this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023

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I've been trying out Gentoo, but imma hop to another distro (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Everything just feels way more complicated than it needs to be.

I tried installing Openshot (a video editor) but I couldn't figure out how to fix the error it spits out when I try to emerge it.

I will now try out Arch and hope I don't need a master's degree to install packages.

Edit: Gentoo isn't the first distro I've tried, I've been daily driving Debian for more than a year and just wanted to try it out since I heard good things about it. And also I didn't really need to use Openshot, I just wanted some video editor and arbitrarily chose to install that one.

Also I guess I will just stick with Debian since apparently Arch is also complicated.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Arch isn't any easier than Gentoo. If you're newer to Linux and looking for something that 'just works' I'd stick with something Debian based like Ubuntu, Elementary, Mint, or PopOS

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

akhtchually arch is a little easier than gentoo. gentoo is fully source-based, while arch is binary first. gentoo has use flags, while arch comes preoccupied with flags.

albeit both distros cater to a little more experienced users, there's that. i also think a more user-friendly distro would be a better start. at least the ones where you can get a working environment by just using a live installer. mint IS a good alternative.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No way! 😱

I'll take a look at these distros, though I'm not really too much of a beginner anymore.

I actually come from Debian, but I hopped distros in hopes of finding an even better distro.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gotcha! Enjoy your hopping then - just didn't want someone to try out Linux for the first time on hard mode and give up

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeap, all new comers to linux should first try Gentoo, if it fails, then try LFS. After that, KISS linux should be a breeze

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I mean... It doesn't have to be a competition, does it?

Some people just want a stable system to work on. I kind of want to leave Ubuntu, I like mint and popos, but. They don't always work out of the box like Ubuntu does for me. So I just change the dm to emulate other distros and it feels good enough.

Am I doing it wrong?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

openshot on debian must be about 3 years behind arch

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I installed Gentoo back when I was just starting out with Linux (I got the release from the DVD on the front of a magazine, if you want an idea of how long ago this was!). I learned a tonne about Linux that has stuck with me to this day, but then promptly wiped the drive and installed something that I actually wanted to use day-to-day hahaha.

So yeah, it happens!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yep that's Gentoo for ya.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As an every-day Gentoo user, there is little reason to use Gentoo unless you have specific, niche configuration requirements. For instance, if you need to use a very specific version of a piece of software with very specific build-time parameters.

Where Gentoo shines is the ability to combine some old packages with some bleeding edge ones. If I, for some reason, want to run PostgreSQL 10 (released 2017) alongside Node.js 20 (released 2023), it is a thing I can do. This is not possible on most other distros - at least, not without side-stepping the package manager and compiling a bunch of things yourself.

I've used Gentoo several times over the years, and what ultimately made me switch back was Docker's reliance on iptables. I was using Fedora at the time, which had switched to nftables. (I don't think this is as much of an issue now, but it was a few years back).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

In my experience, Gentoo is in many ways easier than Arch. Portage is a much better package manager, and getting something to break (even if using unstable) is really hard. Never heard of OpenShot, but I would take a look if there are some bugs related to it that are relevant. https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=media-video%2Fopenshot

In my experience, whilst Arch is also an excellent distro it is much easier to mess something up, or for pacman to mess something.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've found Gentoo kinda frustrating too, having installed it on my laptop just to try it out as a habitual Arch user. Source packages mean updates take a lot longer and will also destroy my battery if I'm not plugged in, there seem to be fewer packages than on Arch, the installation wasn't exactly 100% smooth, etc. I can definitely appreciate Gentoo, but it really seems like it's just not for me. My guess will be that you'll find Arch a bit easier to work with.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Try Nix OS

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I don't think there is a point in using gentoo unless you have a specific need for what makes it unique.

Debian is a great choice imo

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

if you want to try something like Gentoo as a Debian user, it should probably be in a VM or on a second physical computer until you get used to it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Gentoo is not difficult. Been using it for the last year

[+] [email protected] -6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I can understand English not being your native language, and it doesn't really matter if one doesn't speak a language well, as long as he/she honestly makes an effort to communicate.

BUT, "imma hop to another distro" is pushing peoples patience a little too much, don't you think?

Gentoo turned to crap ever since they decided to adopt IBM's trojan horse, elogind, and abandon consolekit2 and seatd which are active and adequate alternatives. But IBM must be paying well the heads of some distributions so they can become their little puppets.

If using openshot is the reason to use linux, are you aware it is offered for windows 11 too?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

What is wrong with imma hop to another distro? That is perfectly fine English: I'm going to hop to another distro.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

...what?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

This is not facebook, smartass comments like this have no place other than the trash capitalist anti-social cannibals network. Did you not understand something in specific ask.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I really love how you try to paint every decision in the worst way possible. No Gentoo didn't abandon seatd it is commonly used. In what way is elogind trojan horse, I would really like to know.

Also, Gentoo is basically the only “major” distro that actually lets you now use systemd at all, actually most Gentoo users don't use systemd, so I really have no idea what you are talking about.

Love how you are trying to paint everyone who disagrees with you as some sort of FOSS revisionist and here in community “Linux for leftist” you are trying to recommend someone Windows…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any possible recipe that can have systemd/elogind in it now has it, the problem is that some who don't have it have sources to default to systemd if not otherwise specified. This has forced users by more than 90% to use gentoo's default recipe instead of playing with configurations all day try to compile without it.

In all my years I haven't seen sources to say enable-openrc or sysvinit or runit or s6, it is ONLY systemd/elogind

For ages people used gentoo because it was the safe way around systemd, and gentoo leaders decided to sell them all out to IBM. People use computers for other reasons than be building software all day getting nothing else done. If you are to build a gentoo installation without IBM's trojan you may as well create your own distro, what do you need gentoo for? To alert you of upstream updates? You can do this otherwise without gentoo, and if you are reconfiguring recipes on your own, you might as well.

Those IBM checks must be sweet, even with a "left" mask on!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What are you even talking about? I guess by recipes you mean ebuilds. Only 260 ebuilds use systemd or elogind USE flags. If you look at those, most of those are just providing some systemd special behaviour (loggind straight to journald session tracking, etc.). There are just a few packages that won't work without systemd, but that is not due to some weird conspiracy theory of yours, but just due to almost everyone, especially in professional spaces, using systemd, but those packages are very rare.

If you look at gentoo wiki almost always you will find that openrc is treated at least with same level of detail, often more. If you look at every poll etc. of gentoo users, you will always find that more people use openrc than systemd. You should probably stop accusing everyone else of being malicious and try to actually look into things first.

Sure, because starting your own distro is really easy feat. Not like gentoo tools have years of development behind them and there are hundreds of developers that worked on it.

You are literally starting to act like liberals that cry “CCP bot” / “Russian bot” every time someone says something that disagrees with their world view.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

🤨

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