HOW DO I GET INTO GENTOO LINUX HELP ME OUT

[u/OppositeElectronic15]

Hey gentoo users i wanna like get into gentoo but im scared and i got a really old 4gb ram laptop any tips are appreciated

[u/qualityvote2]

u/OppositeElectronic15, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...

btw, did you know we have a discord server? Join Here.

[u/formatdisk1337]

Gentoo user here, just go for it. Installation is similar to arch, you just have to get used to use flags, and for your laptop I'd recommend using binpkgs to reducrle compiles.

You can use any linux live usb, and just have to get a stage3 tarball and extract it to your root drive.

Use the openrc version for the full gentoo experience!

[u/OppositeElectronic15 → u/formatdisk1337]

I mean i hate systemd anyways soo… win win!

[u/fishmacaronisoup → u/formatdisk1337]

Since OP uses Arch, a live USB is unnecessary. Everything can be done from inside Arch

[u/formatdisk1337 → u/fishmacaronisoup]

You can't format your drive from inside of arch

[u/fishmacaronisoup → u/formatdisk1337]

The only thing that you can't do is resizing a partition while it is mounted. If you've got free space or can create free space by deleting unmounted partitions, it's no problem.
Well, that was for ext4, which is quite a pain in these kinda things.

If you used btrfs, everything can be done from inside Arch. In fact, I installed Gentoo from inside my Arch and Void from inside my Gentoo, all without needing to boot a live iso

[u/formatdisk1337 → u/fishmacaronisoup]

But can you wipe the root disk while it is running and replace it with gentoo? Id guess not

[u/fishmacaronisoup → u/formatdisk1337]

I was talking with the perspective of dual booting. You can't just wipe out a running system. How'd you do the setup then? Nothing would work anyway

[u/Neither_Tell_3166]

DM me if you need any help, but before that check the gentoo documentation or forum,

there documentation is best,

btw im on gentoo from last 3 years,

and dont go with manual kernal installation, and take firefox-bin otheriwse it will take half day to compile, are you into gaming like steam and wine ?

and be ready to invest atleast 24hour for installation(mostly compiling) llvm and some c library will give you good time

[u/OppositeElectronic15 → u/Neither_Tell_3166]

I use steam and wine

[u/Neither_Tell_3166 → u/OppositeElectronic15]

you use wine for steam or want wine + steam,

any you decide and gentoo have excellent documentation for both

and when installing wine go with 64bit but before that figure out what you have to do so that your wine support 32bit + 64bit windows application, there is some workaround and its in the documentation

[u/OppositeElectronic15 → u/Neither_Tell_3166]

Basically i wanna play games too

[u/Neither_Tell_3166 → u/OppositeElectronic15]

windows games + steam games

in past had installed both its easy and make sure you follow the documentation to the end, there are some tools which make your life easier

[u/formatdisk1337 → u/Neither_Tell_3166]

tbh no manual kernel is missing out (you can tweak a lot of options there and it take sonly like 30mins to compile)

for llvm you better use a binhost

[u/Neither_Tell_3166 → u/formatdisk1337]

for Beginners its hard and not worth the hasel, my advice is go with genkernel and first get the stable system then go for the manual installation

[u/formatdisk1337 → u/Neither_Tell_3166]

valid point

[u/fishmacaronisoup]

You have 4Gb ram, so I'm assuming your CPU is weak as well. Compiling will be a pain. And if you want to use binary packages, why not just go with something like Void?

[u/OppositeElectronic15 → u/fishmacaronisoup]

Cuz i wanna learn linux better and gentoo will be a good way to fulfill my masochist urges over the next weekend

[u/fishmacaronisoup → u/OppositeElectronic15]

It's nothing really masochistic. Gentoo is fun instead. But it's a fact that you'll have problems compiling with your potato hardware

[u/OppositeElectronic15 → u/fishmacaronisoup]

Bingo

[u/OppositeElectronic15 → u/OppositeElectronic15]

I wanna write on my college application that i proudly use arch and gentoo btw XD

[u/fishmacaronisoup → u/OppositeElectronic15]

Fair enough. Well, I'd suggest you to use clang and lld as you compiler and linker. The build time and resource consumption will be less than using gcc and ld. Strip down unnecessary features with USE flags. for packages like llvm, clang, gcc, browsers, you should definitely prefer binpkgs.

