when you guys refer to Gentoo , is it for the meme or does it

Well if you just want to learn about Linux you'll learn plenty trying to work around and fix how shitty Gentoo is. It's more of a tinesink than a learning experience. I'd say stick with Ubuntu and do something fun if you want to learn Linux/haxoring.

And dual boot for your games.

Shits dope. You can make it do what ever you want. Plus when your computer starts you can use it right away rather than on Windows not letting you do anything even though you're in the desktop environment

>>59991349
thanks, I'll probably do this then, although I heard you could do something called a 'gpu passthrough' which seems kinda neat but then again there are games for wine and all but not many, so I'll probably just duel boot

>>59991499
thanks <3

>>59991349
Is it basically a shitty version of Arch?

Gentoo requires an inordinate amount of tweaking and diving into the internals. A lot of people find that fun.

As someone who used Windows for a while, then learned Linux: my understanding of my OS used to be entirely limited to making my way around its GUI. I never even considered anything lower-level than that - even things like file permissions are generally ignored by your average windows user. That doesn't mean that I was bad at using it, just that I viewed the OS as being "just there" and expected it to "just work". Had you put me in front of a command line, I would have been totally lost, as that requires a good idea of the underlying mechanisms of what you're trying to do: if all you've ever done is look at GUIs, you think of parts of your OS as actual visual objects and completely abstract away details of how they are actually handled by the machine.

You can (usually) have this kind of experience with Linux, if you use something like Ubuntu. Some do it because it's a free OS, or maybe because they have an old machine and Windows is too slow for it, etc. (E.g. I installed Lubuntu on an old netbook for my tech illiterate mom to make it usable again, and it worked great.)

But with something like Gentoo, you really get your hands dirty. You stop thinking of your OS as some mysterious force that makes your computer "just work", you get to understand the different components that make it up and make it work. That allows you to e.g. customise these components, giving you VASTLY more freedom than windows allows; it also allows you to fix things when they go wrong (as opposed to blankly staring at a cryptic error popup / BSOD, restarting and hoping it works this time). But there's also a lot, and I mean A LOT, of room for errors (with great power comes great responsibility blah blah, all that stuff).

>>59991537
Now on something like Ubuntu, you can mess around but you don't have to (and in comparison to Windows, the difference in freedom of what you can do between Ubuntu and Gentoo is minimal or negligible). On the other hand, Gentoo requires you to actually install it manually, which means there's a very high potential of screwing up right from the start, which makes it one of the most hands-on and also one of the most time-costly distros.

>>59991513
No, Arch is a shitty version of Gentoo.

Arch used to basically be Gentoo-tier (and IIRC pacman used to be really buggy so you'd even compile stuff yourself often - I may be wrong on this though). Nowadays the Arch install process is so well documented, not to mention the fact that there are derivatives which are literally "Arch, but with an installer", that it really isn't that much trouble, and then in actual usage I haven't heard it being much more user-unfriendly than other distros.

tfw to smart too use computers

>>59991537
>>59991565
thank you very very much, that's exactly how I kinda see an OS and the way you described everything put it in a very very nice picture for me, I already imagined it would be something along those lines but the comparisons made has it alot clearer ,

>>59991474
You can if your hardware supports virtualization. Most modern non k intels do. Newer amd cpus support it but its currently a crap shoot.

Gentoo suffers from the same problem that all Linux systems suffer from, poor desktop environment support and grossly inconsistent UIs that far surpasses Windows inconsistencies.
Additionally driver support is still an afterthought so you are looking at less performance on the same machine.
macOS is both usability-wise and aesthetically-wise the best Linux on the market right now but, like with all Linux systems, has to use WINE or other Emulation to run any games you really want to play, other than Linux users who defer what they want to play with what they can play instead.

>>59991723
I Have an i3 but most likely going to upgrade within the year to an i5 so this also helps, do some overclock-able intel cpus not handle it well?

>>59991745
macOS is very "aesthetic" and stable, definitely, but at the cost of usability and customisation.

Honestly if you're willing to put in the time you can get a fantastic DE on Linux (you don't even have to use any of the DE packages, as you can install your preferred components individually).

>>59991723
>non k intels
What did you mean by this

Did they take their high-end CPUs and decide "nah, they already get overclocking, let's disable virtualisation"? Or am I misreading something?

You're all cancer cells lurking inside of /g/

>>59991785
The problem is that you have to heavily 'Customize' other Linux distros to get a working system. It's 2017 and most Linuxes still have wildly inconsistent File pickers vs File browsers.
Point being, you can have Thumbnails in your file browser (after installing an extension because it's another afterthought in Linux) that are less customize-able than on Windows but then your File picker, which looks completely different doesn't have thumbnail view. The best you get is a preview-pane or microscopic thumbs.

