Back to Gentoo after more than 10 years - and its great :D

[euphi2]

I used Gentoo from around 2003 to 2012. It became to stressful for me to maintain it, so I switched to Kubuntu.

However, recently I noticed that my linux skills are fading away and also had some strange issues in with wayland and general screen setup (One 4k + one 1600x1200), especially after upgrade to Kubuntu 23.04.
I also was unhappy to use AppImages for almost all important applications.

I wanted to buy a faster/larger SSD and so I took the opportunity to do a complete reinstallation and change back to Gentoo.

I decided to go full systemd (to learn about it) and wayland as far as possible.

Installation process was smooth. I started with copying stage archive etc. from Kubuntu installation to the new SSD (in an external USB-C enclosure) and then swapped SSDs.

So what are my important findings?

• I noted that manual is not really describing the variant with systemd-boot as only bootloader, however, the issues I had where quickly solved.
  
• Installation was fast. I changed /var/tmp/portage to a ramdisk (tempfs), so it was even faster. That's definitely way better that 10 years ago.
  
• It was easy to get back to be used to Gentoo. I even remembered my old root password (I just typed it in without thinking about it and wondered why it's wrong now )
  
• Only some use-flags needed to be changed, mostly local flags to adapt to special whishes.
  
• For now I decided to use Chrome as default browser, so browser is binary only. I want to change to chromium, but I use Google sync too much, so it's not an easy migration.
  
• I don't need to use any AppImage. Before I had to use them for FreeCAD, Digikam, PrusaSlicer, Spotify and some smaller ones. All these applications are now faster (startup) and better integrated.
  
• For now I use Gentoo default kernel, but of course I will change to genkernel.
  
• There is less use for large applications. No LibreOffice, instead KDE's calligra which compiled quite fast.
  

Where did I had (or still have) some problems?

• As stated above, systemd-boot was not working out of the box. Installation is not really described yet in installation manual. I don't remember completely how I solved this, but I think kernel installation was in wrong order, so a reinstallation of kernel did the trick. (+ correct boot priority in Bios because I noted that the old boot loader was on a backup disk all the time (instead of the old, now removed ssd)
  
• systemd resolver had some strange issues with lack of DNSSsec support. Fallback was not working correctly. As workaround I disabled dnssec completely. However, now (2 weeks later) it is enabled again and works fine(?!?!). Even before the yesterday stable update to systemd 254.
  
• Resolver did not use ".lan" as default domain, altough it was configured globally. Since I also configured it for my ethernet link, it works fine.
  
• I did the network configuration wrong: Instead of doing any configuration, I just enabled dhcpcd service. This worked fine until I wanted to mount some nfs share at boot - this depends on systemd-wait-online service that only works for managed links. --> Disabling dhcpcd service and instead configure networkd to use dhcp solved this.
  
• I thought setting VIDEO_CARDS="amdgpu" is enough to enable 3D acceleration. However, it must be VIDEO_CARDS="amdgpu radeonsi". (This is in the manual, but easy to misunderstand).
  
• Chrome's mouse pointer is WAY to small. Its almost invisible on 4k screen. --> I will open a topic in Support forum for his.
  
• Some applications have problems with wayland: FreeCAD crashes, so I need to set "XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11". Eclipse has laggy scrolling and does not allow moving tabs/views. This is solved by setting "GDK_BACKEND=x11". Chrome must be set to use "wayland" manually, otherwise it does not recognize correct screen solution and "maximize" only uses approx half of screen height (but full width) ?!? (set "preferred Ozone platform" to wayland in chrome://flags)
  
• When screen is switched back on after idling, some applications resize to wrong size (when they were maximized they use a smaller size, but frame is still maximized. Changing window size and than back to maximize solves this. However, it's still very annoying and I'll open a question in support forum. Note: The issues I had before with Kubuntu were worse. There often screens where swapped, Plasma widgets where rearranged or resized, sometimes the screen even started to flicker etc. I guess it has something to do with the multi monitor setup using HDMI for one and Displayport for the other screen and wrong wakeup behaviour of the 4k screen (so at least partly a hardware/firmware issue of the screen itself).
  
  

All in all, I realy enjoy how fast everything starts and how smoothless almost everything is integrated. I also learned new things and remembered many almost forgotten things

[nikolis]

Welcome back!