Is This What Growing Up Feels Like?
I have been an avid, dedicated Gentoo user for about seven years (gulp). I love the flexibility of the package manager, and the extremely granular level of control over my system it gives me. Installing and administrating a Gentoo system for this long is the reason I know as much about Linux as I do, and I don't regret a minute of it.
However, all that configuration comes at a cost - my time. When the system works, it requires little to no maintenance, and should generally continue to work. If it breaks, it's because I changed something. However, it does require frequent updates to ensure smooth roll-forwards, and that means rebuilding components from source, a lot. If nothing else, it's ecologically irresponsible to repeatedly rebuild a whole Linux distribution for negligible gain.
At the end of the day, my needs are pretty run-of-the-mill, which is kind of a misuse of Gentoo's flexibility. It's finally time to part ways.
This is the list of alternatives I'm considering. I've actually installed and used each of these before as a secondary exploratory distro, but never used any as a daily driver.
This is currently my top choice, but this may just be a reaction to where I'm coming from. Debian's "elevator pitch" is stability. A Debian system should be expected to be rock-solid once installed. I don't want to futz with my operating system, I want to turn on my workstation and do work. Debian enjoys a massive package set and widespread compatibility, but I am concerned that the stable branch lags in terms of updates. I could use Debian Testing, but am I then forfeiting the whole purpose of using Debian in the first place? How easy is it to selectively use updated (or upstream) package repositories for software I actively use a lot on a largely Debian Stable system?
Manjaro is my second choice. I came to Gentoo from Arch Linux, and clearly connect with the "lego set" style of DIY linux distros. Arch was also a highly pleasant, highly stable experience, but this time around I no longer feel the need to build up completely from scratch. I had a positive experience installing Manjaro back in 2016, and can only assume it's further improved since then. Arch-diehards - why shouldn't I just use Manjaro and instead keep it strictly Arch?
I have much less familiarity with RPM, so it would be nice to learn, and hear this is a solid choice for developers who need their system components to remain relatively tight with upstream but still need a stable, cohesive system that all works together. This is the furthest from what I know, so it's tempting, but the whole point here is to think less about my OS and just get stuff done.
OpenSuSE has the somewhat dubious distinction of being my very first Linux distro, about six months before I discovered Ubuntu Breezy Badger back in 2005. I also tried and liked using Tumbleweed in 2018 for a bit as a daily driver, but still ended up running back to Gentoo. This distro has some serious brand loyalty, though. Why should I give it another look?
Most of these distributions actually differ somewhat minimally. It's a choice of a package manager and a default set of applications. I have already settled on KDE Plasma as my desktop environment of choice, so if I don't much care about the base, why not just use their distro and get the most polished KDE experience? Would this limit me in any significant way? The Ubuntu LTS base actually ticks all my boxes too.
Not likely, and not Linux, but Gentoo's portage is the whole reason I like Gentoo so much and is inspired by the BSD-style ports system. Is this actually a viable choice for a daily driver for development work?
I am also using and enjoying Void Linux on my rapidly aging laptop, but it's not quite as "just forget about it" as I want for my more modern desktop, and every so often I have trouble getting something installed (most recently, for example, dotnet).
Is there something awesome I've missed? Other reformed distro-hoppers, what's your Linux forever-home and why?
Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash
Top comments (186)
Maybe you're bored and want to bikeshed in a new distro? :)
I'd prefer that you went with Gentoo because I'd like to see experienced devs stay with it has as much help as it can get.
One criterion for me has been distro's support for the zen kernel and hardened kernel - not all have the same patches or default options.
I'd rather see devs like you pick a distro based on virtue and then apply your virtue to improving that distro in the way(s) you're passionate about.
I'll still keep Gentoo in my life, it's just no longer what I want from my main work OS. I'm trying to pick based on virtue, but my virtues have shifted.
