf

emerge grub dhcpcd gentoo-sources genkernel

wget liquorix.net/sources/4.9/config.amd64
MAKEOPTS="-j8" genkernel --kernel-config=config.amd64 all

grub-install /dev/sda
grub-mkconfig > /boot/grub/grub.cfg

rc-update add dhcpcd default

passwd

exit

reboot

Spend half an hour installing it and it just looks like MSDOS at the end
kek

>""MSDOS""
>Not knowing Linux virtual terminals
REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Because that's a fucking tty terminal, you absolute retard. Stick to Sup Forums next time.

> (You)

not sure why you quoted me there but it's a simple fact that if you emerge a package with a lot of dependencies that you don't have it's going to take a while longer to compile, and if it's a package where there's a binary option available it's not going to be something you want to wait around for to compile even on a 6c12t desktop (usually)

pic related, and:

time emerge -v blender
[...]
real 3m42.613s
user 26m24.955s
sys 2m1.765s

(with just blender and one dep, was having net issues messing with the result)

genlop -t blender
* media-gfx/blender
Tue Jun 6 01:10:16 2017 >>> media-gfx/blender-2.72b-r4
merge time: 2 minutes and 50 seconds.

basically it's always going to be slower than a binary distro and if you're not on a decent 4c/8t desktop or better it's not going to be ideal when you want to use a package immediately

and I'm not saying that this makes gentoo bad, on the contrary, I'm using gentoo because it's a decent distro to compile things from source

So you're saying I should install it on my 2c/4t thinkpad

I meant that everyone says in gentoo you SHOULD compile everything from the source which is total fake news and wrong.
I use it because i CAN recompile something (e.g freetype) with unusual use-flag or install some obscure shit (e.g. opensuse-patched version of firefox) from third-party overlay.
But absolute majority of my packages is just prebuilt binaries taken from calculate or sabayon mirrors/overlays, so it's no different from any binary based distro such as debian in terms of time required for regular update, just times more flexible if you want it.
And obviously whenever someone shits on gentoo like "it's hard because it requres to compile shit" it makes me RRRREEEEEE as fuck.

I did it on a middle of the road cpu on an x200, took hours to get anywhere and took a lot more hours to recompile the base system with xorg and all after I messed up and put the wrong intel gpu driver in the global use flags (completely my fault, got the gpu driver on google from a post that was wrong)

if you can ssh into the system and emerge a full or at least a decent amount of packages in advanced (more relevant if you've used a bare bones system before), and use a cron tab to update the system, and use binary packages for things like browsers/des/etc, then you're not going to have too much trouble but it's still going to be more painful than a binary distro when it comes to installing from source and updates

>I meant that everyone says in gentoo you SHOULD compile everything from the source which is total fake news and wrong.

oh, agreed there, sorry if I gave that impression

>I use it because i CAN recompile something (e.g freetype) with unusual use-flag or install some obscure shit (e.g. opensuse-patched version of firefox) from third-party overlay.

pretty much why I'm using gentoo

I really do like the flexibility as you and others in the thread have mentioned, ebuilds are as good as arch's aur and as far as the rest of the system goes the gentoo devs were willing to fork udev to maintain support for openrc and non-systemd init systems which gained a huge amount of respect from me - goes a hell of a lot further than most other distros

I use OpenRC and PulseAudio, am I retarded?

>avoiding one piece of Lennart's software just to use another anyways
Yes

Oh well, it just works :-)