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Proinsias
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 06 Oct 2014
Posts: 136
Location: Scotland
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 Posted: Sat Aug 31, 2024 11:10 pm Post subject: Could there be a short and simple install guide? |
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I recall the hilarity of the single line command to install Gentoo in ye olde days.
Going over the install guide recently it seems rather daunting and complex for n00bs.
It seems like it could be much shorter and simpler.
Unpack stage3, chroot, enable binhost, binary kernel, reboot, done.
I gather this is somewhat over simplified but it feels like Gentoo can be up and running as fast as Arch and a very simple and basic install guide in a page or so could have users up and running with a 'just works' workstation and the awesome power of a fully operational portage.
I've seen quite a few users on Reddit and other places really wanting to try Gentoo but really daunted by the install guide, and just going back to it recently it's a lot.
I appreciate Gentoo offers choice and the install guide supports this, but many just want a x86_64 workstation, which is really pretty simple these days. Gentoo is rice could be explored later. |
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pingtoo
Veteran
Joined: 10 Sep 2021
Posts: 1330
Location: Richmond Hill, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2024 3:06 am Post subject: |
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Come on, This is IT, Good, fast and cheap, you can only pick two.
Gentoo is not cheap (effort wise)  |
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eschwartz
Developer
Joined: 29 Oct 2023
Posts: 240
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| Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2024 4:28 am Post subject: Re: Could there be a short and simple install guide? |
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| Proinsias wrote: | I gather this is somewhat over simplified but it feels like Gentoo can be up and running as fast as Arch and a very simple and basic install guide in a page or so could have users up and running with a 'just works' workstation and the awesome power of a fully operational portage.
I've seen quite a few users on Reddit and other places really wanting to try Gentoo but really daunted by the install guide, and just going back to it recently it's a lot.
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I find this somehow ironic, since I didn't find either Arch or Gentoo's install guides to be hard or complicated. But I've seen lots of people who are *really* mad that Arch has "removed the instructions so that you can only install Arch if you're a l33t user that knows everything", or "it's such a pain installing Arch -- used to be there were clear instructions on what to do but they removed that and basically provide a list of a dozen other wiki pages and you have to spend the entire install process chasing down wiki links, trying to figure out which pages are important".
And meanwhile, Gentoo users apparently dislike the handbook because they want the "list of important pages" style meta-guide...
But the good news is that https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Quick_Installation_Checklist exists. There is also a draft attempt to improve that.
Personally I think there is room for both approaches. Please offer suggestions to improve the "quick installation checklist".  |
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arran4
n00b
Joined: 19 Sep 2003
Posts: 14
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2024 7:39 am Post subject: |
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| I like the guide, just wish once I make a choice I can filter out what isn't relevant. More so than having sections. |
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Banana
Moderator
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 1792
Location: Germany
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| Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2024 7:49 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Unpack stage3, chroot, enable binhost, binary kernel, reboot, done. |
This can be done, after you know your system and did install gentoo multiple times.
But as diverse as hardware are, you need a more detailed install guide to understand what is going on.
After reading the install guide, you should be able to know what is important for your system.
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lars_the_bear
Guru
Joined: 05 Jun 2024
Posts: 537
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| Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2024 9:26 am Post subject: |
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I would respectfully suggest that the time taken to read and process the long installation document is a tiny part of the time it takes to actually maintain Gentoo.
I think the installation guide (at least for amd64) is excellent. Please don't ever change it.
BR, Lars. |
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Proinsias
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 06 Oct 2014
Posts: 136
Location: Scotland
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| Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 8:20 pm Post subject: Re: Could there be a short and simple install guide? |
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| eschwartz wrote: | | Proinsias wrote: | I gather this is somewhat over simplified but it feels like Gentoo can be up and running as fast as Arch and a very simple and basic install guide in a page or so could have users up and running with a 'just works' workstation and the awesome power of a fully operational portage.
I've seen quite a few users on Reddit and other places really wanting to try Gentoo but really daunted by the install guide, and just going back to it recently it's a lot.
|
I find this somehow ironic, since I didn't find either Arch or Gentoo's install guides to be hard or complicated. But I've seen lots of people who are *really* mad that Arch has "removed the instructions so that you can only install Arch if you're a l33t user that knows everything", or "it's such a pain installing Arch -- used to be there were clear instructions on what to do but they removed that and basically provide a list of a dozen other wiki pages and you have to spend the entire install process chasing down wiki links, trying to figure out which pages are important".
And meanwhile, Gentoo users apparently dislike the handbook because they want the "list of important pages" style meta-guide...
But the good news is that https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Quick_Installation_Checklist exists. There is also a draft attempt to improve that.
Personally I think there is room for both approaches. Please offer suggestions to improve the "quick installation checklist". |
Thanks, I remembered there was a mini guide somewhere but couldn't find it, I was just thinking something like that with the binhost in there too. I know Gentoo offers a lot of choice, but seems really pretty fast and simple to have a full desktop, server or chroot up and running these days, I was using the Calculate binhost to save time before which I wouldn't have recommended to others, but the offical binhost kinda changes that. It seems much more of a viable alternative to Arch, Void, Debian etc now, but with all the power under the hood when needed.
