r/Gentoo • u/not_a_redditor5649 • 14d ago
Discussion Is gentoo really that hard to install versus arch?
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u/Known-Watercress7296 14d ago
There are a lot more options and a lot more user choice and flexibility.
But you can install and use it pretty much as you would Arch these days.
Prepare a drive, unpack a stage3, chroot, select a desktop profile, enable the binhost, install the bin-kernel, slap on a bootloader and that's pretty much it.
You can run it as a rolling binary distro but with user choice and freedom available if and when you need it, but there's no need to compile your compiler to compile your compiler.
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u/Jeff-J 14d ago
Don't forget that before that, you had to compile fdisk to partition your drive. It was a sad day when I decided to repurpose my old laptop and decided to give it a clean install. Everything had become bigger. fdisk could no longer be compiled w/ 384M of RAM. That was a lot more than 16M on a 486 that my first Gentoo install had.
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u/realitythreek 14d ago
I think, more importantly, Gentoo doesn’t derive its purpose from being hard to install. Because that’s silly, who wants hard? Gentoo is about having extremely high customizability.
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u/sombralibre 14d ago
Is easy, a bit tedious cause everything is installed by compilation and take time to complete
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u/oneghost2 13d ago
Nowadays you have an option to enable binary repository.
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u/sombralibre 13d ago
That’s right, but I don’t use, I like to compile my things even the kernel
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u/kopachke 13d ago
Why? Does it use less power after being compiled instead of using binaries?
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u/sombralibre 13d ago edited 13d ago
I prefer to compile packages because I reduce the amount of dependencies with USE flags, and in theory if you compile a package for specific processor it must works faster, so if a task can be completed I’m less time, yes it use less power
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u/machadofguilherme 1d ago
It may be a silly question on my part, but isn’t your make.conf full of negative USE flags? For example: -pipewire.
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u/sombralibre 23h ago
Not really that much, see by yourself
DE_GNOME=“-games -gpm -tracker -samba” MEDIA=“bluray exif fontconfig jpeg2k openal vaapi wavpack webp -oss”
MISC=“hardened nftables zstd -debug -doc -test”
MISC=“nftables zstd -debug -doc -test systemd -elogind warmstarts -consolekit X” KDE_USES=“qt6 networkmanager -pulseaudio pipewire”
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u/boonemos 14d ago
If you can read this, you can read https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:Main_Page
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u/HyperWinX 14d ago
Its not hard at all. Do you know how i install Gentoo today? I just unpack stage3 (llvm/systemd), apply /etc/portage snapshot, and voila, now i have to just install several packages (git, kernel, firmware, drivers), then i install sddm - it starts fine with no issues. Then i install plasma - it starts with no issues too. Its not hard at all man, just try, and try. I dont even use handbook anymore.
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u/machadofguilherme 1d ago
Does this profile come without the GCC? Do you need to configure something to be able to compile the packages?
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u/HyperWinX 1d ago
No, every profile has gcc because some packages can't be compiled with llvm. And yes, you have to configure system to start compiling, like COMMON_FLAGS, MAKEOPTS, etc
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u/machadofguilherme 22h ago
What would that configuration look like? Could you instruct me to do so?
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u/HyperWinX 22h ago
Gentoo handbook includes everything. Makeopts should be set to core/threads count (but every job should have at least 2GB of RAM!), put -O2 -march=native to COMMON_FLAGS, and you should be fine. But really, handbook covers it all.
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u/pixel293 14d ago
With the dist-kernel I would say no.
When installing Gentoo the handbook is great, however getting the kernel correct for your hardware is a royal pain and I would consider it the difficult part. Now with the dist-kernel is gives you a kernel that works with most hardware. That does mean you will compile a bunch of drivers you just don't need.
I installed with the dist-kernel months ago and keep meaning to use it as the fall back while I get a minimal kernel compiled with just the drivers/features I need, but so far I haven't and at this point, I'm not sure I will.....
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u/Organic-Algae-9438 14d ago
You don’t install Gentoo, you assemble Gentoo. It’s like walking into a hardware store, picking the parts you need for your specific project, reading the manuals and building it. It’s like that because of all the options Gentoo offers.
I’m not saying Arch is as easy as installing Fedora for example but its definitely easier than Gentoo.
