It was announced late last year that Gentoo is now offering binary versions of their packages. I’ve always had an interest in Gentoo, but the need to compile everything has always turned me away from it. I run Arch because it gives me the sense that I have more control of my system, when compared to other distros like Ubuntu, for example, but it still keeps things simple enough for day-to-day use. That being said, when compared to Gentoo, Arch is still rather restrictive, so if there exists an alternative that offers Arch’s simplicity, and also the potential for customization of Gentoo, then I would gladly switch. I am wondering if Gentoo’s new binary offerings fit this description. From what I understand, it removes the need to set use flags, and to compile any packages, but it still allows you to maintain full control over your system.
So, in summary, is a binary Gentoo functionally equivelant to Arch Linux, but with more control over the system? I would like to know more about the following:
- Does the OS installation change, and, if so, how?
- Does package installation, updates, and maintenance change, and, if so, how?
- Do system updates change, and, if so, how?
- Do you lose any potential control over the system when using the binaries, rather than compiling from source, and, if so, what?
- Are there any differences in system stability? Can I expect things to break more readily on a binary Gentoo compared to Arch Linux?
Just a disclaimer: I have never used Gentoo – all my knowledge is second hand, or from skimming documentation out of curiosity. Please correct any inacuracies that I may have in my knowledge.
deleted by creator
Using binary packages — those that are offered — is missing out on a key strength of Gentoo and the primary reason one may choose it over another.
Do you get any benefits when compiling giant binaries like FF or chromium?
When I ran guixos those two sat in a separate manifest because compiling them was a “leave it overnight” type of jobs.
deleted by creator
I was wandering about the benefits for specific apps like browsers.
From my limited experience, most compiled updates are finished pretty quickly. The only exception are huge binaries, so a ThinkPad literally takes hours to compile Firefox.
deleted by creator
Are the benefits of compiling from source noticeable for modern hardware or slightly last gen hardware? Like, a last generation Ryzen 5900x with NVidia 3070 GPU (my current setup).
I know compile flags definitely have an effect, I just don’t know how dramatic a difference there would be.
deleted by creator
As the Gentoo chromium maintainer, not really - we strip most CFLAGS as part of the ebuild unless you enable a special USE flag to keep them and it’s not particularly supported - if you encounter breakage with that enabled the first thing I’m going to ask you to do is turn them off.
Edit: we do have some USE flags that control how the package is built, but that’s mostly choosing between the Google-bundled and system versions of libraries.
Edit the second: there isn’t a package on the binhost for chromium yet, I need to work out how to build it so that it isn’t an issue to distribute.
Using binary packages — those that are offered — is missing out on a key strength of Gentoo and the primary reason one may choose it over another.
Gentoo is about enabling choice. The choice to use non-customised binary packages to fill a need is still a choice.
There is really no comparison between Gentoo and Arch outside of the “build your own system” approach
This is essentially what I was referring to.
I’ve been using Gentoo for a bit less than a month now. Installing the binary version of a package can easily be done by providing one or two flags to emerge. The binary packages are compiled pretty generic, to work with most systems, so you lose out on most of the compilation level control.
This has been answered a bit already but:
So, in summary, is a binary Gentoo functionally equivelant to Arch Linux, but with more control over the system?
Perhaps, if that’s how you view the world. I’d argue that it’s better as I’ve never seen Gentoo ship a version of curl that broke Portage…
I would like to know more about the following:
- Does the OS installation change, and, if so, how?
You basically unpack a tarball, select a kernel, install a bootloader, and go. It’s no different to before except that you can optionally choose to enable the use of binary packages.
- Does package installation, updates, and maintenance change, and, if so, how?
If comparing to arch, you use portage to handle that but the concept is the same.
Gentoo has a great system for managing configuration changes when a package updates a file that you’ve customised.
- Do system updates change, and, if so, how?
This question doesn’t make much sense to me. What is a “system update”? Isn’t that just updating all of your packages at once?
- Do you lose any potential control over the system when using the binaries, rather than compiling from source, and, if so, what?
Yes and no. If you customise your USE flags the binary won’t be suitable and instead portage will build the package as you requested it
- Are there any differences in system stability? Can I expect things to break more readily on a binary Gentoo compared to Arch Linux?
Hahahahaha. Hahahahahaha. Hahaha. Ha.
Arch is notorious for shipping barely tested software to have the higher version number in their repo.
Gentoo enables users to select the stable or testing path, on a per package basis, so you have to opt into packages that haven’t been well tested and even those are typically better tested than arch.
I’ve never seen Gentoo ship a version of curl that broke Portage…
Aha, would you mind elaborating? That sounds like quite the issue for Pacman to break its own dependencies.
You basically unpack a tarball, select a kernel, install a bootloader, and go. It’s no different to before except that you can optionally choose to enable the use of binary packages.
