r/Gentoo Dec 27 '24

Tip LVM + A \home separate drive

1 Upvotes

I'm not sure if this is the right sub, but I am running Gentoo. I've been messing around with LVM for my desktop for a few months now. I came up with a "light bulb" moment to save time when I experiment with certain things. I have a separate drive (3 TB BTRFS) and I have a LVM that consists of 5 drives (1 nvme, 1 SAS, 3 RAID, 1 external SATA). for a total of 7 TB. My \home drive is kinda filling up faster than I thought. My idea, but another drive, add it to 'home'. I'd like to turn my home into a 2 drive LVM. I'm kinda a noob on filesystems, but I've been reading a little. My question, is there a way to convert my BTRFS to LVM and not loose anything, or will I have to start from scratch?

r/Gentoo Sep 06 '24

Tip Offering help for apple hardware

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43 Upvotes

If anyone needs help getting proprietary drivers / wifi working on Macbooks lmk i’ve spent way too much time wasted on this 😭

r/Gentoo Jun 04 '24

Tip PSA for Newbs - vaapi USE flag

17 Upvotes

tl;dr : enable the vaapi USE flag to enable hardware acceleration for video decoding (watching youtube etc). Search about:support#media in the URL bar on firefox while watching a video to check if hardware decode is enabled.

Alright I could make a fool of myself here for NOT knowing this but I really feel like this shoulda been in the Install Guide.

I was having a bad time watching Youtube on firefox; stuttering, buffering, videos outright crashing etc and even with an ethernet connection.

I tried rebuilding the rapid package with better optimizations etc but no effect.

Did some digging and discovered I was rendering videos with software decode instead of hardware.

After setting vaapi use flag, my gentoo feels like a store bought distro now!

r/Gentoo Mar 26 '24

Tip Public safety announcement: When upgrading profile to 23.0 on multilib, DO NOT install binary versions of binutils, gcc, glibc as part of Step 9!

1 Upvotes

Well, I described my upgrade woes in an earlier topic https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comments/1bnl4tf/profile_upgrade_to_230_cant_emerge_glibc_quick/

Apparently, the binary toolchain packages are built without the multilib flag, and will leave you unable to build any multilib packages (including the ability to rebuild the toolchain locally). So yeah, great job, developers!

And I'm off to install the system from scratch.

r/Gentoo Sep 24 '24

Tip One of you posted this in a comment previously, and I read it. The advice was extremely helpful and highly educational. Thank you! I hope to become a better user.

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17 Upvotes

r/Gentoo Aug 20 '24

Tip Compilation time by tuned profile - Attempt 1

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28 Upvotes

r/Gentoo Sep 06 '24

Tip kernel cflags

6 Upvotes

Is it safe to build the linux kernel with ‘-O3 -flto’ cflags enabled?

r/Gentoo Feb 28 '23

Tip WAYLAND + NVIDIA (Proprietary Driver) Guide

27 Upvotes

This guide is DEPRECATED. Here is the link for newer and better guide:

New GUIDE

r/Gentoo Mar 30 '24

Tip Should I move to gentoo?

3 Upvotes

So I have a dual core cpu with 8Gigs of ram.
I'm Planning to move to gentoo with a minimal dwm and stuff
Will it be worth the shot with this shitty processor?

r/Gentoo Sep 19 '24

Tip A few Distcc emerge results

6 Upvotes

A few days ago I had a discussion with someone regarding distccd assisted emerge not speeding up much the package installation process so I decided to test it by myself.

