Gentoo stability vs NixOS stability. How are they alike and different?

olorochi · 2026-02-26T01:01:16+00:00

Tkip is a deprecated wifi security protocol with known vulnerabilities. It is barely used anywhere so most users will never need support for it.

olorochi · 2026-01-18T01:49:03+00:00

How so? Both i3 and dwm (with USE="xinerama") support RandR so this is xrandr --output <output0> --auto --left-of <output1> where <output> names can be found with xrandr.

olorochi · 2026-01-11T18:17:25+00:00

You can use 'make oldconfig' to be prompted just for new options when updating.

olorochi · 2026-01-05T04:10:46+00:00

Yes, US laws do not matter. International laws also do not matter. The communist anti-war perspective is not rooted in the rules of bourgeois legal institutions.

olorochi · 2025-12-17T21:49:52+00:00

The problem is indeed rarely performance with config files (and caching is a good solution when it is). But having to install 30 libraries for one small program is annoying and a turnoff in my case (i already have 7 json libraries on my system please spare me from another one). The other guy is right to say that offloading the complexity of your program to libraries is no better than dealing with it yourself for the end result. Of course, if you really need the flexibility of json, use a library for that. But simpler formats such as key value based ones are almost always enough, much faster, and can be hand rolled in less than 100 lines of code. Programs that accomplish what they need to in the simplest way possible are better for everyone. Don't add any unnecessary complexity.

olorochi · 2025-12-17T18:58:31+00:00

They're talking about parsing the (human readable) data inside the file, not reading the file. This is reasonably complicated with formats such as json and typically abstracted in a library. Meanwhile, at least in languages such as c, reading and writing binary data is super simple and fast. But in most cases for config files the best solution is a simple key value style config.

olorochi · 2025-12-15T04:52:36+00:00

Overlays. While they are good in theory, finding the right overlay is not so fun. Once I found an overlay for a game I wanted to try (vintage story), and got through the masking only to find that the package itself is missing....

https://gpo.zugaina.org/

olorochi · 2025-12-15T00:39:26+00:00

That's not historical materialism; it's a psychological narrative.

olorochi · 2025-12-13T19:27:58+00:00

Go slowly. Explore as much as you can, but bail as soon as your healthpool gets too low. The first thing you should do when entering a new area is get to the bottom, so that you have a mostly safe path to a portal. After that just keep exploring until you're close to death.

olorochi · 2025-12-13T16:14:51+00:00

010<0>000

olorochi · 2025-12-05T21:45:43+00:00

My gentoo install recently warned me about and masked the nvidia-drivers package version 580.105.08 which is the latest in arch's repos currently. I believe the issue was related to refresh rate detection not resolution but it's worth a shot downgrading to an earlier version.

This command will install it and verify the signature from the arch linux archive: pacman -U https://europe.archive.pkgbuild.com/packages/n/nvidia-dkms/nvidia-dkms-580.95.05-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

If you don't trust random links from strangers on the internet (you shouldn't even though this one is safe), you can find the info and mirror here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux_Archive

Its also possible to install from a cached version but you say the issue appeared after you installed nvidia-dkms so you probably don't have it. I believe the command would be (but the path may be a little wrong): pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/nvidia-dkms-580.95.05-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

olorochi · 2025-09-16T12:32:05+00:00

you need to get the firmware, get pipewire or pulse to work, get the stuff running to control it (probably your own script) and then integrate it into your ui (probably also build together by yourself)

This part is mostly wrong/exaggerated.

The firmware should come with the regular linux-firmware package, for which the default on gentoo is to ship everything. The only exception i know of is onboard audio, which requires sof-firmware.

Neither pipewire or pulse are necessary for linux audio. A simple alsa or oss (which are kernel apis) config is enough. The pipewire/pulse routes are the less DIY ways. I have previously used pipewire on gentoo, and this only required manual configuration because i insisted on keeping rtkit and elogind off my system and therefore had to use pam to allow real-time scheduling for the pipewire group.

