for those of you who were around last
sunday for the stream you'll know that
that i installed gentoo now the first
thing i should say about my week with
gentoo
is that i'm very appreciative for all of
my patrons who got me to the goal
which is the reason why i installed gen
2 in the first place especially
robert i mean especially everybody but
robert paid like over 200 dollars to get
me to that goal so everybody
thank you
for supporting me so the next thing i
should say is that i'm still on gen 2
like i still have my gen to install and
i can actually show you my gen 2 install
right here this is my gen 2 installed
ignore the the lack of a wallpaper it
won't stay like i can't get
my i can't get fat i keep the wallpaper
to stay after reboot i don't know why
it's
weird things are going on just trust me
on that so this is my gen to install
and you'll notice that i'm on dwm and
not i3 which is uh an interesting story
which i'm going to tell here in a few
minutes but i've used gen 2 now
every day for the last week for several
hours now i have not lived in it full
time
simply because i had to get work done
and
until gen 2 gets to a certain point you
really can't do any work with it and i
didn't have enough time to just sit down
for hours and hours on end to get
everything working a week later i think
i'm finally to the point where i could
use gen 2 full time if i wanted to there
are a few things here that are
not working correctly yet
but i'll talk about those here in a few
minutes but i'm at the point now
a week later
where this is a fully
functional system it has all my stuff on
it all my scripts are in the right place
everything
the like the main stuff that i
absolutely have to have is working so i
have some thoughts about gen 2 the first
thing
i should talk about
is the overall experience
now for those of you who have never used
gen 2 before or have never been
successful installing gen 2 before
what makes gen 2 interesting is that
it's a source based distro and what i
mean by that is that everything you
install has to be compiled by you there
are hardly any binaries that you install
now that's not completely true because
there are binaries that you can use
things like the firefox binary the
kernel binary stuff like that so you
don't have to compile your own kernel or
compile firefox or whatever but for the
most part if you install something
you're going to compile it so for
example i installed
ranger i had to compile it i needed the
uber's in order to get image previews i
had to compile it i i used exa for my ls
alias here i had to compile it
over and over and over again that's what
gen 2 is now
if that sounds exhausting to you then
you're not alone but you're probably
wondering then what is the benefit of
actually doing this
and the benefit actually is pretty neat
it
by compiling everything from source by
building everything yourself it allows
you to
fine tune exactly how things are
compiled so for example things like
pycom can be compiled without vsync
support if you wanted to i don't know
why you'd want to do that but you could
do that you could compile obs without
end bank support if you wanted to
there's
a ton of different options for every
program that you download they're called
used flags and you can say for instance
tell the system that you never want to
see pipe wire ever like you never want
any package to install pipe wire as a
dependency or anything like that
you can do that and it ensures that pipe
wires never touches your system
that's amazing that is a really neat and
very
attractive
reason to use gentoo and i'm gonna miss
it when i use arch again so i'm just
gonna put that out there that's gonna be
one of the reason things i miss
when i move back to arch or arco outside
of the compiling things from source
really the biggest thing about gentoo is
that it's very much like arch actually
and that you build everything together
yourself every little piece every little
dependency
is something that you have to put in
there and that's the reason why it's
taken me a whole week
to get the
system up to the point where it's
actually usable there are so many little
itsy bitsy pieces that go into
the ability to use like dwm or i3 you
that it just takes a while to get there
and you can be using your computer for a
little while and then realize oh i need
this thing so i have to go run off and
compile this thing and then you'll use
your computer for a little while longer
and you'll realize that there's another
dependency that you haven't installed
yet and you have to run and install that
one and while on arch that's not a big
deal usually it's just pseudo pac-man
dash s whatever and it takes five
seconds to install on gen 2 it's a
little bit different now for the most
part the horror stories
that you hear about four or five days of
compiling stuff
most of that at least in my experience
is complete nonsense the longest
compile
session that i had was with crusader and
that's a kde application so i had a ton
of dependencies and that took about 25
minutes
now i have really high end hardware so
obviously if you are running this on a
laptop or something where you don't have
64 gigabytes of ram and a
ryzen 3800 x your compile times your
obviously gonna be a lot slower but from
my experience the compile times had
weren't
so bad that it would have that it proved
annoying but the problem is is that
still over time as you
install a whole bunch of stuff that
compile time does add up and that means
everything takes just a little bit
longer to install to update
whatever it just takes a little bit
longer
and honestly there's nothing hugely
wrong with that for me personally i
didn't find it that egregious that
things took a little bit longer
i just went and did something else while
i was waiting for something to emerge so