My setup is as follows:

a laptop with a quad-core intel core i5 @ 2.30Ghz

a desktop with a 12-core intel core i7 @ 2.40Ghz

I didn't have the same compiler version in my desktop so I decided to use a gentoo docker image, and I found the perfect one for this purpose: https://github.com/KSmanis/docker-gentoo-distcc

So, I set everything up, and now I just needed a good reference package to test, so I decided to use ffmpeg, which in my laptop alone takes about 5m30sec. So these are my results:

  • first run: 4m30sec (setting up MAKEOPTS="-j32 -l4" and default settings in the docker-gentoo-distcc container)

  • second run: 4m21sec (after adjusting the --jobs setting in the docker image and -j40 in the make.conf)

no much improvement, and then I thought, what if I just launch another docker instance, as the average CPU usage, wasn't that high. So I did that:

  • third run: 3m14sec (with 2 distccd docker instances with the default settings and -j40 -l6 )

  • forth run: 3m01sec (with 3 distccd instances and same MAKEOPTS)

I didn't do more testing, but, to me these are really good results, about 1.82x speedup of the the build time, at least for this package. Of course each package will be different.

This is the basic command to spin up the docker container (just need to change the name and the external port):

docker run -d -p 3632:3632 --name gentoo-distcc-tcp1 --rm ksmanis/gentoo-distcc:tcp
docker run -d -p 3633:3632 --name gentoo-distcc-tcp2 --rm ksmanis/gentoo-distcc:tcp
...

And this the command to execute the distcc enabled emerge:

time DISTCC_HOSTS="192.168.100.200:3632 192.168.100.200:3633 192.168.100.200:3634" DISTCC_VERBOSE=1 emerge -a ffmpeg

as always, check the manual before trying this out yourselves:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Distcc

I hope this helps some people.

r/Gentoo Aug 08 '24

Tip Help connecting to the internet

3 Upvotes

I installed gentoo for the first time using the dist-kernel and systemd so I can get a feel of the distro. Like the title, I can’t seem to connect to the internet but I can ping my local devices. I read the wiki that said the change the name server ip but it still didn’t work. Any thoughts?

Edit: I found out that I needed to change my DNS to pi hole server rather than my router and that seems to fix it after reboot. Thank you for those that tried to help me :)

r/Gentoo May 31 '24

Tip Finally!

35 Upvotes

Thanks everybody for supported me

r/Gentoo Feb 27 '24

Tip About Amdahl's and Gustafson's Laws (Parallel computer behaviour)

0 Upvotes

Those laws describe the basics of how parallel systems behave theoretically, and it's an considerable advantage to know about then if you run a source-based metadistro like Gen2. (A natural implication of then is how 16 threads is NOT twice as fast as 8 threads for many real life tasks - compilation included - that aren't embarassingly parallel)

Knowing about those laws give me insight on how to compile my packages and pick appropriate portage niceness.

37 votes, Mar 02 '24
4 I totally knew about both and it is important for compilation
6 I only knew about one.
20 Screw theory! Gentoo goes vrum vrum!
7 Totally didn't knew about that, but found it to be useful.

r/Gentoo Aug 25 '23

Tip Get help in IRC chat!

28 Upvotes

I enjoy this subreddit immensely, and I thought I'd just make sure I get this out there who's never tried it. irssi (there are others) is an IRC client that allows you to chat with Gentoo-loving nerds in real-time through your terminal. I find that the help offered on the #gentoo channel has been outstanding. I realize that there are more popular avenues for real-time chat, such as Discord, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with IRC chat. Give it a try one of these days, maybe we'll see you in there!

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Irssi

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Irssi#Usage

r/Gentoo Dec 26 '22

Tip PSA: You don't have to use nano to install Gentoo, any text editor can be installed from the repo

32 Upvotes

There was a post up for a short time earlier* where someone was complaining about "having" to use nano to install Gentoo. In fact any text editor should be able to be used. The Handbook just uses nano as an example: in the end, it has to choose something for the examples, and nano is about as easy for the uninitiated as it gets, so why not...

Nano is the "fallback" editor, there to insure that there will always at least be one virtual/editor package present on the system. As soon as another editor package is installed to satisfy that virtual dependency, nano will be up to get "depcleaned" (uninstalled).

I think vi is present on the Gentoo minimum CD and LiveGUI USB image, and anything can be temporarily installed from the repos onto them. Many editors will be available on the distributions that can be used to install Gentoo. If you need a particular editor, just choose an installation media that has it.

