The 2 Worst Things About Gentoo Linux [Rant]

Today I talk about my problems with Gentoo and a potential failure regarding the #6MonthLinuxChallenge.

👇 PULL IT DOWN FOR THE GOOD STUFF 👇

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==== Time Stamps ====
0:00 Intro
0:43 Overlays
4:12 Story Time
5:21 Masking
9:25 Not Redcore's Fault
11:08 Wrapping Up

#rant #gentoo #thelinuxcast

[cschannel]

I realy like your general attitude toward learning new things. Willing to admit your mistakes and open to the possibility that you may be wrong.👌👌

[abriction]

FWIW if any of you get that masking issue when updating or emerging packages, use --autounmask=y --autounmask-write in your emerge (both of them in the same command) for example:
emerge -av --autounmask=y --autounmask-write x11-terms/kitty
then it will ask if you wanna add changes to config files, select YES. then run dispatch-conf (as root) and press u.

[sandikata]

In last 10 years haven't faced issues with masked packages. But you have to understand how portage works.

1. Keyword mask (green amd64, yellow ~amd64, red -*)
Usually unmasked by package_accept.keywords
green - stable
yellow - unstable
red - keyword mask (mostly you won't use them, unless you need some live versions from git)

2. Package mask
Usually unmasked by package.unmask
red - masked (M flag, you won't use them at all, as they're mostly broken or causing breakages)

[bonbonpony]

The worst thing about Gentoo is what once used to be the greatest thing about Gentoo: it's updates.
It used to be great, because whenever you wanted to update some piece of software, or even an entire system, it was super easy: just sync the Portage and emerge the updated version. And it was always about the choice: it was the user's decision entirely about _what_ to update and _when_ to update it.
It's the worst thing now, because if you don't update pretty much everything once in a week, your system becomes deprecated very quickly and every attempt at updating just one piece of software that you want to update brings a fuckton of dependencies, which in turn cause shitloads of conflicts that cannot be resolved automatically, and they're almost impossible to resolve by hand without breaking the system. It literally became easier to just erase your disk and start from scratch than update it piece by piece. And when you complain about it on Gentoo forums, instead of helping you, they make snarky remarks about you bringing it upon yourself by not updating often enough.
Gentoo used to be about choice. Now the only choice you're often left with, is the choice of another distro.

[slalomsker]

Maybe the strange stuff makes more sense if you keep in mind that Gentoo is a meta distribution. Think about this in the way of using it to build a custom distribution for dozens or hundreds of similar servers or workstations. Prominent use case: building Chromium OS.

[HomerSparkle]

This is not only a noob problem, trust me. I used Gentoo for about 10 years, and more than once I hit "build dependency Hell" that was so bad I was literally forced to wipe and reinstall.

And actually it gets progressively worse the older your system is. And by that I don't mean how long since you last updated, I just mean how many years it's been installed, because the older the system, the deeper you've dug the USE flag hole.

The main selling point with Gentoo is customisability via USE flags, but that same selling point is also its downfall, because eventually you paint yourself into a corner of USE flags that become unsustainable due to upstream changes in packages, and the only way to untangle that mess is to somehow figure out all the many, many USE flag and other settings you need to undo to be able to proceed, and portage/emerge is basically no help whatsoever. So unless it's something small that you can figure out easily, a lot of the time it really is easier to just give up and reinstall, and that's extremely cringe for any Linux system ... we're supposed to be better than that.

I really don't understand why portage can't just figure this stuff out programmatically, tell you "I need to change X and Y, OK to proceed?", and just do it and shut the hell up. Whatever it does, it can't possibly be any worse than wiping and reinstalling, right?

This is why I no longer use Gentoo. It's literally unmaintainable.

[RM-hnir]

Been using Gentoo since the early 2000s on a 500mhz PIII. Oddly enough I can't get into other distros.

Did like using the *BSDs, but still always find myself back with Gentoo.

[HyenaEmpyema]

good rant. I gave up on gentoo about 10 years ago when I realized ubuntu was just as fast. I learned a ton about linux and OS' in general along the way though. Let me offer some context to some noobs that dont understand why we have gentoo: back in the early-mid 00's, CPU's were way slower than what we have today. So if you recompiled the apps tuned to match your architecture capabilities, you could get real, noticeable speedup. Nowadays you can do it but the juice ain't worth the squeeze. I admire the Gentoo crew for keeping up on it, and thank you for the many years of learning and fun.