let me talk about the good things so i
talked a little bit about the
ability to use use flags and to compile
software and packages
without or with certain features that's
the number one reason that i like gen 2
it's actually really cool there are
other reasons that i like gen 2. the
biggest one being i absolutely have
adored my time here because i've
learned
so much if you are interested in
learning a lot about linux but you're
not quite interested in going crazy and
installing linux from scratch gen2 is a
fantastic option for you because it is
very complex but at the same time easy
to learn if i can say that you can
do a ton of stuff here and get a ton of
information
and just learn a lot
now one thing is for sure though is i
would not do this alone like i have had
a lot of help ben from my discord server
has been there and zany's discord server
uh
tyler's been there uh to help josh
has been there to help
and without those three guys i wouldn't
have actually been able to even install
gentoo on my own at least without a
whole bunch of trial and error so i'm
very appreciative of having help so i
highly recommend if you're going to try
gentoo find someone that knows what they
have what they're doing and ask them for
help but even beyond the help thing i've
learned a lot like there's just a ton of
stuff here that i've learned to do and
it's been a very rewarding experience
i've
been able to create a system basically
from the ground up
that i'm proud of i can come here i can
do actual work i'm recording this
video right now on gen 2. if i could get
my i3 configuration file to work i was
going to do a stream tonight from gentoo
we're going to talk about the problems
here just a minute but the point is is
that
this is a fully functioning system and i
did it right i had help
but
i'm very proud of the fact that i'm here
like i have all my configuration files
here
i have all my junk here and it works
like i could right now minus a few
things that are really pissing me off
use this system for the next month and
be perfectly happy and in fact i've
considered doing it but let's go ahead
and transition into the negative things
the first thing
that pisses me off right now
is that i can't get pycom to work very
well so
if you are
familiar with pycom at all you'll know
that one of the features of it will
allow you to run it with a vsync flag
that will
will take
some of the screen tearing off from your
system
for whatever reason this computer here
screen tears like a mofo it's just
a horrible thing with this combination
of hardware
that it just doesn't and it doesn't
matter what linux distribution it is
like they all do it
it doesn't matter like
usually the only place i notice is when
i'm scrolling through like a web page
the screen tears and it drives me
absolutely bonkers i can't put up with
it it just ruins my
my day it ruins my day
so
usually i can use pycom to get rid of it
and when i can't use just python to get
rid of it all of it like sometimes it
just takes off like the top 90 percent
of the screen tearing and you can still
notice it somewhat
there's a trick that somebody in the
comments is going to point to where you
cr where you create a file in
etsy x11 slash
xorg.com.d or something like that i've
done that
and i still have screen tearing
so that's my number one complaint right
now is screen tearing i can't get rid of
it no matter what i do
and i've tried like i said i've tried
the two tricks that you're supposed to
use in order to get rid of it and
neither one of them work
i had a hell of a time actually getting
pycon to actually start
and that turned out to be my problem
because i compiled it without any use
flags
and if you don't compile with use flags
you can't use the vsync flag and i was
using the v6 flag so it was just it was
borked once i got it recompiled with a
vsync flag and started it in the x dot x
profile directory instead of my uh auto
start file for dwm
it worked fine but the screen staring
was still there
so
honestly that's my biggest problem right
now if i could get rid of the screen
tearing i'd probably stay right on gen 2
for a while and do a long-term review of
it but i can't stand
the screen tearing it bugs me like it
seriously just pisses me off i can't get
rid of it the other negative thing i
have to say about gentoo
is that it is
complex like it is really
complex and there is just a ton of stuff
here for you to learn the biggest
problem i've had over the last week is
learning emerge emerge has a literal
[ __ ] ton of options and none of them are
intuitive and it's not that this is not
an emerge problem pac-man has the exact
same problem like how does pac-man dash
s capital s equals equal install s
like s doesn't mean install in any lane
which as far as i understand it doesn't
make any sense it emerges the same way
if you don't learn some of the flags
you're kind of going to be very confused
very fast very often
and even now a week later i'm still
getting the whole a hold of what
flags you need to use to do things like
install stuff like update the system
like
unmask
packages
and all this stuff it's one thing right
after another and it's all stuff you
have to learn in order to use the system
it's not necessarily a bad thing because
i like learning that stuff but i can see
how it could be very overwhelming and
very frustrating for a lot of people
because it was very overwhelming and
very frustrating for me
now there are apparently cheat sheets
out there where you can
see all this stuff in like a very
glanceable way i did not get a chance to
take a look at those you know
extensively over the last couple days
but
that's something that i would definitely
check out if to if i was going to stay
on
gen 2 but i would just say
that if you are deciding to try gen 2 i