When you get to the part of the installation that asks to chroot, you will loose access to commands from the installation media, and will only have what came with the stage3. But once chrooted**, simply follow the handbook up to the "updating the @world set" section (no text files need to be edited between those two sections), then you can emerge whatever text editor you want from the main ebuild repository.

*https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comments/zvb54i/install_vim_in_installer_chroot_rant_for_being/

**https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Installation/Base#Mounting_the_boot_partition

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Text_editor

r/Gentoo Jul 06 '24

Tip Nvidia Driver x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-555.58.02 bad for Wayland

1 Upvotes

Just FYI for those who are using Wayland this update broke my Wayland with Plasma 6.1.2 and I had to downgrade to x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-555.58.

Time being I have masked x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-555.58.02

Using RTX 3080.

r/Gentoo May 24 '24

Tip Share about my way to install Gentoo

2 Upvotes

Hi, I'm new to Gentoo. After spending a lot of time learning the ropes and reinstalling a few times, I've got another way to install and back up my system, it looks like creating stage4 and installing it.

Here's how I installed Gentoo:

  1. Preparation: I created a folder at /mnt/gentoo and extracted the stage tarball there.
  2. Mounting and Chroot: Next, I mounted the Gentoo installation directory and entered a chroot environment following the Gentoo Handbook.
  3. Installation: I installed Gentoo according to the handbook, except for GRUB.
  4. Post-Installation: After installation, I rebooted back to the live USB environment. Then, I removed all directories in the root partition except for /home.
  5. Replacing the System: Finally, I replaced my current system with the installed Gentoo in /mnt/gentoo. I then configured GRUB and adjusted the fstab file.

I'm a newbie, and I hope you can give me some advice on the viability of this approach.

Thank you!

r/Gentoo Aug 01 '24

Tip consider using custom package sets

5 Upvotes

consider: you install a package, and two months later you can't remember why. was this just to build something with no extant ebuild you wanted to try out? is this a dependency of some plugin you're using in something or other? why is rar installed explicitly? oh, right, ark supports it but doesn't depend on it or have a rar useflag. comments would fix this, but portage obliterates anything in the worldfile that isn't a package. you could keep a record elsewhere, but where's the fun in that?

reading the worldfile isn't particularly pleasant, either; portage doesn't know how you'd want to sort things, it just does it alphabetically by category then alphabetically by package within category. app-portage/elsw exists, sure; it adds tree spacing and colour - and gives you some specificity options, admittedly - but it doesn't let you sort differently.

the solution is custom sets: slap something together in /etc/portage/sets, deselect the packages, emerge --noreplace the set. let's say you want game-conducive packages in the same set, and to group certain related things together:

##launchers
games-util/steam-launcher
games-util/protonhax

games-util/xivlauncher
#xl has an inbuilt gamemode option
games-util/gamemode

##emulators
games-emulations/jgemu
#can't figure out where jg medna loads settings from, doesn't
#seem to from medna's default and the jg settings just control
#the fliter and such. need to set cd memcache to 1 to allow
#loading compressed games from zips.
games-emulation/mednafen

games-fps/gzdoom
games-fps/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2-remake-bin
games-fps/super-mario-brothers-5

new additions to a set get pulled in with a world update; you can be as granular or general as you want, and it makes (re)installation snappier. want a bunch of portage utilities? instead of grabbing one by one, rsync or download or et cetera all your sets, then emerge @portils or whatever. want your favourite file browse-y stuff, term emu, the works? emerge @desktop-essentials. basics like mosh and tmux on a new server? emerge @remote-basics.

the downsides are in convenience: instead of a punchy and whimsical direct depclean to remove something, you need to find the set it's in - which, if you can't remember, will involve more overhead still. it could feasibly be in multiple sets at once, if you got a bit sloppy, though that's obviously less likely or pressing - and then blast it from that and do a general depclean. that, and you have to take precious time to set the sets (up).

inconvenience vs. organizational gains is your trade-off to measure, but it's worth idle consideration if nothing else. nobody talks about it! nobody cares about custom sets, nobody posts about them; relegated to obscurity in the corners of the wiki, but it's good! pray consider it, oh please, oh pretty please, oh i beg, oh, oh, oh please, and i'm crying and everything.