Ah okay, I was under the impression that the installation didn’t require installing from source with the new binary system – I thought it was more akin to Arch’s installation where you just select your kernel binary in Pacman, then download, and install.
Gentoo has a great system for managing configuration changes when a package updates a file that you’ve customised.
Would you have any resources/documentation for me to look into this more?
This question doesn’t make much sense to me. What is a “system update”? Isn’t that just updating all of your packages at once?
I misworded my original post – I was referring to things like updating the kernel. I thought that maybe the kernel would be a binary, so it would not have to be recompiled like how I would assume it usually does.
Gentoo enables users to select the stable or testing path, on a per package basis, so you have to opt into packages that haven’t been well tested and even those are typically better tested than arch.
This sounds very appealing to me, but I must admit that these sorts of configurations do seem like they would be mildly daunting to juggle on a production machine.
Aha, would you mind elaborating? That sounds like quite the issue for Pacman to break its own dependencies.
There was a bug with http/2 in a particular version of curl, which was very quickly updated in the arch repos and rolled out to users; It broke pacman’s ability to sync.
It’s one of those frustrating things that happens, and someone has to hit the bug first. It’s nice to have a “stable” and “testing” branch so that users explicitly opt-in to bleeding edge packages.
Ah okay, I was under the impression that the installation didn’t require installing from source with the new binary system – I thought it was more akin to Arch’s installation where you just select your kernel binary in Pacman, then download, and install.
This is just the base system - it’s like any other distribution’s base install except that we don’t have an official ‘installer’; Gentoo distributes tarballs that users unpack following the guidance in the handbook.
From there most packages can be installed as a binary if the USE flags line up (and it has been asked to do so), otherwise portage will compile it for you.
After unpacking the system image you can install a binary kernel, have portage compile one for you, or manage it manually (but still let portage fetch sources)
Gentoo has a great system for managing configuration changes when a package updates a file that you’ve customised.
Would you have any resources/documentation for me to look into this more?
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dispatch-conf
I misworded my original post – I was referring to things like updating the kernel. I thought that maybe the kernel would be a binary, so it would not have to be recompiled like how I would assume it usually does.
It comes down to user choice. That can now be entirely binary or from source (or from source but managed by portage)
This sounds very appealing to me, but I must admit that these sorts of configurations do seem like they would be mildly daunting to juggle on a production machine.
It’s actually pretty straightforward - you nominate packages that you want to run on ~arch (testing) and add them to some config files. Portage handles the rest.
This is just the base system - it’s like any other distribution’s base install except that we don’t have an official ‘installer’; Gentoo distributes tarballs that users unpack following the guidance in the handbook.
[…]
After unpacking the system image you can install a binary kernel, have portage compile one for you, or manage it manually (but still let portage fetch sources)
It may be best for me to simply attempt to install Gentoo in a VM to see for myself, but, out of curiosity, how does the base image differ from something like the
.isothat Arch Linux distributes to allow you to install the distro? So, if one were to install a binary kernel, would they still need to initially compile anything? Or could one theoretically do a full Gentoo install without the need of compiling?No idea, I don’t arch.
Theoretically you can install a desktop amd64 system using the binhost without compiling anything (or if compilation is required there won’t be much), I haven’t tried though I have seen other users do it successfully.
deleted by creator
This question doesn’t make much sense to me. What is a “system update”? Isn’t that just updating all of your packages at once?
I would think syncing the repos and emerging the @world set would be considered a system update. But I guess that is a bit different from how most distros do it.
Something no one else has mentioned is that it’s at least theoretically feasible to recompile an entire Arch system from source with particular compiler flags using ABS. It’s mentioned in passing here. I haven’t been able to find any straightfoward guides or anything, but it seems like it’s doable. (Might require some custom scripting to be reasonably easy to do, though.)
It’s incredibly unsupported and untested. You have no idea what bugs you’ll be uncovering.
Now I kinda want to do it. Lol.
Limited experience with the binary repo but here goes.
I switched over a samba and sftp file server that I don’t need to customise with use flags. Along with installing and configuring gentoo-update from the guru repo to handle updates this box pretty much looks after itself now except for kernel updates/reboots and config updates which I need to look in to. I noticed when I enabled the binary repo and updated the system that a lot of packages if not most were available as binaries.
I switched over a desktop system that is basically a tv these days (it’s an old dell aio with ok speakers etc). This box has plasma installed and I noticed that some packages don’t appear to be included in the binary repo such as the infamous qtwebengine. I say appear because I haven’t delved too far into it. I can always exclude the packages that pull in this and other bottlenecks if I want so I might go down that route eventually. Again, a lot of packages just get installed from the binary repo if they are available but I couldn’t tell you percentage wise or which ones.
