#gentoo

michi@f.praschnig.com

20jahre Linux-User

Ich habe gerade festgestellt, dass ich in diesem Jahr mein 20jähriges #Jubiliäum als reiner #Linuxuser feiern kann. Ich habe schon vorher immer wieder experimentiert, aber 2004 komplett umgestellt (ausser zum Gamen gibts noch eine Windoofmaschine).
Und wisst ihr was? Abgesehen von einigen Hürden von Datenaustausch zwischen Programmen, habe ich die Umstellung wirklich nie bereut.
Meine Karriere ging von #SuseLinux, über #fedora, #Ubuntu, #gentoo zu #sabayon. Und als dieses vor ein paar Jahren aufgegeben wurde, wechselte ich zu #Manjaro und bin hier sehr glücklich. Die beiden Server laufen auf Ubuntu.

carstenraddatz_fca@nerdica.net

Tweaking an embedded linux felt like inventing the tableflip

Cleaning up old storage space you may find oddities like this, well I did and noticed I almost but not quite had forgotten this episode. This collection of attempts to install a #Gentoo prefix environment into the abomination of non-LSB embedded linux that shipped with QNAP hardware surfaced when moving data.

But that frigging showstopper from back then is still a vivid memory. #GCC didn't behave like the documentation said it would, preventing me from sneaking in a library I dearly needed for prefix bootstrapping. I tried numerous times, different libraries and it felt like inventing the tableflip emoji over and over. Now I won't even check the log, this is over. You hear me? *shakes fist at the past

Still, the very same hardware I did this on still runs nicely despite being limited to thin 2GB of DDR2 on an atom CPU. It has been superseded by newer QNAP hardware recently; the ideal backdrop for #ThrowbackThursday with #nerdvalue.

Oh well. Today, an rm -rf old/ fixes this for good. Meanwhile I'm off to TrueNAS land, in which #jailmaker supplies the tiny bits iX systems do not.

$ ls -lA old/
insgesamt 34120
-rwxr-xr--  1  500 users    34254 Jan 10  2012 bootstrap-prefix.sh
-rwxr-xr-x  1  500 users    34034 Nov 30  2011 bootstrap-prefix.sh.old
-rwxr-xr-x  1  500 users    33832 Jul 29  2011 bootstrap-prefix.sh.orig
drwxrwxr-x  8  500 users     4096 Dez  6  2011 gcc-4.2.4-r01.4_20111205
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users      137 Dez  6  2011 gcc-4.2.4-r01.4_20111205.sh
drwxrwxr-x  9  500 users     4096 Dez  6  2011 gcc-4.2.4-r01.4_20111206
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users      171 Dez  6  2011 gcc-4.2.4-r01.4_20111206.sh
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users     3676 Aug 30  2011 gentoo-prefix-binutils-emerge-info_20110830.log
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users      114 Aug 30  2011 gentoo-prefix-binutils-emerge-pqv_20110830.log
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users   633626 Aug 30  2011 gentoo-prefix-binutils_20110830.log
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users    34935 Aug 25  2011 gentoo-prefix-coreutils6_20110825.1.log
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users    55355 Aug 25  2011 gentoo-prefix-coreutils_20110825.1.log
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users    15730 Aug 30  2011 gentoo-prefix-gcc-4.4.5_20110830.log
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users     3969 Aug 25  2011 gentoo-prefix_20110825.1.log
drwxr-xr-x 10  500 users     4096 Dez  6  2011 gentoo_20111210.bak
drwxr-xr-x 10  500 users     4096 Mär 18  2012 gentoo_20120318
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users  1897483 Dez  6  2011 gmp-4.3.2.tar.bz2
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users  1077886 Dez  6  2011 mpfr-2.4.2.tar.bz2
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users  1138685 Jun 10  2010 mpfr-3.0.0.tar.bz2
drwxr-xr-x 13   99 root      4096 Okt 30  2012 owncloud
-rw-r--r--  1  500 users 29904951 Nov 30  2011 prefix-overlay-20111110.tar.bz2
carstenraddatz_fca@nerdica.net

My #Gentoo #linux #userstory in brief

Inspired by a post from 2019 by @know, here is my #linux #userstory in brief.

Back in early 2004 there was no #Ubuntu yet, and I was ready to go dualboot. So I started that journey with a #gentoo iso image because the documentation was excellent, verbose and taught you everything, so you knew what you were doing all along. I checked, the Gentoo Handbook still does this very well.

How rewarding a learning curve! 😁

The experience was so different from the S.u.S.E. ncurses-based installer that I had used once in 1998 or so, which hid everything behind menus and kinda put me off the idea. Pressing buttons doesn't teach you a thing, typing stuff after you understand what it'll do does. It was only upwards from then on.

Today I'm using setups closely following Sakaki's Installation Guide (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Sakaki%27sEFIInstall_Guide) on all my workstations with LVM, LUKS and GPG. Practically, today, the actual distribution used on a target system to configure, maintain and run does not matter much. Sadly, that set of Sakaki's instructions is not actively maintained any more.

With #ansible automation has gone far, and typed commands have been abstracted away for the most part. You declare what you want in playbooks, and whatever Gentoo, Ubuntu or #Debian have you is made to match the requirements. Hands-on commandline only gets you so far, won't scale to many hosts, and as much as clicking about a Windows UI to do stuff has limits at some point you'll be taking next steps. #Puppet, ansible, and #git are your friends. #Vagrant be useful still. You'll want to get to know them pretty soon if you haven't already.

So Gentoo initially gave me that joy of discovering technical details which make systems work. With the community on IRC and folks over at https://forums.gentoo.org/ you'll almost never hear "did you try turning it off and on again", but instead meet knowledgeable gentoo users who help you get to the bottom of it. Using gentoo means growth.

How was discovering your favourite distribution for you, and how have you been using it?

#linux #userstory #gentoo

qlod@parlote.facil.services