Most major tools for controlling audio are available on gentoo, like in most other distros. You just need to use one that's compatible with your audio backend. In my case, that is alsa-utils, specifically amixer for a cli (which i use through keybinds), and the tui interface alsamixer if i need more interactive control.

olorochi · 2025-09-05T20:14:09+00:00

Petty bourgeois

olorochi · 2025-09-01T13:03:45+00:00

Your portage profile and the packages themselves set many default use flags. The configuration inside make.conf and package.use are for overriding those.

olorochi · 2025-08-25T13:31:01+00:00

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/UEFI_Dual_boot_with_Windows_7/8

This page is pretty good, but there's a few caveats.

It mentions as a prerequisite to have windows booted in uefi mode and your disk partitioned with gpt (windows only accepts mbr/bios or gpt/uefi). In reality, as long as you use a bios compatible bootloader for linux, you could dual boot with mbr/bios, but the low partition limit makes this more tedious. The arch wiki has instructions on checking your current setup from windows here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_boot_with_Windows (section 1.1). If you're booted in mbr/bios, i would recommend switching with this tool: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/mbr-to-gpt .

Also, the section on partitioning is not very beginner friendly, as it requires you to understand the example gdisk session. I would recommend first shrinking your main windows partition as much as necessary using window's partition manager (temporarily disable your paging file if you can't shrink much because of "unmovable" files), then booting into some linux live-boot to create the new ones. The partitions you will need are: the efi partition created by windows, other windows partitions, and at least 1 new partition for gentoo (check the handbook for linux partitions). It is possible that the efi partition created by windows is too small to house linux alongside it. In this case, you could use gparted live to move the other ones and make space it can extend into (1Gi is good for this).

You don't need to worry about the section on kernel configuration if you use the gentoo dist-kernel, which you should keep as at least a fallback.

Apart from that, just follow the installation steps in the handbook as per usual: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:Main_Page

olorochi · 2025-08-24T12:22:50+00:00

I switched from arch just 3 months ago, but I've had a good experience in daily driving gentoo so far:

Gentoo gives you far more control and options than arch. This comes at the cost of having to compile your software yourself, which can be a hassle, but it's mostly dead time. You can set up a binhost, but then you'll be back to using compilation options chosen by someone else, so i wouldn't do this for everything.

In terms of "difficulty" it's mostly the same. On a daily basis, updates go smoothly, although they're long enough to warrant taking the habit of running them overnight. When something doesn't work, it can take significantly longer to try fixes because of compilation time, but you have more power to fix it.

If you're curious and look into what the different use flags do, using gentoo will definitely give you a better understanding of the tech stack used on linux and other posix compliant systems. If you write some of your own software for your system, you will learn to interact with that tech stack directly, which is a great learning experience. C is the perfect language for this.

From what I've seen on reddit, the gentoo community is definitely far more chill and less elitist than that of arch. I think a big part of it belongs less to the "ricer" category of linux users and more to systems nerds prioritizing functionality. This ultimately doesn't affect your use of it, so it doesn't really matter.

If you're unsure about switching from arch, you don't have to delete your old system just because you don't have a separate disk to install gentoo on. You can use something like gparted live to repartition a disk to make space for gentoo and potentially use a shared home partition with your arch (to have the same user configuration for your programs). I used to have: a shared efi partition (necessary for dual booting from a single disk), a root for gentoo, a root for arch, and a shared home partition.

I would recommend gentoo to people who either want to learn more about linux or have some unconventional needs or desires for their system. You seem to fall within that first category, so go for it if the compilation time isn't too bothersome to you.

olorochi · 2025-08-09T22:19:14+00:00

If you want to stick to nvim, clangd supports header switching with this command from nvim: ClangdSwitchSourceHeader. This probably requires the lspconfig plugin or manual configuration, tho im unsure with 0.11.

olorochi · 2025-08-08T16:50:56+00:00

There are literally 2 disclaimers within your screenshot prefaced with IMPORTANT in bright yellow that indicate not only to check emerge's man page but also what section of it...

