I've been using Gentoo Linux for the past 6 months.

Published: at 04:10 PM

For the past 6 months, I’ve been using the Gentoo Linux distribution. Here is what I have learnt.

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What Is Gentoo Linux?

Gentoo is a distribution of the Linux operating system. Gentoo was first released on 31 March 2002, making it (at time of writing) 21 years old. The Gentoo operating system is generally seen as very hard, primarily thanks to the fact it has no real installer. Instead, the installation of Gentoo happens on the terminal, and is done with the handbook, 10 long pages of commands you need to copy into your terminal to install it. However, this process is relatively simple. If you have ever used linux before, you should be familiar with the terminal, and manage to install Gentoo quite easily.

My Configuration

I have installed Gentoo using:

OpenRC

OpenRC is an init system. The first process which is started when you turn on your computer. OpenRC is Gentoo’s own custom init system. It is speciffically written for Gentoo. A more popular alternative is SystemD, which is garbage. More newbie oriented systems, like Ubuntu and Debian almost always use SystemD. Gentoo’s OpenRC, however, is way easier, as everything is easily viewable and controllable, and as Gentoo requires a lot less processes to run.

Wayland

Wayland is one of the two big systems for having windows on a linux machine. The other is X11, which is an older alternative. Wayland contains many improvements over X11, making it more modern, as well as making it quicker.

Hyprland

Hyprland is a modern tiling window manager. Window managers are, on linux, the programs that arrange your windows and decorate them. Hyprland looks very nice, is highly configurable and allows you to use any keybindings you like, although I’ve used the default keybindings. With tiling, we mean that, in contradiction to more traditional systems where you drag and resize the windows, Hyprland resizes automatically, to make every application almost fullscreen, and if you open a second window, the applications will automatically resize to make place for that window.

MPD

MPD stands for Music Player Daemon. A Daemon is a program that keeps running, without a window. MPD can play your music, without having a window open, and it starts when you turn your computer on.

Efi

Efi is a standard for booting computers. Back in the olden days, computers started through MBR, a master boot record. However, nowadays, most computer boot with EFI, which has a partition on which files are stored, which are ELF executables and which can be selected by the kernel. It isn’t that much of a difference from MBR, but it is newer and nicer, so I chose for using EFI.

GRUB

GRUB is the GNU bootloader. GRUB is the program which is loaded by your computer, and which loads linux. GRUB is the most popular bootloader, although alternatives exist.

Grand Theft Gentoo Theme

Grub allows installing themes, and I have used the Grand Theft Gentoo theme, because it is objectively funny.

Catppuccin

Catppuccin is a theme, which I’ve implemented across all of my application. It uses pastel colours above a dark background.

The Portage Package Manager

A very interesting part of Gentoo is Portage. Portage is the program that Gentoo uses to install software onto your computer. In contradiction to more popular package managers, like the apt system on Ubuntu / Debian, portage downloads the source code of your programs, and compiles them on your device. This is safer, as you know exactly what you’re installing, but it is also faster. The C compiler will compile the program, not for every computer, but for your computer specifically, so that it includes less overhead. Another very important part is USE flags. USE flags are toggles of features you want a program to use, like using pulse or alsa for audio. This reduces overhead too, and also gives you less dependencies that are needed.

Do I Like Gentoo

Yes. I like Gentoo a lot. It is very quick, and I managed to make everything look super clean. I will continue using Gentoo after this post too.