What about precompiled Gentoo? Then you'll be familiar & not wasting time on compile, which is the main virtue that's currently being violated - right?
I hadn't thought about that. I'm running precompiled Gentoo on a raspberry pi right now (and plan to for the foreseeable future), and it's a great solution there, but it's perhaps a little too static for a desktop system. I will inevitably want to make changes and apply updates, which just puts me back at square one.
Surely there's a way in Gentoo to use precompiled when you want and still have access to the normal config options...
Yep, absolutely, and it's more configuration and (likely, in my case) trial and error. I'm a little burnt out on tailoring Gentoo, I guess.
Yes, but after all these years your Gentoo config should be pretty dialed in by now, right? And these days you can basically 'emerge world' in the background while you're working, right? I'm not really clear on the problem, but perhaps you're a convert to the climate change religion - in which case you should probably use something like ChromeOS. The globalists would prefer you have everything in the cloud.
Not sure why you're getting abrasive and political about this, I don't really have a response to that part of your comment.
Yes, when my system works, it works well. It's still held together by years of my own configuration, and when I decide to make changes, there is a chance I break something and it's not always clear what the fix is. There always is a fix, of course, it's Gentoo. I am at the point that when I do run into an unclean merge, I am frustrated that I have to then go digging to resolve it. Maybe it's a problem with my expertise, but it's happening right now - some update recently introduced some ABI incompatibility that's at odds with some hardcoded change I made years ago, and undoing the change caused more problems, so now I need to dig to find the source of the issue into order to get a clean merge. It's not a huge problem, for now I'm ignoring it and just not merging some updates and my system works fine, but it's annoying that I will eventually need to fix it. I don't want to play the game anymore on my work OS, just on side projects (like the Pi).
Chrome OS is modified Gentoo
Yes, but tailored to this specific web-focused use case. It's not a replacement for a general purpose OS, even though it's built from Gentoo's meta-distribution tooling, and I don't think the suggestion was made in earnest.
Maybe a reinstall is due. I haven't had to mess with anything since I started using Docker for questionable stuff. Meaning stuff that I thought might mess with my system in unforeseen ways.
Your views might be the reason you find my reply abrasive. I don't think I can be accused of making it political when your article says it is "ecologically irresponsible" - that's political. This happens often when someone says a strong (and what I believe to be an ideological) political view... And if anyone opposes it, then they get accused of "bringing up politics." Trying to divorce technology and politics completely is impossible.
Replace "irresponsible" with "wasteful" and its an even more objective observation, and a very secondary point here. Before this thread, your only other comment is some crap about "globalists" and political correctness in an unrelated thread, so it's hard for me to believe you're commenting in good faith.
Wasting electrons? Wasting your money on energy? I don't think compiling software from scratch is absolutely wasteful. Energy neither created nor destroyed. Quantifying how Gentoo affects a desktop users energy bill would be a challenge to do fairly.
Sure, it's nuanced, and probably interesting to dig deeper in to. My point is that's not really my point here at all, maybe it was a mistake to even mention that at all in the OG post.
You're probably right, a re-install would help me with today's frustration about my Gentoo install, but I don't think Gentoo has to be the be-all, end-all of my Linux experience. I'll always have a Gentoo install around, and appreciate it for what it is, but there's lots of tools out there.
Gentoo's stage3 builds & funtoo.org seem like good options + that reinstall.
I go back and forth on funtoo. I ran it for about two years but eventually ended up back on Gentoo. It's got some cool ideas, but I'd prefer to stick with where the brunt of development is focused. Maybe when I learn a lot more about software I can try again and be a more active participant in the distro's development, I hope it stays around for a long time.
As for the reinstall, I keep a SystemRescueCD flash drive around, that's usually all I need to start fresh.
I will still have to try it to recommend it, but maybe having an immutable workstation will reduce your issues. Someone here mentioned Silverblue, but Darch can do the same with Gentoo, Arch, etc.