What I am trying to illustrate with this is that Linux (ab)users see getting a computer into a usable state that comes standard in macOS, Windows, and to some extent (albeit less so), in the distributions /g/ likes to spend its time bitching about/feeling more superior than (Ubuntu, RHEL, Fedora).

>>59991889
>See getting into a usable state...
Fuck, I meant to say "into a usable state as customization" when in reality it's just trying to make it like more easily available options.

>>59991889
>to defend Macs he talks about file browsers on Linux

I would accept your argument if I didn't literally use cd over finder in 99% of cases. That 1% being the times where an application requires an "Open.." dialog, and there are no other options.

I still see your point - and your argument does apply to other parts of the DE - but you literally chose the worst possible thing to compare. I'll take unriced LXDE over Finder any day. (Of course, if you're a coffee shop tier hipster who just saves reddit memes to "Pictures" and articles for his vegan blog to "Documents", then finder is perfectly fine. But that's self-evident.)

>>59991253
>I like Linux but I like my gaymes
Frankly, if it can't be played on Linux, it's probably not worth it. I used to be a really big gaymer, but then I realized how much of an enormous waste of time it is. In the rare event that I want to play something, I'll just fire up Doom, Quake, or something like that.

>>59991962
I am talking specifically about thumbnail support when examining the File browser + File pickers.
Finder has significant problems, I agree.

OP see my games argument being realized here >>59992028

>>59991798
Some earlier sandy / ivy bridge & haslel k models had no vt-d (whereas the equivalent non-k versions did) but I think the 4x90k has it and my 6600k also has it

They all still have vt-x so it only matters for pci passthrough

>>59992102
Huh, weird. Good to know.

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Gentoo is amazing. I can have multiple conflicting versions of packages, or 64 and 32 bit libraries at once. And it's all fine because the programs that depend on specific architectures or specific versions of programs are compiled from source, so portage just links them with the version it knows it depends on.

See https://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/slotting/ and https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2015-03-28-true-multilib.html

If you've ever had to deal with dependency issues with packages you'll know why this is awesome.

Also being able to manually include (or exclude) certain features from any package or your kernel is extremely useful. For example, I was able to simply remove the SSL heartbeat extension and recompile my packages when the heartbleed vuln came out.

Did I even mention Portage?
>Portage works without any external repo.
>Portage supports using llvm icc etc to build with.
>Portage supports distcc.
>Portage supports slotting of dependencies.(multiple versions of python, ruby, gtk etc)
>Portage supports multiple kernels BSD Fedora debian etc.
>Portage can thread package installs and downloads

Meanwhile, with Arch
>overzealous autistic fan boys
>"you'll learn how Linux REALLY works!" When it's literally just configuring a package manager and letting scripts do the rest
>offers nothing that minimal net installs already offered for other distros don't.
>muh bleeding edge packages!! when you can just install directly from the upstream source in any distro.
>only reason to use it is the aur, which is full of broken and unmaintained packages and isn't monitored at all, most "packages" are just a bash script to download the package and it's install script from GitHub.
>aur is far worse than Open Build Service, which actually lets you package binaries and programs for multiple distros.

there's nothing it offers that makes it worth using over any other distros and it has the worst fucking user base.

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>>59991253
Gentoo will solve all your Windows problems, but then you'll have new Gentoo problems. I prefer the Gentoo problems.

>>59992161
I first installed (GNU/) Linux 6 years ago. Started with mint, but after a few month decided that I wanted to try out something less user friendly (mostly to force myself to understand how the system works). Chose Arch over Gentoo partially because of it having a stigma for being hard to install/maintain (I was retarded back then, I know), partially because my system was very weak, and I did not want to wait for hours on end to compile a package. Most issues people on here bash Arch for I have not personally encountered and Pacman is pretty great desu. This summer, however, I am going to upgrade my system (Ryzen) and finally install gentoo. Wish me luck.

>>59992301
>>59992200
>>59992161
Void master race

Fight me

>>59992391
Void is good
I Like it better than I liked gentoo when I tried it too.
xbps is lovely and so is runit

>>59992391
>Void
Heard of it, but don't know anything about it. How is it "better" then Gentoo?

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>>59991253
Gentoo is fine if your goal is to become a Linux expert. If you want to actually do something productive with your computer immediately, Ubuntu is a better choice.

>>59992700
or, like any other distro that requires setting it up yourself, if you want to set up your own special snowflake enviornment
Its fun to do at first and after youve done it enough you actually come to like and prefer some special snowflake setup of your own.

>>59992070
Op here, i see it lmao

>>59992681
It's just shitposting, I've never actually used gentoo.

From what I've seen Void is probably the best distro which isn't a debian or fedora or suse derivative, and doesn't require you to compile absolutely everything yourself. Slackware is alright too.
The advantages of void are mainly runit (a modern init that achieves the same things as systemd, arguably does them better, but most importantly does them without overriding like half the functionality of your entire OS and being a huge bloated poorly-understood piece of crap), and xbps (which is just lovely in general).

