this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Real benefit. For average users it's debatable but if you want to exclude certain components or have complex dependencies "just work" without tons of docker images or need bleeding edge performance by tweaking everything, I don't see any other choice.
Also if you need to seamlessly integrate new projects that don't provide packages, writing a live ebuild is straight forward and will keep updated from a regular git repo just like any other package.
Want to compile certain stuff with clang and the rest with gcc? Or use libressl instead of openssl? Stuff like that? No problem. Just be aware that you might need to file bug reports if you do exotic stuff because gentoo won't prevent you from doing stuff nobody did before.
And installing gentoo by going through the install manual step-by-step, is certainly priceless for diving into linux under the hood. It's a bit like a LFS but without the hassle.
So, that sounds like the kind of thing you would want if you’re making something like a drone or a router, and you have very limited resources available in the device. Compiling can be done by a the cluster you you have in the factory, not the feeble pi zero on the final product itself.
However, I can totally see why many people would want to run Gentoo at home too. It’s a pretty cool idea, and if it’s cool you might be willing to put up with the drawbacks.
Highly customized/optimized Linux images certainly are one use case of gentoo.
The "cool factor" is a significant point. My gentoo laptop (which I update rarely besides browser/security updates) boots in under 3 seconds to graphical login :-)
Actually most compiling is pretty quick on modern systems (compile in DDR4 ramdisk, nvme, fast CPU etc.) I'd say, most stuff compiles as quickly as installing a binary nowadays.
It's the huge stuff that's annoying: webkit, rust, Qt, boost, firefox/chromium etc. But one can skip updates easily or use precompiled binary packages that are provided for big stuff.
Pi4 is perfectly doable. But Pi Zero won't be a lot of fun.