Yeah, for sure. It's not something I've spent much time looking in to, but does seem like it would address my problem from the limited understanding I have.
Ditto!
I started with Ubuntu, and also liked to tinker a lot, when I had too much spare time, I went to Debian, Gentoo, Sabayon, Arch (in that order, note how I grew tired of compiling and wasted time, with each hop, I started to look for precompiled again).
Finally I read a comment Linus said about Ubuntu that really clicked with me and made sense, I needed to work and be productive with little hassle, need the most compatibility and focusing on my work, not fighting the distro to make it do what I want. So it was Ubuntu, it just works. Simple as that.
I don't regret using those other distros, they taught me a lot though, but I think it's a natural transition to simplicity after you see it's not worth the extra milliseconds of performance, at least for a user that besides being a developer, does the usual things with his PC.
I have to agree. I'm now tempted to switch from Gentoo to Ubuntu, namely because Gentoo is a time sink... and I'm wasting my time. On my laptops, I'm using a flavored version of Ubuntu called Xubuntu, using the XFCE desktop environment. I've used KDE and Gnome -- they've moved too far from "Choose reasonable defaults with a large base of options, don't yank 'em away, don't think you know better than me, and don't get in the way of me doing what I need to do."
I think I'm switching soon, probably with my next hardware swap.
A small update. I switched.
Why? I use Chrome Remote Desktop. Gentoo had a package for it that needed a maintainer to keep it up. I had a problem a filed a bug.
The response was to remove the CRD package.
That broke the camel's back. I switched that day.
Very relatable. Is the usability gap between Debian and Ubuntu really that large?
I gave Debian a last shot before going back to Ubuntu because I liked the idea robustness, but even with the "less stable" Debian I was missing a lot of the bleeding edge and features I needed at that moment in my day to day job, I felt crimped at times and having to revert back to, you guessed it, compiling from source and installing a parallel version. Ubuntu has really been stable for me, I think the Debian idea of robustness is not really meant for the end user, but more oriented towards servers and other target audience, definitely not a developer's distro IMO, because we need to be on top of the latest most of the time.
Usability-wise, there's always something ready-made for Ubuntu; commands, binaries and tutorials are Ubuntu-first because it's the consumers distro, that's what I wanted, if I needed a program I don't wanna know the inner workings, I want to copy paste the command, install and keep on moving with my thing.
Awesome. Right now I'm leaning Debian, and got a working install up on my hardware in no time at all, but I think I just need to have this experience for myself as I use it more. There's a decent chance I'll end up on Ubuntu for similar reasons, we'll see.
Experience is never bad, at the end of the day it's what you feel most comfortable with. Debian for me is right there next to Ubuntu in terms of what I need, so it's a close choice.
At least for development, needed bits are more likely to "just work" on Ubuntu, in my experience, more than any other distribution, even Debian or Fedora.
Mostly, I want to get stuff done, and want the least friction when using new bits. That is what you get from the mainstream.
My personal favorite has been KDE Neon as it ticks all the right boxes for me and most of my dev team.
Why Neon:
KDE is for me best DE right now, as it's mature, secure and can go from windows clone to tiling WM in minutes.
KDE Neon prevents me from hacking and upgrading my base OS as I feel like I'm having a fresh experience continuously. That stream of improvements to the software you interact most with on a daily basis allows you to just enjoy your computer instead of feeling that tinkering need deep down.
Experience:
KDE Neon is super stable and upgrades haven't failed me so far. Integration from discover (UI package manager) with flakpak and snap has been seemless for a few months now. PKCON (console package manager for KDE Neon) has also worked flawlessly with apt backend.
Sometimes you do run into an incompatible package from base ubuntu as that was packaged for an older QT/KDE libs version. Usually I then install that bit of software using snap or flatpak as it then ships with its own libraries anyway.
Hope this helps!
Ive heard Neon doesn't always play well with non-KDE software. Have you found that to be the case, beyond the qt versioning issue?