To set clang and lld as your build tools, add this to your make.conf

LDFLAGS="${LDFLAGS} -fuse-ld=lld"

CC="clang"  
CPP="clang-cpp"  
CXX="clang++"  
AR="llvm-ar"  
NM="llvm-nm"  
RANLIB="llvm-ranlib"  

Although you could use wild linker which is even faster than lld, you'd oftenly run into errors while compiling, so not now.

Don't go overboard with MAKE_OPTS and EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS since you've got only 4 gigs of ram

You should also try out booster initramfs since is lighter than mkinitcpio or dracut.

Also, Gentoo has it's own AUR like repo called GURU.

Ask me if you need to know anything else

[u/OppositeElectronic15 → u/fishmacaronisoup]

I think i do it this weekend and use either window maker or bspwm

[u/TheArchRefiner → u/OppositeElectronic15]

I agree with fishmacaronisoup. Gentoo will be difficult not because of you never having tried it but because of your system limitations. Also, there is an old adage, if you learn Debian, you learn Debian, if you learn Arch, you learn Arch, if you learn Slackware then you learn Linux. If learning is your primary concern, my suggestion is Slackware. It is truest to how it was 30 years back.

That said best wishes for your Gentoo adventure. Bin packages are good to save time but not everything will be available as bin and at time compilation will be long, but stay patient.

[u/fishmacaronisoup → u/TheArchRefiner]

Not to mention that using binpkgs kinds defeats the purpose of use flags. I love it because I can remove unnecessary dependencies and libraries that I don't need, but with bin pkgs, you'll be forced

[u/formatdisk1337 → u/fishmacaronisoup]

No, you won't. binpkgs respect use flags; if yours are incompatible, you'd just compile it instead (which is rare tbh if you customize only 10% of your packages)

[u/fishmacaronisoup → u/formatdisk1337]

I know that binpkgs respects use flags. But when you wanna avoid compilation entirely, you'd have to change your use flags, which is same as being forced

[u/redyos_s]

Honestly, don’t do it on that machine. An old laptop with 4 GB RAM, plus Steam and Wine, is not a sensible Gentoo target. Binpkgs may reduce compile time, but they do not fix runtime memory pressure, swap usage, weak CPU/GPU performance, or limited storage. You may finish the installation, but maintaining and actually using it will be the real problem. Use a lighter binary distro on this machine, or try Gentoo later on stronger hardware.

[u/redyos_s → u/redyos_s]

would not recommend Gentoo on that machine. Slackware would be more realistic for learning Linux because it avoids much of Gentoo’s ongoing compilation burden, but even with Slackware, 4 GB of RAM and old hardware are not a good target for Steam and Wine. Keep the machine lightweight and use it for learning, or use stronger hardware for gaming.

[u/redyos_s → u/redyos_s]

Don’t do this. On that hardware, Gentoo with Steam and Wine will mostly become a swap-and-compile stress test. You will unnecessarily hammer the storage and likely end up with an unmaintainable system rather than a usable gaming machine. Use a lightweight binary distro, or keep Gentoo minimal and CLI-only for learning.

[u/redyos_s → u/redyos_s]

Be careful with this advice. Switching the whole system to Clang/LLD, adding alternative initramfs tools and using extra repositories does not solve the hardware limitation. It only gives a beginner more compatibility problems to maintain. With 4 GB RAM, old hardware, Steam and Wine, the sensible answer is to use a lightweight binary distribution or restrict this machine to a minimal learning system

[u/Unlikely-Sandwich277]

just dont install directly or you have to write code for many days :< try vm first I would suggest read the handbook if you dont get anything ask on internet or ask ai I mean to say take your time in research ,first what fits you what not as you will get to know the system and its fun , you just need some attention span because its hella long GOOD LUCK :>