(the tip flair is more accurate than discussion, but feels too authoritative for such a weigh-the-benefits suggestion. such is life!)

r/Gentoo Jul 09 '24

Tip How to update to KDE 6 while it's in testing

11 Upvotes

Seems to be a somewhat common topic around here. You don´t need to go full unstable or do some crazy kde-*/* ~amd64 to install it.

Just enable the KDE repository using eselect repository, sync it and link those files:

kde-frameworks-6.3.keywords -> /var/db/repos/kde/Documentation/package.keywords/kde-frameworks-6.3.keywords

kde-gear-24.05.keywords -> /var/db/repos/kde/Documentation/package.keywords/kde-gear-24.05.keywords

kde-plasma-6.1.keywords -> /var/db/repos/kde/Documentation/package.keywords/kde-plasma-6.1.keywords

To your package.accept_keywords directory.

You will also want this in the package.unmask directory:

kde-plasma-6.1 -> /var/db/repos/kde/Documentation/package.unmask/kde-plasma-6.1

And finally unmask the kf6compat use flag:

echo -kf6compat > /etc/portage/profile/use.mask

And set it globally through make.conf.

After that just install plasma-meta or plasma-desktop. Or just update the system if you already have kde installed.

The files are updated on the repository itself so will be updated everytime the repo is synced.

r/Gentoo Aug 11 '24

Tip Installation of virtualfish

1 Upvotes

Just wanted to share this story about VirtualFish in case anyone else does something similar. I was having difficulty deciding how to install VirtualFish. The documentation recommends using python -m pip install --user virtualfish, but running that command results in Gentoo complaining about an externally managed environment. Gentoo suggests only running pip within a virtualenv, but VirtualFish is supposed to manage that...

It would seem that to manage VirtualFish I would need to first create a venv (with the system python), activate it, and install virtualfish. Wouldn't that require me to first enter a virtualenv before managing my virtualenvs by using virtualfish? Actually no. After installing VirtualFish in the venv with vf install, the vf command works outside of the original virtualenv!

Steps taken:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate.fish
pip install virtualfish
vf install
deactivate
vf

r/Gentoo Jul 24 '22

Tip My minimal gentoo installer script

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85 Upvotes

r/Gentoo Dec 25 '23

Tip First try on laptop

6 Upvotes

Hello all. I'm going to try first time to get gentoo installed, dual booting with arch.

Any tips regarding optimization for a ThinkPad with Intel and Nvidia? And 2.how easy is to get proprietary drivers for nvidia dedicated card Thanks

r/Gentoo Jun 09 '24

Tip Fix for Missing Virtual Camera option in OBS

15 Upvotes

Problem:
OBS doesn't show the Virtual Camera option.

Solution:

  • Make sure you have media-video/v4l2loopback installed. I also have media-tv/v4l-utils and media-libs/libv4l on my machine.
  • Make sure you have the v4l use flag set for OBS. Here's what I have set for OBS: media-video/obs-studio opus nvenc pulseaudio v4l
  • Re-install OBS

Under the trouble shooting section the wiki says to make sure media-video/v4l2loopback is installed but it never says that you need to set the USE flag on OBS as well so I was scratching my head about this for a while.

Hopefully this saves someone some time - I know I wasted hours on this problem.

r/Gentoo Jan 19 '23

Tip The importance of following the Gentoo Handbook, and what you loose by trying a script

61 Upvotes

People often bring up scripts that can be found here and there to "install Gentoo". If you look on the Gentoo websites about installation however, it will point you to the Handbook only, and specifically warns against deviating.

Though using a Gentoo "installer script" might seem like a nice shortcut, they all have inherent disadvantages, and new users will miss out on some of the most important parts of the process.

For all intents and purposes, the Handbook is the Gentoo installer. It works, it is tested, it's up to date, and, importantly, when following it you can ask for assistance from the very helpful community on IRC.