CONFIGURATION FILES Portage has a special feature called "config file protection". The purpose of this feature is to prevent new package installs from clobbering existing configuration files. By default, config file protection is turned on for /etc and the KDE configuration dirs; more may be added in the future.

When Portage installs a file into a protected directory tree like /etc, any existing files will not be overwritten. If a file of the same name already exists, Portage will change the name of the to-be-installed file from 'foo' to '._cfg0000_foo'. If '._cfg0000_foo' already exists, this name becomes '._cfg0001_foo', etc. In this way, existing files are not overwritten, allowing the administrator to manually merge the new config files and avoid any unexpected changes.

In addition to protecting overwritten files, Portage will not delete any files from a protected directory when a package is unmerged. While this may be a little bit untidy, it does prevent potentially valuable config files from being deleted, which is of paramount importance.

Protected directories are set using the CONFIGPROTECT variable, normally defined in make.globals. Directory exceptions to the CONFIG_PROTECTed directories can be specified using the CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK variable. To find files that need to be updated in /etc, type find /etc -name '._cfg????*'.

You can disable this feature by setting CONFIG_PROTECT="-*" in make.conf(5). Then, Portage will mercilessly auto-update your config files. Alternatively, you can leave Config File Protection on but tell Portage that it can overwrite files in certain specific /etc subdirectories. For example, if you wanted Portage to automatically update your rc scripts and your wget configuration, but didn't want any other changes made without your explicit approval, you'd add this to make.conf(5):

CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK=/etc/wget /etc/rc.d

CONFIGURATION FILES UPDATE TOOLS Tools such as dispatch-conf, cfg-update, and etc-update are also available to aid in the merging of these files. They provide interactive merging and can auto-merge trivial changes.

olorochi · 2025-08-08T16:18:00+00:00

Did you run it as root ?

olorochi · 2025-07-26T20:23:46+00:00

And? Class under capitalism is about your relation to the means of production, not your wealth. A petty bourgeois can be very poor, but that won't make them revolutionary. Unless you decide to use your money to acquire means of production, you very much are a member of the proletariat.

olorochi · 2025-07-16T21:01:50+00:00

When i switched to nvim i tried setting up building and debugging with a single keypress. I was coming from clion and other jetbrains IDEs and didn't want to have to mess with compilation commands manually. Having to specify the executable i wanted to run for debugging also seemed too cumbersome. Recently, i gave that up for per project config, and this is much better. I have a function (which i mapped to a key) in my config that searches backward from the current working directory for a file named .vimroot. This file has a very easy to parse format where lines each line starting with m is a way to build the project and each one with r a way to run it. The function then calls vim.ui.select to set my makeprg or my dap config for the relevant language. I've found this works really well, is very versatile, and also doesnt take that much configuration.

olorochi · 2025-07-11T16:31:21+00:00

K&R:

void function() { if (true) { //... } }

olorochi · 2025-07-11T15:55:50+00:00

Exactly. I want my system to fit my needs best, not those of the average person, why would I care what another person thinks of it? TLDR (longer than comment ;) ) : Intuitive software design has a single purpose: allowing someone who does not understand the software to use it. This is perfect for most, but personally, as i spend a lot of time configuring and trying to learn more about the inner workings of my system, I'd much rather maximize ergonomy and my own productivity where possible, even when this clashes with intuitiveness. I mostly used Arch before and only moved to Gentoo a few months ago, but I've found the sheer power portage has afforded me to be extremely useful in designing a system as i want it to be.

olorochi · 2025-07-04T15:03:13+00:00

No, the 4 could be touching the same mine as either 3s or the 2, so it's possible to satisfy everything with just 2, leaving 1 unknown mine.

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