The question though is how long will this distro last. Seriously sir, stop the anguish and just use Ubuntu. They are a stable company that is financially solvent and will still be around in a few years.
No absolutely not - all gnome library based software works absolutely great, and theming integration has gotten much better over the last few months as well.
As root filesystem editing is protected in KDE I usually use thunar for example, works fine. Same goes for Firefox, which has full integration with the taskbar for example.
I can't recommend NEON enough if you're a KDE user, it's super stable for us and it just feels great to get the latest and greatest in KDE land without the fear of complete system meltdown / full rolling release distro.
Awesome. I'm leaning more and more in this direction.
I'm also a KDE neon user and it's just fantastic! Very stable and well-supported Ubuntu LTS base + new and shiny KDE software on top which is super polished, intuitive, and somehow light on system resources. Definitely recommend it!
I'm following KDE Neon development lastly and I see that in the lasts months it's becoming more and more integrated also with Gnome applications making it a kind of universal OS for Linux plus its own niceties.
But what's the difference with something like Kubuntu since they are both Ubuntu based distro with KDE on top?
Kubuntu is Ubuntu with KDE Plasma, so it'll get more updated packages from Ubuntu and you could also get a non-LTS base.
Neon on the other hand is always based on Ubuntu LTS, so Ubuntu packages may be a bit more behind, but you get the latest and greatest KDE stuff.
I’ve been an Apple groupie for more than 10 years. Loved the iPhone revolution and the incomparable build quality.
Note in exploring Linux again fire a few reasons, mainly price, ports (lack of), and boring OS.
Never thought I would abandon Apple but I just can’t stomach the changes abs costs any more. And a super expensive laptop with only four USB C ports? It’s driving me insane - my Laptop often looks like a Christmas tree.
To round up a bit this point I would say, for someone who was using Gentoo, distros are reduced to: how new are the SW in the repos and how annoying is to install Steam if you care about that and as far as I've heard with Proton that's not even a problem anymore.
and by the way "... arguing is half the fun of being a Linux user ..." I don't think is half, I would say is about 67%, it was 50% years ago when ....
Right now, the "best" tool is one I won't ever feel tempted to switch out. I think we're saying the same thing, ultimately.
Perhaps temptations have an inward rather that outward cause. In more modern language: it is the dev, not the tool.
So you're after something that's
Have you considered using a fork of BSD? It's supported by a multimillion dollar corporation, who've built a custom window manager on top of it. It's tailored to a very specific hardware setup, but under the hood its mostly vanilla BSD, with the same utilities and philosophy. It's a great development OS, and you'll never spend any time messing around with the OS.
One catch: you'll have to buy one of said corporation's computers to use this OS, or hack one together yourself.
Other than politics and price - why wouldn't you use an Apple Mac running OSX?
Because of its terrible UX, bug-ridden UI and lack of customisability or compatibility.
and to go from the most flexible and configurable distro to Apple tiny box? go from, compile this package but only with this features I'm giving to you; to "feedme Apple gods", and please be nice to me... I'll pay you more if you love me back! and don't take more ports away from me plz! or do, if you think I don't deserve or need them...
... seems a big jump to me.
It is, but it's partially precipitated by the fact that I no longer care much about that as long as I can use the tools I want to use. There are other reasons why this is not on my radar, though.
You're not wrong, of course.
Those are reasons enough for me, though. I'm good with the hardware I've got, have no plans to upgrade for several years, and got the specs I needed by watching prices of components individually, ending up spending a fraction of what Apple hardware would have cost. The hackintosh route is also just that - a whole project in and of itself. I want something I can install today on my hardware as-is. Also, you still need to buy a license, right? If I can get most of the way there without spending money, that's worth it to me.
The core of it to me is the package manager, not necessarily the set of stuff on the install disc. That said, is DEB vs RPM pretty much cosmetic?
