Linux components for a home desktop used in DIY electronics

RoGeorge · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2020 Posts: 19

The intent is to pick the necessary software components to build a Gentoo used as a home desktop (for one user), but also used in EE design (Electrical Engineering): microcontrollers, FPGA, analog electronics, PCB and so on.

Existing hardware (won't be changed): i7-4790K, 32GB RAM, nVidia + Intel GPU (both are used), 4 various monitors (3 connected to nVidia, 1 to Intel), 1 SSD, a few SATA disks, 2 LAN cards

Must have:
- 1. ZFS on root. (mainly to make snapshots before tinkering with the OS, then roll-back if something goes wrong <--- Can ZFS snapshots on root work as a rollback mechanism for the whole OS?)
- 2. No systemd, no udev
- 3. USB 2.0, most of the devboards, hardware programmers and debuggers are connected through USB
- 4. Super key + type a few letter must search, preferably filenames too, but not file content (similar with Gnome search with SuperKey + type <--- How is this called?)
- 5. Must be able to install binaries, some devboards toolchains come as binary installers only

Nice to have:
- 6. KDE/Plasma
- 7. USB 3.0
- 8. Wine

I'm familiar with Linux (some years ago I even started to build a LFS, but I was sidetracked and never finished that project). Don't have yet a good understanding of Linux internals, that's why I am asking for advice regarding components.

I'm new to Gentoo. Chosen it for two reasons: to learn in detail how GNU/Linux works, and for the freedom of choices. Emerged a Gentoo for the first time last weekend, on a real disk (UEFI and GPT) but without ZFS on root, and with an empty KDE/Plasma. Then, spent the rest of the time reading docs, forums, wikis and parsing the first 5 chapters from the book Linux Sea by Sven Vermeulen.

So far, I guess I'll need genkernel, OpenRC, eudev, alsa, KDE/Plasma. Are these a good/correct choice? What else will I need? Should I go with Gentoo, or just give up, and stay with an Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Fedora, etc.?

Any other advice will be appreciated.

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3150

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2020 9:37 am Post subject:

RoGeorge,

Pretty much what szatox said.

Gentoo isn't a distro. Its a set of tools you use to design and install your own distro.
Like LFS but with a package manager.
You get the flexibility to do your own thing and you keep the pieces when you break it.

If you require the underlying flexibility that Gentoo provides the trade off is learning to deal with the complexity that comes with it.
That's mostly a one time thing and you only need learn about the bits you need as you find you need them

Like szatox, I would use LVM for snapshots since I like a reliable filesystem. Snapshots are not a substitute for backups.
As for the applications, Gentoo is the ::gentoo ebuild repo and the portage package manager. Everything else is $UPSTREAM.

RoGeorge · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2020 Posts: 19

Thank you all, but you should've also warned me that Gentoo might be highly addictive!

@szatox
I didn't know LVM can have snapshots, too, and can rollback changes. For some reason, ZFS still seems more appealing to me. ZFS license doesn't bother me other than that that the Linux kernel doesn't include native ZFS support because of the license.

@NeddySeagoon
About the price for flexibility, what worries me the most is that I could do rookie mistakes with the settings, and end up with a system full of security holes.

---------------------------------

Last weekend I've looked for info about ZFS on root, and give it a try in a VirtualBox/Ubuntu18.10, but without following a certain wiki. It was a fail.

The most detailed pages I could find about configuring ZFS for a root install were from Ubuntu: https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/wiki/Ubuntu-18.04-Root-on-ZFS . Some ZFS setting are there only because they are required by SystemD, but the doc seems good. I'll ask about keeping those setting for OpenRC in another topic (e.g. acltype=posixacl because journald requires ACL). If there are other reference docs that I should read about Linux on ZFS root, please kindly point me to it.

Surprisingly, the size of the virtual disk has grown to about 40GB

. Also, it took way too many hours to make it practical to fool around with Gentoo emerging in a VM. I need to emerge on the real HW, but I don't want to stay without my main machine for days while experimenting with Gentoo.

Since there is a dedicated 160GB HDD for Gentoo experiments only, I can keep the current OS untouched. It should be possible to emerge Gentoo from a GUI terminal in the current OS (Ubuntu18.10), and only reboot to test the builds. Random search result: https://www.wikihow.com/Install-Gentoo-Linux-from-Ubuntu

I want to have the current cake and eat it, too, while learning to fast bake a new one!

Are there any fine details for why emerging Gentoo from another distro wouldn't work?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 8:37 pm Post subject:

RoGeorge,

You won't be running lots of services listening for incoming connections that you didn't even know were there on Gentoo.
Gentoo gives you to two things,
1) the packages you explicitly install
2) the packages needed to support the packages you explicitly install.

Conversely, if you have not installed it yet, you almost certainly don't have it installed.

That doesn't stop you setting up ssh to allow user guest to log in with password guest.
That's a very bad thing. :)

Nobody ever leaves Gentoo.
People wander away for a while but they always come back eventually.

-- edit --

Gentoo only needs a few tools to install. Any distro that provides the tools can be used.
Get a root shell. Do