highly recommend
taking notes it's one thing that i
really regret not doing is when the the
fellows were helping me install this
stuff i really wish i'd had a notebook
here in front of me and i wrote down
specifically the stuff about merge that
i should have
known like specifically like the
unmasking of packages like i've finally
gotten it down after a week but there
are certain parts of that process
that i've had to look up probably 10
times and it's just annoying now if you
don't know what unmasking the package is
don't worry about it it doesn't really
matter it's just a gentoo thing
the point is is that sometimes you have
to do this in order to uninstall or
order to install stuff
and
the process is something that has to be
done in a certain order if you like if
you miss a step it doesn't work so i've
had to look that up several times so i
highly recommend as you go through and
install this stuff
take notes especially on the merge stuff
you'll be happy that you did so gen 2
honestly it has been a really good
experience i've been highly impressed
with what i've seen of it so far now i
can't say anything about gaming i don't
have steam installed and i don't know
whether or not i'm going to make it that
far or not i also can't say anything
about being able to stream on here
because i haven't actually been able to
stream on gen 2 yet so i don't know
whether or not that will work i will say
this
the documentation for gen 2 is fantastic
if you had to put the archwiki and the
gen 2 wiki side by side and ask which
one's better i wouldn't be able to tell
you they're both
really good i would say
that they're both technological in
prose
and by that i mean
if you don't know what some of the words
mean you're going to have a problem so
if you don't have an underlying idea of
what you're doing
you're probably going to get confused
and if you're like me when you get
confused reading something like that you
kind of zone out or start skipping stuff
and that's not a good thing like in in
arch you can kind of get away with it
some and sometimes because you can
always go backwards during the install
of gentoo if you don't do things in
order
your gen 2 install is not going to work
so
don't be like me in that in that
scenario so the final question that has
to be asked is
will gentoo stay on my system
the answer to that question is
uh
probably not
and there are multiple reasons for it
first i do have to do a long term review
coming up and i need this hard drive in
order to do it so that's the biggest
reason why the second reason is also
equally big and that's the screen
tearing if i could get rid of screen
tearing honestly i wouldn't mind keeping
gen 2 around for a little while and
actually making this the next long-term
review
but without being able to get rid of
that
i can't do it like i just can't use
something that screen tears that bad
one of the things that i do primarily on
my computer is read stuff like half the
time i do work like my actual job i'm
reading
thousands and thousands of words in
either google docs or some other program
or something
and if the screen tears while i'm doing
that and i notice it it takes me out of
whatever i'm doing for
multiple seconds maybe even up to a half
half a minute
where i'm raging in my head like why is
this doing that
and
well might not bother other people it
bothers me so much that i can't get work
done therefore i can't use gen 2. that's
just kind of the way it is so if in the
next couple days i can fix that screen
tearing perhaps gen 2 is the next
long-term review if i can't fix it in
the next couple days probably gentoo is
going to get overwritten with slackware
because that was the next long-term
review plan that's with what i was
planning on doing next
so
we'll see how that goes would i
recommend gentoo for other people hell
yeah i actually would if you are
interested in linux and you know what
you're doing like if you know
what linux is how the file structure
works and all that stuff especially if
you've installed arch linux before
installing gen 2 isn't that much more
complicated than arch linux it's really
not i would recommend doing it on a
computer that has certain specs
a lot of memory a fairly competent
processor so that you're not there
forever because if you're on really low
in like 10 year old hardware it's going
to take you too long and you're just
going to get frustrated
and you're also probably going to burn
your house down
because your your laptop or whatever is
going to get really hot and it's just
not going to be a very good experience
so do it on something modern and you'll
have a good time and you'll learn a lot
even if you don't stick with gen 2
you'll learn a lot along the way
and so i would recommend anybody who's
interested in becoming like a linux die
hard give this a try it's actually not
that bad so that is it for this video
if you have comments about this
experience you can
leave those comments in the comment
section below
i'm sure that there's something else
that i was going to talk about that i've
just completely forgotten because i
didn't take any notes for this video
it's just kind of more like a ramble
but
i will leave those in the comment
section below if i if i come up with
something else that i've forgotten i'll
leave those down below as well so if you
want to you can follow me on twitter at
the nextcast you can support me on
patreon at
patreon.comcast before i go
i'd like to take a moment to concurrent
patrons robert said devon patrick fred
kramer meglin jackson from tools steve
base edgar linux garrick samuel mitchell
art center j-dog carbon data jeremy
shawn odin martini andy ross merrick
camp joshua peter a crucible dartmouth
sex primus and pm thanks everybody for
watching i'll see you next time
[Music]
you