For Arch it seems to me the install guide feels like a bit of trap for noobs, and kinda functions as a fake gate, whereas something like Exherbo the distro itself is the gate. Gentoo always stood out as a really friendly and welcoming space to onboard people with amazing people here to talk them through everything with nigh on infinite patience, Neddy and many more. Around 2012 I spent a few hours fumbling around in a tty trying to do an lvm/luks install on Arch, after a borked update a few months in I went to Gentoo and step one was like "Use a desktop on ssh or any gui install environment you are comfortable with so you can use Firefox and mouse or whatever, for the love of God you don't use a tty", I instantly felt stupid for having followed the Arch docs to the letter whist scrying into my phone and a tty for hours and installed Gentoo copy and pasting from Firefox whilst logged into IRC and here. Over a decade on and people are still fumbling around in tty's trying to install Arch as the offical install is scripture, and the other install options and stuff like Archstrap, whilst being in the offical docs, are not gonna be found by a n00b..but make install much simpler. Seems so much simpler to fire up the Ubuntu iso and grab the Archstrap script than use the offical Arch iso that provides a tty.
I wouldn't really change the handbook, it's awesome, always has been but I know I can ignore most of it. I was just talking to someone on reddit losing their minds trying to understand the kernel, cflags, use flags, makeopts and more in one go, they seemed quite pleased when I said they can just ignore it all, ask portage for a binary desktop, reboot and consider ricing in the fullness of time if they are bored. It 'just works' like Arch does, if you ignore all that stuff portage will take care of most of it for you these days.
I also appreciate I'm not contributing anything and people like yourself are actually doing the work but I do think there are many people who could benefit from Gentoo with a few noob friendly simple guides. They avoid Gentoo as it's scary and will consume their lives and computer....but they love playing with cool new stuff and don't realise you can install and run Gentoo pretty much as you would Arch these days but with partial upgrades, a stable branch and all the wonders of portage and ebuilds out there.
I just think Gentoo is often seen as some terrifying scary source only system, when you can install and run it as easy as you can Arch as a binary rolling system but still have power and control when the need arises, or even just set up a binary chroot in no time at all and start playing around with the build system. Unlike T2SDE, a binary Gentoo chroot seems to 'just work' and you don't really need to boot it on bare metal to start building experimental stuff for lolz. You can deploy it on some tiny Debian cloud server as a binary chroot and just fuck around, I had it running as a prefix on a tiny restricted cloud instance recently so I could trascode video and save £6pm to be allowed to use ffmpeg, but it took a while to build and it seemed if the prefix could have leveraged the binhost It would have been a lot faster to get up and running and rinse the droplet for what I wanted instead of compiling a full OS.
For the quick install I think it would be nice to see the basics for something like a uefi desktop with binhost and binkernel. A sort of ten steps to Ubuntu manageable in minutes for the sort of system most people are using as a workstation these days. That someone could grab a desktop tarball, ask for binaries, slap on a binary kernel, reboot into gnome or whatever and actually use their instant Gentoo to read about what it can do and all the options, live with it as it forever or start their ricing journey if they feel like it. A bit like T2SDE offers full desktop systems you can just boot into and start building novel systems for your rpi or whatever whilst watching youtube.....but perhaps better as Gentoo is awesome as a rolling mainly binary workstation now.
Last edited by Proinsias on Mon Sep 09, 2024 9:43 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Proinsias
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 06 Oct 2014
Posts: 136
Location: Scotland
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| Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 8:44 pm Post subject: |
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| pingtoo wrote: | Come on, This is IT, Good, fast and cheap, you can only pick two.
Gentoo is not cheap (effort wise) |
That's kinda the point, it feels like Gentoo is the holy trinity now with the binhost, I don't need to frankenGentoo with the Calculate binhosts anymore. It's good, fast and cheap officially now. Like Arch but with user choice when required. The only minor gripe I have is seamless multiple binhost support which I suspect will come in time......so I can just add in the Calculate repos too.
If you just ask for binaries and don't touch anything unless you absolutely need to, it runs smooth and simple with little cpu stress or personal stress required. Like Drobbins' Funtoo Wolf Pack idea, don't touch make.conf and just use Debian sources unless you have good reason to do otherwise.
The point of Gentoo always seemed to me to make life simple. Gentoo is complex and the devs put in a lot of effort so I don't have too.
If you are not tearing your hair out going insane fighting a binary distro, just use the defaults and binaries. For the odd time you do wanna do something non-standard or odd, portage has your back. You can really easily change a version, grab a git build, add an overlay, patch an app, add a bleeding edge feature, build a musl/s6/bcachefs/toybox image for a riscv chip you got from China, or add an overlay for some new DE or whatever.
I see little point in ricing kernels, stripping out code via useflags and ricing cflags on a modern workstation, but I do see the point in Gentoo as it's rolling, stable, supports choice where needed and is generally awesome. Debian does 95% of wht I want or more, but the edge cases are where Gentoo shines.
If Gentoo is more effort than Debian, just use Debian. Gentoo seems to exist to make things simple when you need to deviate from mainline, but removing bluetooth support, or gnome or march=native seems rather pointless to me for a workstation or server that's self hosting. It is nice to have if you need to modify a particular program, wanna test new stuff, build a custom OS like ChromeOS or Alpine or just build something for a really specific restricted target, or someone is paying you for a very specific need. |
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Installing Gentoo