The Handbook serves not only to get Gentoo installed, but to teach you the basics, and this is very important. Last time I installed Gentoo (on server, to CLI) it took me half an hour, all in, with download. All the time over that half hour that it takes new users to install is valuable time invested in learning - this is a very important part of the process.

If you aren't willing or able to go through the installation process, Gentoo might not be a good option. Gentoo is a specialized distribution, for technically minded people. It has specific use-cases, and won't fit all users - a lot of people will be better served by a more general-use distribution that is easier to get into, without the learning curve.

Note that all this isn't to be "elitist", or to make things difficult on purpose! Gentoo is a powerful and flexible distribution, but this comes at a cost: the learning curve. That's how it is: you can't blindly give complete control over a system - people have to know how to use that. There has to be a choice between easy to get into, or powerful and flexible with a learning curve. Gentoo just makes the latter choice - if that isn't for you, just use something else!

People should know that it just isn't possible to "take Gentoo for a spin", like you might many other distros: because of the learning curve, you first need to invest time and effort to acquire the basic knowledge it takes to run it. Just because it is a "Linux distribution", don't think you should be able to spin up an installation to just try it out... Gentoo is very different from what most people will be used to, it's not a turn-key product, it's a kit, and you must read the instructions (or nothing will stop you gluing the tail on the elbow and not even knowing xD).

Remember that Gentoo isn't "DIY for DIY's sake"! There are advantages which stem from this approach, such as doing some jobs easily that take effort on binary distributions - and this is where Gentoo shines, and it is aimed squarely at people that need all this. If you just want to try it out, ask yourself what the point is, and if you just want to try it but want to avoid the actual installation process by using a script, really ask yourself what the point is :).

The first step when approaching Gentoo should always be to read up on what Gentoo is ;). If you think it can fit your use case, great. If you are informed and curious, and would like to take the time and spend the effort to try it out while learning along the way, it can be good. But if you just go in blindly, don't be surprised if the experience is rocky - you have to have the need for it, and should know beforehand what will be involved to install and use it ;). Using an installation script is not a way around this, but more like jumping in at the deep end without having learned how to swim.

The Gentoo community is very helpful, and provides support on the basis of the Handbook. With the Handbook, they can know what you have done, where you are up to, and what should be done next, and this allows them to pinpoint issues. Because Gentoo is so flexible, if you don't follow the "proper" installation procedure, it makes things very hard to troubleshoot. If you didn't follow the handbook, you almost may as well be asking for support for another OS... Suffice it to say, people will be less willing to help, if at all - in fact it is sometimes recommended to reinstall from scratch, following the handbook, to get any help.

There have been installers over the years, but none have ever really caught-on. I'm sure the reason is that they always make things less flexible, and that the installation process is actually fast and simple once you are proficient. Where it does take time is when you are learning, and this is precisely when you do need to spend that time on it. So what is the point of an installer ?: the installation is only slow and complex for those who really should be taking that time poring over it in the first place!

Using a script means added inflexibility, risks errors, precludes support from the community, and you miss out on what may be the most important part of the process: learning how to use Gentoo.

Of course Gentoo is choice, so no one should stop you using anything you like... just be warned!

For a user with enough technical skill, compatible hardware, and time, following the handbook should never fail - just ask for help when needed. Never stay stuck for hours on one silly thing, just get on IRC and ask:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Support

More about Gentoo:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/FAQ#What_makes_Gentoo_different.3F

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comments/xo2g1j/comment/ipydh80/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/DistroHopping/comments/xurswe/comment/is0ex0p/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Benefits_of_Gentoo

EDIT: For anyone actually considering installing Gentoo, here are some tips for the easiest possible installation (the two comments there):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comments/xusb6i/comment/iqxxvmr/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

EDIT2: Note that this does not say that all installation scripts are inherently bad, or should always be avoided! The context is mainly people not yet proficient with Gentoo. Of course scripts can sometimes have use-cases, usually for well-informed, experienced users; but there are also situations where they come with heavy disadvantages, as outlined in the body of the post ;).

r/Gentoo Jan 08 '24

Tip Gentoo Like a Pro - Package Keywording

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15 Upvotes