I have been using Arch for five years and I think I would like to call myself at least a progressive beginner when it comes to Linux, computers and networking, to be humble. 🤣
I would like to “move on” to Gentoo or LFS to force myself to learn more[1]. Please share your pros and cons for switching to any one of these approaches.
Use case: a gaming rig (using nvidia’s proprietary drivers and an AMD CPU) on one system and a server on a separate system.
This was my main incentive for switching to Arch a long time ago, and it worked! ↩︎
LFS is a classroom. The point is to learn.
For getting work done, use a distro that meets your needs, and has a community you respond to.
Gentoo is great if you’re constantly on the outskirts of the garden.
LSF is not a distro. It is a instruction manual and teaching aid. Don’t use it as a base for you main OS. And IMO Gentoo does not really teach you more then Arch does. It gives a bit of flexibility that not many care about (how things are compiled) at a very big cost (of having to compile everything yourself). I would not use either unless compiling things is your hobby.
Sure, try them in a VM if you really want to. But I would not really consider that moving on from your current distro nor do you really need to do that.
I agree with everything you said.
LSF is not a distro. It is a instruction manual and teaching aid. Don’t use it as a base for your main OS
OP, you can use it as your main OS, and I know some people do. I wouldn’t recommend it, though. Because once you have LFS you realise that you need at least automatic dependency resolution. And once you start thinking about it you realise that you’re reinventing a package manager. At that point just use a distro you like :D
For gaming, Ubuntu’s got the strongest support.
Why do I know that?
Because I tried running Steam on … perhaps openSUSE or Void, & was told by Steam that they only support Ubuntu.
Since then I’ve read that they support others, but it was only a few years ago where they told me they only backed that one.
Linux Torvalds has spoken on how you simply can’t make an app that will work on all distros: it isn’t possible.
Gentoo would except for that kind of compatibility probably be your highest-performance OS, since you can intentionally include ALL of the CPU-optimizations which test to work best for you.
_ /\ _
I’ve been gaming with Steam on Arch without issues for a few years now, occasionally applying some popular Steam command tweaks as can be seen on protondb. My question is rather, after a days consideration, could I achieve the same gaming experience with another init system than systemd, such as I can have on for instance Artix or Gentoo, provided I install all the other dependencies for Steam and drivers for nvidia. 🤔
You shouldn’t do either.
You’re setting up a server and a gaming computer. Arch is about as out in the weeds as I would go to accomplish those goals. Both applications are focused on stability and reliability and compiling from source for lfs has a bunch of hidden gotchas that make doing anything a hassle. Not compiling from source also ends up causing you a pile of heartache when the binary you get doesn’t include support for a library you’re using or the version is incompatible or any number of other screw ups that can happen.
If you have a spare computer and just wanna see if you can do it or learn how it works then lfs is the way to go but if you actually want to provide some service or game then don’t switch.
Gentoo. Use Gentoo and keep your sanity
I agree. LFS is a project, Gentoo is a system you can actually rely on. LFS is fun to go through but not on your main machine IMHO.
I agree with everyone here, if you want learn stuff than LFS is amazing, I encourage everyone to go through it at least once. But it’s not a daily driver, if you want a daily driver stick go with Gentoo or stick with Arch.
I agree. Also to add to this if your someone to casually learn things and use it at the same time Gentoo is a great step up from arch.
If you are wanting to learn more Linux internals AND create something maintainable, you can create your own distro using Yocto/Bitbake. LFS teaches you all about Linux internals, but kind of leaves you to twist in the wind afterward. I would argue that Yocto exposes those internals AND gives you the ability to maintain the distro you’ve created (roll your own packages, pull in kernel patches/versions/modules, scan for applicable CVEs, etc.)
Or Gentoo sounds cool. Maybe an easier intermediate step before rolling your own.
Yocto / Bitbake were inspired by Gentoo’s portage.
I used them when playing with zaurii (Zaurus PDA) and openmoko.
Gentoo is a distribution that can be used as daily driver (I’ve been doing it for years!), while I think of LFS as more of a learning project.
I suggest LFS if you want to learn the complexity of creating a distro from scratch. (You might not succeed on the first try. I gave up multiple times before forcing myself to finish it)
I never tried Gentoo so I can’t really say anything good or bad about it.
My question is: what are you expecting to learn from this? you say “learn more” but what exactly do you want to learn? Because if it’s “becoming better at linux” you can definitely do it with just Arch.
If you just want something “more difficult” to install, I guess you can do it.
