Ran gentoo for a decade back in the 2000s, was awesome, then some idiots started breaking everything on a daily basis.
Go back every now and then, builds are SOOO much faster with modern cpus, but there’s also no point.
Gentoo is like a fast car on a rail track, you’re not actually going anywhere. Arch was OK, but another moron kept breaking expat (pacman needed expat btw). Always hated redhat and ubuntu turned to the dark side.
Some crazy single guys age and stop living so wild, I feel like that’s me and distros, a nice cup of debian with a ton of lxcs and vms to bang whenever I’m horny.
Check that, I’m in a thruple with debian and freebsd.
I love Arch and keep it on an old i3 laptop that I use despite having a Core i7 laptop. But for my actual daily desktop computer I use Pop. I don’t like being in the middle of some big project and then realizing I need to stop and spend an hour installing some missing package to continue with my project. Pop simplifies all of that, even though it doesn’t provide the same sense of accomplishment and old-school computing that I get by using Arch.
I’m tempted to go back, but man, something always breaks, and it’s never anything cool, it’s always something backwards ass random library for font layout or some shit, and everything just falls on the floor.
But I think I need at least a good arch environment for gaming, debian blows on that regard. I just can’t afford to lose my system for half a day because something breaks, if it’s a kernel issue I can fix it myself, but not if it’s dll layer 8 for the stack used to format yaml files for postscript printing which somehow means all my text editors get linker errors now.
I’ve never actually had Arch break. I’ve just encountered shit like when I plugged my printer into the USB port of my computer and hit Ctrl+p and realized I didn’t have CUPS or any printer spooling stuff installed. So I’d have to stop what I was doing and figure out how to install and configure that stuff. That’s part of what makes Arch so enduring to me, but it’s also a PITA when you’re just trying to get stuff done.
I have dailied arch for 13 years and have never once ran across something like you are describing. Not saying arch doesn’t break in the way you are describing, just genuinely curious how your system breaks like that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/67ef10/comment/dh5vjk5/
It was similar to this, but it was longer ago and didn’t see this post then.
Never had any issues with Arch and im not the only one. If your system is unstable, it’s your fault, point to the line.
Meh, kinda depends. Most issues I’ve had with Arch are related to bugs with apps rather than system breakage (looking at you early Plasma). Overall Arch is stable and issues are resolved quickly, though sometimes you may need to avoid major software releases for a while.
Now look, that isn’t true. While yes, the maintenance of your system is entirely up to you, you cannot help it when a bug comes from an update. Typically if you stay away from the git versions of software, you should be fine, but library updates break stuff all the time, all it takes is that one piece of software that you use to not be compatible with an update and you’re out. Yes you could downgrade that package, but what if something else you uses requires that updated package? Then you’re downgrading that. Next thing you know, 30 libraries have to be downgraded because they changed the way their syscalls work and that software cannot make use of the libraries the way they are.
I prefer using arch and I don’t have any problem doing any of this stuff (I approach software the suckless way save for a file manager), but I can see why a lot of people look elsewhere for their distro of choice.
bugs is something that can happen when you build your system yourself
I wouldn’t really call arch a system you build yourself, as that would imply you are building every package from source including the base packages. Stage 3 Gentoo is IMO the bare minimum.
it’s a diy distro, even if you use pre-compiled packages you’re technically building your system yourself
Lived on gentoo for a decade with less problems than I had on arch.
That isn’t saying much. I’d say gentoo honestly has better system stability than even Debian if you know how to properly set up your system
never said Arch was perfect, boths are diy & great distros, the only bad thing i could mention about gentoo is portage being written in Python
Love myself some NixOS. All the customizability with none of the breakage. Pretty stable, very reproducible.
ITT: people sleeping on the power of portage and think Gentoo is just for optimized software.
Portage is so good.
Portage is great, I loved the fact that you can have slots with different versions of the same package. Nowadays I’m on Debian Stable. I just don’t have the time anymore.
Don’t you have some compiling to wait for?
Waiting for compilation is the most satisfying thing in universe. It’s almost orgasmic.
I use Arch btw.
I was using Gentoo for some years, and I have to say I do not regret switching to Arch.
That said, power to those chosen or damned to wield Gentoo in the eternal war of kernels. They are the fabric of reality, interstellar light and darkness, they are the reason we, common folks, can live peacefully with precompiled packages, not knowing the pains of building everything from sources.
Many years ago I ran Gentoo as well. Switching to Arch was a considerable upgrade. I admit I’ve been running Ubuntu since Lucid (aside a brief stint of Fedora). It’s nice that things mostly just work. It allows me to focus on life and not wifi drivers. Man, that sounds like such a cop out.
Anyhow, there’s part of me that would love to play with those cosmic distros again some day.
As a former long-time Gentoo user, I use Arch 😉
I’m OOTL. What’s the icon on the right?
Gentoo. It’s a distro based around compiling most packages on your machine either for hardware compatability or performance.
Gentoo is just arch with extra steps
As a person who has daily used Gentoo before, I’ve never been so offended by something I totally agree with
I don’t get arch,but I have a life and much prefure ubuntu over Amy linux distro
I smell a little bitch here…
what do you mean by “i have a life” ?
It’s as shrimple as that
i have a big problem with that, because i don’t get how life is better for not using any diy distro ?
Bruh, I have things like work life and family, again arch is arch and I have a life
You know installing and configuring Arch so it’s functional doesn’t take much longer than an hour, especially with install scripts. There’re even Arch based distros like EndeavourOS which are easy to get started with. Arch taking over your life is kinda a meme, ricing it can take as much or as little time as you’d like.
If I could install the damn thing, I WOULD run Gentoo. Furthest I got was install the base system. I was never able to install a DE. 😂
What’s the appeal of purposely using a user unfriendly system? I’m a Linux beginner and I use easy to use distros. Just curious as to why torture yourself?
I wouldn’t say they are user unfriendly, just not fit for beginners. There are definite advantages to those distros for advanced users, as they offer way more customisation than beginner friendly distros.
Installing an OS by hand and compiling the packages you need on top of a bare bones system is a great learning experience. It also gives you the most flexibility, for better and worse.
Often its to learn about how a linux system works under the hood, also Gentoo can theoreticly have a small performance boost (tho on modern hardware its extremly small).
its only joking
I used to use void, was a great distro, using Fedora now though
Gentoo ricer reporting in.
Ran a stage 1 Gentoo build whilst at uni back in the early 00’s. Man building that on my Athlon took an absolute age - and there was no easy way for me to read docs whilst I was putting it together.
Still, ran Gnome DE and did my dissertation on it.
My greatest achievement in life was running on stable gentoo installation for a month. Then I messed up something and never found the courage to get back to it. I have just flown too close to the sun…
