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! ↩︎
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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
LFS is not a distro, it’s a book that teaches you how to build a Linux system from the ground up.
By all means do it at least once because you can learn a lot from it, but it’s not meant to be used as a daily driver, unless you have nothing else to do in your life than keeping it maintained.
If you want to learn more then do LFS. I don’t think Gentoo teaches you much more than a manual Arch install. But very few daily drive LFS. It’s hardly practical. Gentoo is daily drivable but if you don’t care about compiling all your own packages then I don’t think it’s for you.
I’d say just do LFS on an old laptop or a VM.
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.
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.
Can I chime in for NixOS? Give it a shot. Truly next level.
Second NixOS. I’m curious as to whether Gentoo does much that NixOS doesn’t do, aside from not using systemd and not having a world-readable store.
I believe nixos is superior. Especially on the package manager side. NixOS supports almost all packages for linux and far surpasses even the AUR on arch Linux.
You can use systemd with Gentoo. it’s more customizable and has a better package manager (imo) and better documentation. For regular desktop use I think NixOS makes more sense, even if I detest the language.
More customizable isn’t necessarily better if you have no goals in mind, either way.
I run neither on my “main” machine.
Better to go with Lix, imo. NixOS had a controversy surrounding sponsorship of American warfare industry.
How does the documentation and community support differ? Sometimes I can get lost in nix or any OS. But forums and troubleshooting matters a lot to me.
Rather go with guix os which actually is based on a sane language and has stronger security/reproducibility measures. Not to mention a much more pleasant community
How does this compare to nix, vs lix? I didn’t know of guixos.
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.
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 think you don’t understand what LFS is. It is not a distribution you move on to, you build it from the ground up yourself following instructions and understanding how it works. Gentoo does all of that for you, you just have a ready to go distribution where you compile applications from source; you can even use binary builds to avoid compiling complicated and big apps.
