I am looking for a distro that is based on Gentoo or is heavily inspired by it. I am a long-time Gentoo user and Debian on system where I don’t have the time to maintain it. I love the flexibility of Gentoo, but although my hardware keeps up, I find my self often not willing to wait hours for an update on my main machine. I am glad that there are some binary packages for some programs and I use flatpak, too. But even though, updates take too long, time I want to spend using my computer. I thought of going to Debian everywhere, because it is stable and does not move too fast regarding major updates. So, Arch-based distros are no option for me.
Can someone of the community recommend any Gentoo-based distros?
Isn’t Gentoo all about compiling everything?
Maybe you should search for some rolling release distribution. I’m using Arch since many years and am quite happy with it. You rarely have to build anything yourself. Only if you have to use the AUR.
I second this. It sounds that you want a rolling release distro. Suse Tumbleweed is also a good choice.
You both right about the rolling part, but Arch has one problem for me: There is no dedicated stable version I am aware of.
Definitely not Gentoo based, but if you can get by with their unique approach to basically everything, NixOS can be pretty interesting, in that while it is technically source based, binary caches are widely used to basically “pretend” to be a binary distro. And it does let you patch things shouid you want it (at the expense of recompiling everything that even slightly comes in contact with the patched package)
There are some parts that are too “baked in” to change – requiring systemd, for instance – so that may be a dealbreaker for you.
Using systemd is not deal-braking for me, but not being able to use it, would be problematic.
NixOS: I guess, I should try it. The concept sounds fascinating. Like old Sabayon, but current.
Because of the way it works, you can try out on a VM for a bit and move your config over to real hardware trivially if you end up liking it. That’s how I did it before I realized how immature it’s rocm support is and had to switch back to arch
I installed Nix in a container, so I can learn some things before I move to it. So far, I am a bit dissappointed, that it is still using Xorg.
It doesn’t have to. I ran Sway on Nix the entire time I used it, and I know Hyprland supports Nix as well
That ist interesting. Do you think a gnome session using wayland would also work?
I don’t see why it wouldn’t. You may need to enable a config option or two though. Documentation isn’t NixOS’s strongest suit.
Thx, I’ll figure it out
There’s advanced search on distrowatch.com where you can filter Gentoo based distros.
Thx.
I liked Sabayon back in the da…
Latest release: (Rolling release) 19.03 / 31 March 2019; 4 years ago
Oh.
I remember this one. Not sure, why I never switched back then.
Not Gentoo based, but have you considered having a play with Void? It’s a stable rolling release, bare bones with it’s own init. Very customisable. I’m using it as my daily driver outside work use (Linux isn’t allowed), and not having any problems, while still getting to tinker.
Gentoo doesn’t have many descendant distros (unless you count ChromeOS, which is a whole other crottle of greeps), and most of them inherit all of its warts. That flexibility you praise exists pretty much because it’s a source distro—you can’t select which optional features you want if you don’t compile the code yourself.
I usually either run “emerge world” overnight with the --keep-going option or set MAKEOPTS so that I’ll have a core free for interactive use while it’s compiling. These days, portage won’t break your system on you—not like ~2005 when you had to run revdep-rebuild all the time to keep from hosing stuff—so it’s safe to update unattended provided you check the list of packages beforehand using --pretend, and mask or --exclude anything dodgy.
So, the real decision I have to make is: Do I still want/need this flexibility or not?
Sounds like you want Debian or Arch. Gentoo is about compiled distros.
It seems it comes down to these two, doesn’t it?
It seems it comes down to these two, does it?
I don’t understand what gentoo-ness you’re looking for, if you want a binary and not source-based distro, and don’t want a rolling distro (but do want timely packages?).
That said if you’re interested in a rolling debian testing based distro, Siduction is nice.
Yeah, it is complicated. I’ll look into Siduction. I hope it is not too fast with updates.
I’ve used Gentoo in the past for 6 years on my desktop and was quite happy with it. I was pretty much in your boat, I knew my way around, could fix problems and knew where to ask for help. All fine and well until time became an issue.
I went with windows for a couple of years until I was fed up with it (again) and switched back to Linux. After some testing, I went with arch. It gives me the closest feeling to Gentoo, without the endlessly long compile times. It requires some learning of the ins and outs but once you’re settled, the experience is on par with Gentoo (at least for me).
I am using Gentoo for more than 10 years now, on two machines. I set it up in a way, so that the more powerful desktop compiles packages that can run on both machines, so that I at least have to wait only longer once for each world update. Use-flags need to be the same on both for that to work.
I did use Sabayon Linux while it was a thing. The Wikipedia has a list of Gentoo derivatives. Calculate Linux might fit your bill, but I haven’t try it yet.
Thx, I scroll through the list. (:
Whenever I tried to move away of gentoo I have found only pain.
Looks good first few days but pretty soon I find issus I don’t want to deal with. Additionally, solutions are made by much less knowledgeable users, so even solution is hard to find.
I use gentoo because it works and I know how to fix (without reinstalling).
I have mint on one desktop, it is so nice… but I use it only occasionally (for gaming and deep learning) even font rendering is not what I like.
You can try Debian Testing (or Unstable) whichever is rolling release, that’s closest you will come.
A lot of people like Fedora… so, maybe…
So… shop around but you will be back, it is like going from Subaru to anything else in the same price range or cheaper. Not possible.
Yeah, on my previous machine I had still the stage3-archive from the day I built it. And I believe I even recompiled everything with different mtune settings, so that I can use the same installation after an CPU upgrade. Don’t remember details anymore; this was huge for me, back then. (:
And yes, I fear to find only frustration for some tweaks and changes I can do only with Gentoo. Choosing how I boot my machine and such. No grub, systemd-boot instead, etc.
Debian is still the closest. Maybe I switch to it on my laptop, which I currently don’t use much.
Maybe I should try something more ambitious like NixOS on the spare machine (laptop) and see whether it feels right for me; I can always fall back to Debian.
What are typical compile times for let’s say weekly updates and for a full system?
A normal world update after 60 to 90 days can take one day (including troubleshooting, if needed). I between I do only security updates, in most cases they are done within minutes depending on the package and there compile-time dependencies.