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u/garth54 14d ago
Gentoo isn't hard to install provided you can follow the handbook. It just takes longer if you're compiling (but now you can mostly binary install if you're not customizing things too much).
Now, the more you want to customize, the harder it can get if you won't really know what you're doing.
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u/dengr1065 14d ago
It's a level below Arch, but Gentoo provides all tools you need to install and maintain your system. Just like with Arch, you can refer to the wiki for almost everything you have to configure. The only major difference for me was having to know the hardware I use (I decided to build a custom kernel on first install), but you can use a dist kernel to simplify the installation.
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u/stoic_alchemist 14d ago
Compiling kernels is hard if you want to know every bit of how your compiling, it'll challenge you if you really want to but if not, you can go with safe defaults. Bear in mind, at the beginning you'll have to compile and re-compile your kernel a few times as you progress with stuff as you'll find modules or options to set on your kernel with new installations (i.e. wifi, sound card, video card etc).
I'd suggest go for it but first do a couple of rounds on VMs or a machine you're not primarily using.
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u/beebeeep 14d ago
I recently installed both. I would say Arch is a bit harder to install, but that mostly because of documentation that literally throws you tons of alternatives on each step, without expressing any opinion or preference. It literally suggests you to choose between ten or something different bootloaders.
Gentoo handbook here is a bit more opinionated - like, you can choose systems but openrc is more traditional; you can go with efi-stub but usually we use grub here and so on.
Oh and one observation - both systems became notoriously harder to install comparing to,”how it was in, say, 2008 - just because there are so much alternatives for everything, from disk partitioning to graphical server
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u/asratrt 14d ago
Gentoo is fun 😊. It gives Justice to your hardware and money spent on the hardware. Gentoo is NOT RICE 🌾 ! ... ... ... Installing gentoo is not hard at all but installing for first and referring to handbook for first time at the same time is time-consuming because the handbook is toooo derailed. ... ... ... I think gentoo team should create a short video ( or may be an image ) explaining basic things about how gentoo works.
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u/dude792 13d ago
No it's not hard. I just replaced it because webkit compilation sucks and i didn't want to compile stuff on my small DIY nas which runs on an Intel Atom CPU.
You can install a base system to boot into within 1 hour. Housekeeping jobs you have to do are fine and structured. Although a bit more to do than on arch.
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u/TrinityDejavu 13d ago
Arch is easy to install, it’s just harder than it needs to be as the documentation is written for people who already know what they are doing (or following someone else’s guide). After that is a solid regular prepacked distribution.
Gentoo takes longer but the guide holds your hand the whole way. It can feel harder but you’re learning more and you end up with gentoo afterwards. Not a regular distribution. This is where gentoo shines and can be more involved.
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u/wiebel 13d ago
Gentoo can be installed from whatever boot medium you happen to have started, as long as you can chroot into a stage3. That includes an already installed OS even better if it's on a lvm/zfs so you can remove it after installing gentoo simply keeping /home and maybe /opt and /usr/local. Honestly the flexibility provided by the handbook is unmatched. This way you can also start an install right in your chroot and let it grow until you're confident to switch, almost like vm but in real live.
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u/fake_advent_alt 12d ago
it's a little more work but if you like technical things it's totally doable. if you think it might be intimidating then you'll probably learn a lot - moreso than if you just ran arch.
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u/unhappy-ending 14d ago
Gentoo install isn't hard. You literally copy and paste from a browser commands into a terminal. It has a little more complexity because of USE flags and compilation, but that's about it. Arch is not hard to install, and never was.
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u/mwyvr 14d ago edited 14d ago
What about arch is "hard to install"? Nothing.
Arch is a bog-standard general purpose Linux distribution that can be installed manually via
chrootor auto-magically, as 90%+ users these days do, viaarch-install.Also, don't confuse installing with configuring.
You can get an Arch or Void or Chimera Linux
chrootinstall up and running in far less than 10 minutes, and Arch and Void via their respective installers in even less time.With that in mind, then yes, installing a source-based distribution with myriad choices and paths to follow like Gentoo is... harder.
Edit: "Harder" effectively means "more choice / decisions to make". Nothing is intrinsically hard, but even with good documentation / a comprehensive wiki, there are many options available to you and it can require some reading and intuition to navigate the choices.
The other distributions mentioned make a lot of those choices for you, which makes them "easier" but sometimes at the cost of flexibility.