So, I’ve been using Arch Linux ARM on Raspberry Pis for some “desktop systems” as well as for a janky-ass NAS solution, but that project is kindof dying. They go many months in a row sometimes without any package updates. It’s wild. And when people ask WTF is going on and offer beg to be allowed to help in some way, the admins lock the thread.
So, I’ve been looking to switch my Raspberry Pi’s to something that doesn’t depend so much on some “project” out there to be able to continue to use.
The main Gentoo project fully supports ARM. And even if it didn’t, it’d be a lot easier to use Gentoo without support than Arch.
Switching my main box (not a Raspberry Pi – it’s an x86_64 system) to Gentoo was basically for the purpose of trying out Gentoo again and evaluating whether I want to take the plunge and switch everything to Gentoo.
Aside from that, there’s SystemD which is yucky. (Yes, I know about Artix, but when last I tried it, it didn’t really feel “ready for prime time”. It depends a lot on the main Arch repos.)
Plus, I do kindof like the idea of “more control over my system(s)”. Configuring/compiling my own kernel (yes, you can do that on Arch, it’s much less “in the spirit of” Arch) to make it as minimal as possible and disable everything I don’t need. And of course USE flags are a plus if you want a light system.
gentoo is less about compiling from source (I mean it can be about that too)
and more about having a lot of choice and really nice tooling.
it’s in some ways a bunch more stable and declarative than arch.
packaging your own stuff is even easier and you can just have most packages be stable while only running unstable version of the packages you explicitly care about :)
Interested in why you went back to Gentoo after Arch.
I use Arch (btw) and tried Gentoo back in the day, but it’s always in the back of my mind that compiling source could be “better”…?
So, I’ve been using Arch Linux ARM on Raspberry Pis for some “desktop systems” as well as for a janky-ass NAS solution, but that project is kindof dying. They go many months in a row sometimes without any package updates. It’s wild. And when people ask WTF is going on and
offerbeg to be allowed to help in some way, the admins lock the thread.So, I’ve been looking to switch my Raspberry Pi’s to something that doesn’t depend so much on some “project” out there to be able to continue to use.
The main Gentoo project fully supports ARM. And even if it didn’t, it’d be a lot easier to use Gentoo without support than Arch.
Switching my main box (not a Raspberry Pi – it’s an x86_64 system) to Gentoo was basically for the purpose of trying out Gentoo again and evaluating whether I want to take the plunge and switch everything to Gentoo.
Aside from that, there’s SystemD which is yucky. (Yes, I know about Artix, but when last I tried it, it didn’t really feel “ready for prime time”. It depends a lot on the main Arch repos.)
Plus, I do kindof like the idea of “more control over my system(s)”. Configuring/compiling my own kernel (yes, you can do that on Arch, it’s much less “in the spirit of” Arch) to make it as minimal as possible and disable everything I don’t need. And of course USE flags are a plus if you want a light system.
Anyway, those are my main reasons.
gentoo is less about compiling from source (I mean it can be about that too) and more about having a lot of choice and really nice tooling. it’s in some ways a bunch more stable and declarative than arch. packaging your own stuff is even easier and you can just have most packages be stable while only running unstable version of the packages you explicitly care about :)