Disadvantages of void are basically that it's void of packages. In reality 95% of everything you'll ever need is right there.
Also it actually has a nice installer, it doesn't hold your hand all the way or load fancy graphics and dialogues with explanations, but it lets you get what you need done quickly and easily and just werks(tm) - assuming you know what you want to do of course.

tl;dr it's probably similar to gentoo but has an installer and most of the time you don't need to compile things.

>>59992878
You're forgetting xbps-src
it has a ports system, xbps-src, that lets you set USE flags like gentoo(though only some packages have significant options).
Though it sort of sucks because regular xbps will overwrite any packages from xbps-src unless you manually put them on hold then manually unhold them and recompile when theres an update.
it still is nice for some things though. like compiling alsa into firefox while we still can.
no packages isnt such a problem now as I remember it being when I first tried it though. the only major complaint I have is it only has anthy as a japanese ime, no mozc. slightly more minor is no freetard kernel available.

>>59991253
Contrary to popular belief it really doesn't make you a computer guru. Gentoo is essentially barebones sysvinit Linux (yes, there is the choice to run musl and even ulibc, as well as the BSD toolchain), which is heavily abstracted by it's package manager. Portage in concept is probably one of the best package managers conceivable - but there's still a lot of awful issues. It has a much more massive graph to resolve everytime you run an emerge so it can take a long time, rsync is very slow also (although many are migrating to git or a squashfs image), and the EAPI is a huge PITA. Portage itself comes with symbolic link management tools and can fix broken links as well, but to access out of tree things you need to use layman.

I will say for modern systems, the compilation time should be handwavable, USE flags are great too because you can sometimes get out of tree features or globally disable certain environments like pulseaudio or java. In practice these are just abstractions atop of building the program yourself, albeit good abstractions which makes dependency resolution for certain flags a lot easier. Being able to optimize large swaths of programs with unconventional CFLAGS are nice too - particularly vectorization and native processor optimization can provide unexpected perf bonuses, but these are pretty limited in use. Multislot on portage is another great plus but a lot of packages have limited releases and forces you to manually install multislotted instances (e.g. NETCDF).

Gentoo is good but I think a lot of people misunderstand it as a "hobbyist learning distro" but it's really intended for power users who want it to be easy to customize your system, whether you're a ricer or if you're setting up a workstation which needs to be precisely tailored to your use case. I own a box that runs Gentoo specifically for CAE/CAM/CAD, and I have to write my own ebuilds for certain programs.

>>59992952
I just installed void a few days ago so I'm still learning the ins and outs of xbps. That sounds really useful - optional USE flags without an autistic requirement to compile literally everything.

>>59993085
Is Linux from scratch much harder than Gentoo?

Because it seems like it would be the perfect 'hobbyist learning "distro" '.

>>59991253
first you should learn how to use periods, you're gonna need them to write drivers for your teledildonics hardware.

>>59993244
they arent as extensive as gentoos though, again.
xbps-src is fairly simplle but for some reason I had trouble with its documentation so an easy summary for you-
clone the void-packages git repo somewhere, maybe /opt
in it, with root privileges, './xbps-src binary-bootstrap '
after that, installing things is './xbps-src pkg [packagename]' to build the package. the built package will go in hostdir/binpkgs, in the void-packages directory. you then install them with 'xbps-install --repository=hostdir/binpkgs [package to be installed]', from there.
options use the -o flag with xbps-src. so, './xbps-src pkg -o opt1,opt2,~opt3,opt4 pkgname'. prefixing with ~ means disabling that option.
./xbps-src show-options pkgname to see what options are available for something.

>>59993514
Nice, thanks!

>>59993576
also look at void-packages/etc/defaults.conf to see how to configure options without flags.
put your configuration in void-packages/etc/conf, though, rather than editing defaults.conf

>>59993278
Yes. Linux from Scratch requires you to build your own compiler toolchain from scratch and then bootstrap the whole system, then build a workable instance of the GNU tools and GCC in the system afterwards. To make it usable (BLFS), you'll be sitting at the computer hammering away at your own cURL program or wget the whole day and compile them until you get the programs you want. It's fine as a learning distro though.

Gentoo's problems are mostly its features

I mean, it isn't really a fault that it requires the user to either know their shit or be ready to read a lot of manuals/guides.

But at the same time, it makes no sense to bother unless you either know your shit or want a slow, possibly frustrating learning process. Also it doesn't offer a whole lot of benefits if you don't care about optimizing your system as much as it allows you to.

source: tried it out but gave up pretty soon when I wanted my laptop to be usable and it was faster to wipe gentoo + install debian than figure out how to actually use portage to even install X

>>59991253
It's definitely a meme. However for intermediate users Gentoo can be a great distro.