[zoinkshaggy]

I didn't think the overlays were too hard just takes a few extra steps to get them working. I'm currently not on Gentoo as I go back and forth between Void and Gentoo. If I remember correctly how I dealt with overlays is as follows: First run eix-remote update then run eix -R name of pkg you are looking for. In the results it will show you which overlays the pkg is in. Then run eselect repository enable name of overlay you want to enable. Then run emaint -r name of overlay to sync overlay. Then emerge the pkg as normal. There may be an easier way that I'm not aware of, but this is how I installed pkgs in overlays. I hope this helps you out. There is a lot of good information on the gentoo wiki about this as well.

[CraigOlson]

precisely why i left gentoo. its needlessly complicated. I ran it for a year, and finally got sick if wasting time hunting down these type of things and went back to Arch....BTW

[patrickprucha]

Gentoo should be easier than it is, I don't care what the gentoo elitist say! Because in the end, its just linux. Gentoo is a good side projected.

[Ja.KooLit]

yep... overlay is a bit messed up compared to AUR... I wish one day gentoo will have only 1 overlay only

regarding packages masking,

most of the overlay packages needed ~amd64

so if you set your make.conf as none ~amd64

then you need to set that packages in package.accept.keywords

for example
gui-libs/<package name> ~amd64

[kenneth_mata]

Have you given a look at the Helix text editor? Is essentially vim with kakuane selection paradigm, could be a neat video.

[MrSnivvel]

It's not Gentoo making things complicated it's the nature of compiling source code from thousands of different code sources. It's the reason distros have their own specific changes for packages incorporated in when they are deployed for general consumption. Everyone fits on a scale between having a system that is pre-configured for them and wanting to have absolute freedom to control their system at every point, and Gentoo falls on that latter side of that spectrum. People who go "distro hopping" are more inclined to be the former on that spectrum because generally they either don't care or don't want to know how to do X that distro Y does and then replicate that onto their current system.

[ApoplecticDialectics]

There is a saying among some knife collectors that the knife is never really yours until it tastes your blood (cuts you).

You're never really a Gentoo user until it has REAPED YOUR SOUL AND OBLITERATED YOUR PATIENCE.

I love Gentoo, but man I hate Gentoo.

[hansdampf]

8:19 i don’t know the exact error message with the masking here, but I think you problem is your mindset here. I know it can be nagging to see that there is an update for your package and it can’t be installed because it’s masked. But keep in mind that this is not a big problem. If you are on gentoo unstable (the ~ branch, as we call it) this happens all the time. It just means that the gentoo dev pushed the update for his package already because they wanted testers to be able to install that version for example but they didn’t want to push this onto users yet. Because it doesn’t fit with other package versions in the repo currently for example.
Just ignore it for a few days.
If the package is still masked for several days it’s worth investigating further and looking into that exactly is the reason for it being blocked.

Just one more thing: throw that thinking over board that you could just unblock a package and outsmart portage. When portage blocks packages against each other it always has a good reason to do so. Then you update a library and it’s Abi changes, all packages using that lib are going to break. With important libs this could easily break your system. Portage manages to update even the most important core libraries on the fly in a running system (by rebuilding all depending packages against the new lib for example). Trust me, you don’t want to mess with this process.

And btw, with —autounmask or —autounmask-write emerge will solve many masking problems for you (at least the easy ones)

[thelimatheou]

I started using Gentoo in 2001 and was a hard core enthusiast. Moved to Arch two years back, and haven't looked back. Gentoo is good, but it is a timesink. If you really want to learn about Linux and how to troubleshoot problems, then Gentoo is your distro. If you still want bleeding edge with much less dicking around, then go for Arch/Arch-based. Added advantage, as you listed, is no overlays to use/try some of the more obscure or newer software.

[joshua_lee]

Matt this is my mess up, I think I forgot to tell you about eix.

Which is a tool that can search repositories and even overlays.

[TheCurtisnixon]

Gentoo isn't supposed to be easy. the amount of configuration allowed, is both a boon and a curse. A boon if you know what you're doing, a curse if you don't. overlays aren't too difficult once you learn them, and portage is a hot mess if you're new. Keep your use flags simple, the wiki is your friend, and the arch wiki is useful for configuration of some packages as well.(check gentoo's first) Once you've got the hang of the use flags and package management, it's fine. But it takes more than few hours to get the hang of, if you're on your own.hell, getting gentoo installed is an acomplishment. Don't be afraid of discord and/or irc. both have lots of help.
Personally haven't used it ina few months, and probably won't ever again. I didn't have any issues really, It was my first distro after all, but I'm sick of waiting for packages to compile. I know, boon and a curse. I have to say it. I'm using arch now btw. << :D But only because it's the happy middle ground between gentoo and deb. At least for me.

[ArniesTech]

Aaaah nothing Like having a cup of coffee while listening to a nice rant 💪😁