English, Tech

From Arch Linux To Gentoo

My Dearest Mad-Readers,

The day has finally come for me to take a drastic step as a Linux user. A step I have been waiting to take for long enough. If you have read the title, you must have guessed it : As I am writing these very lines, my time on Arch Linux is running to an end. Goodbye my dear friend! The adventure has been memorable, and you will always remain in my heart. Yet I need to move forward and quench this insatiable thirst for knowledge of mine. I need even more freedom. I need Gentoo.

Why Distro Hop Today ?

There actually are many reasons. I need to re-install Linux as soon as possible because my /root partition is almost full. I gave it 20 GB instead of 40-50 GB, and I still need to have some big programs on my machine such as Audacity, LaTeX, Kdenlive, OBS… I do not have to switch to Gentoo, but I am seizing the opportunity. Like all of you, I tend to get too comfortable and it can take me months or years before being willing to re-install my OS. Now is the best time, I believe.

Do learn from my mistake : If you intend to resize a partition one day, do put it last in your partition scheme. /root should come last, in my opinion, since you can always move your data from /home to an external disk in case of emergency.

My next partition scheme :

  • /boot/efi : 512 MB
  • /swap : 4 GB (to be comfy)
  • /home : Around 190 GB
  • /root : 50 GB (to be extremely comfy)

Notice that /root will come last, because I want to be able to resize that bast*** if I ever fancy doing it. With this next scheme, I should not have to ever touch it again, hopefully. You never know however. Better be safe than sorry. Speaking about safe… I may use LVM for this next install.

Why Gentoo ?

There are 3 keywords in my life which I abide by like values, or principles :

  • Liberty
  • Curiosity
  • Generosity

I believe that switching to Gentoo will help me in my endeavor of being the best version of myself everyday. It should satisfy both my desire for liberty and my omnipresent curiosity but also my will to help. There are few people running Gentoo and I am quite tired of power-users being neglected. One should be able to speak about complicated technological topics without anyone feeling offended.

I am done playing around with pacman. Not that I dislike updating my system every morning, but I will not be able to do it if I emerge victorious installing Gentoo. Indeed, installing software and updating the system take significantly more time on Gentoo, since everything needs to be compiled from source.

I also pursue efficiency with all my heart. I believe that Gentoo + Dwm + St is the right formula to satisfy me until I am fully ready to create my own Linux distribution with LFS. This one should be my last step and I am already actively working on it. I need to sharpen my knowledge of C but this is a work in progress. I have many projects in C which I am eager to work on, but I have no time to dedicate to them at this moment. My situation as an au-pair + blogger/YouTuber takes too much time for me to focus on it. It would not be reasonable, since I also enjoy relaxing from time to time.

My Latest YouTube Video

If you have read up till this point… Well, thank you, first of all! Secondly, you may be interested in my latest video. It is a sort of live version of this blog post and you will also learn how to create a live CD from an already-installed Linux distribution, if you do not already know how to do it.

Please notice this video is shorter than usual, since I was told I need to be more concise by one of my followers.

In case you would be interested, I added a little sign-off...

Signing Off

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post. I hope it was helpful to you! Do tell me which Linux distribution you are using in the comments, and why you think it is better than all the others 😉

If you liked it, feel free to let me know via email, by subscribing, liking, and/or commenting. You may also check out some more of my work. I also have a Patreon page, a YouTube channel, if you wish to support me there, and a GoodReads account.

I wish you all the best,

Phil.

7 thoughts on “From Arch Linux To Gentoo”

  1. The only person awake in the house deep into the night, Arch and its bast*** siblings repeatedly crashed their installers and that is why I am back at the utterly reliable, dependable, stable (and therefore sometimes boring) Linux Mint Cinnamon. With the latest Ubuntu RWA on a flashdrive. I didn’t have the energy to take down the lengthy error reports but just decided that the heavens conceded that Arch won’t run on my otherwise high quality, compliant hardware. Oh, and for me, I have what I need, so if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” -> Hi Anonimicus! I’m sorry it didn’t work out. You’re entirely right about this actually. No need to fix something that works. If you’re happy with Mint, do stick to it 😉

      Liked by 2 people

      2. Hi Anonimicus! I understand you better than you imagine and totally agree with this philosophy. Don’t change a winning team. If you’re happy with a tool, keep to it. Happy blogging 😉

        Liked by 1 person

  2. When the Arch-ish installers failed this time, I had a bootable Windows 10 Pro flashdrive handy, one that I had made using mkusb and not woeusb, as the ever reliable woeusb nowadays malfunctions in all distros. Interesting thing is that my Windows flashdrive worked fine but the .ISO file must have changed from a previous download, as there were driver files missing and it couldn’t connect to the wifi at that stage. So, Mint found its spot, so it weren’t just the Arch installers that were problematic. I am used to Windows 10 Pro being a very easy, uncomplicated and fairly quick install (onto a SSD) when connected to the Internet. I am told it’s a real beast when it sits on a regular HDD.

    Liked by 1 person

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