Unfortunately at this point that's Gentoo, and not much else, which makes me think Manjaro might be the right call here. I don't care about nerd street cred, but I do care about using the "best" tool for the job. I guess the better question is whether not subscribing to one of the more mainstream package managers shooting myself in the foot in any significant way?
Depends also on what to dev and if you usually try a lot of new SW, with AUR Arch has an availability second to none. And if you have used Gentoo, admin Arch would be a breeze. Debian feels too outdated for a desktop.
I vote for Manjaro.
Before Manjaro I used Ubuntu for years, the user experience has been almost the same, stable. Didn't have any problem with the hardware (but that just luck). I've been using Manjaro i3 edition for more than six months and everything has been great so far.
I installed all my development tools from the main repository without any problem. Didn't even bother to learn about the package manager the first month because the graphical frontend (pamac-gtk) was so convinient and easy to use.
If you do need to do some maintenance I believe they have some helpers scripts that automate some stuff for you. I came across one of those while browsing the options of
bmenu.Heck of a review. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Excellent, I get to recommend my favourite, NixOS (I am not affiliated with
them, apart from submitting packages and occasional bug[fixes]).
First, some vocab:
So you can try out Nix without going all the way to install NixOS first, but only some of the points may apply.
Pros:
Cons:
I have managed to reinstall my system after I discovered my old hard-drive was having problems, in 45 minutes. This might seem like a lot, but it included getting back to the exact configuration, which would otherwise be a week of tweaking things. Also, the actual install only took 5 minutes, the rest of time was:
If you love Scheme/Guile and/or lack of any proprietary packages (Nixpkgs has proprietary packages, but hidden/disabled by default -- easy to enable though) try Guix. Ideas based off Nix, but different set of packages (AFAIK, I haven't played with Guix much).
If I have you interested, perhaps try installing it? For learning the nix expression language, the manual and nix-pills are useful, but to give it a spin, you don't need to read everything right away, for basic things the examples in the manual and some intuition should do you fine.
Hah, was wondering if this would come up. I actually have a Nix install on this hardware too, it's my second-in-command and I LOVE it. I'm going to have to do some serious thought about why I'm not ready to go exclusive with it - mostly it's just so, so different.
+1 NixOS. I've moved to it from Arch for the same reason as you, Ben. Broken Vim installation caused by a :PlugUpdate on a very busy day is what broke the camel's back for me; curious what it was for you.
I've written about my motivations for the move here: kalbas.it/2019/03/24/why-i-use-nixos/
Happy New Year!
To be honest, I don't remember - I don't know if it was any one specific thing, or a sudden realization that I was wasting a lot of time. The specific "straw" is probably irrelevant - it was a long time ago, in any case.
Great write-up, thanks for sharing. I'm hoping that NixOS will someday be the answer I'm looking for here, it's incredibly cool.
That's fair enough, especially if you want/need to use arbitrary proprietary packages, e.g. I sometimes need Quartus for work then sticking for something well known or FHS abiding works much better.
Manjaro includes a lot of junk apps you won't use out the box, including things like menu items for Microsoft products and associations with
.docfiles, etc.It doesn't offer anything I can think of over Arch except a GUI installer, and installing Arch takes ten minutes if you follow the steps on the website, which is possibly even faster than the GUI method.
It's more like, "why shouldn't you use Arch?"
Good points, all - true enough re: install time. Doesn't Manjaro keep its own package sets on top of the base Arch stuff?
It has a few packages written by someone who clearly has no clue what he's doing, but no, all it does is hold packages back a week, and occasionally backports security patches and doesn't publish the PKGBUILDs for them.
something you have to consider is that if you come from a GEntoo install, Arch would be even easier given that most of your config would be just copy files from your existing Gentoo /etc; when I moved from Void - Arch - Gentoo, the whole install where mostly just copy/paste. So maybe in your case Arch maybe is actually faster to install than Manjaro.
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