Yeah! I forgot about revdep-rebuild! Now that you remind me I do remember being worried about having to rebuild modules, forgetting about it, having to boot frlm live and chroot, and what not going back to Gentoo. I had almsot completely forgotten about it because it is so smooth sailing now.

I started using Gentoo many years ago, and took a break from it for a few years. It has some overhead to maintain. Two years or so ago I went back to it and, no joke, it is so much simpler now. Dist-kernel, dracut, refind just sorted everything. I felt like I was cheating. I don’t have to write my own custom initramfs for my custom needs? Stuff just solves it? And compilation errors and conflicts even when running a bunch of keyworded packages: gone! What is going on?

So important to document all these tactics and counter-tactics. It will also come to parts of Europe soon. Sweden has under the current government implemented prisons for children and forced government employees to report suspected undocumented children and families. And the far-right has not even officially been included in the government yet. We probably have to prepare here too.

Still, huh? Yeah, that is why I stopped using it too.

How does OTR work on it nowadays, or have XMPP moved to some other encryption?

This is such an important thing to learn when using linux. If you want to be able to rescue your setup and not just reinstall: live usb!

To do a rescue on a system that does not boot, then you may also have to enter your environment and fix things, you do that by chroot. I always forget what steps are necessary, so I always look it up in the gentoo handbook: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Full/Installation#Chrooting It is the same principle with any live media.

Look into a distro that you might like, and find a “live usb” of it, often it is the installation media itself. How it works is basically it is a linux already installed on a disk image you transfer to the usb, and tell the computer to boot from it. Instructions on all this usually comes with the live usb media. Then you usually get a “try it out” or “install” option, or it just leaves you at a pre-configured desktop. Click around, install stuff, browse the web, get a feel for it.

Gives you a shell where you basically are sudo for every command.

What do you mean? This

remoteuser@server$ nc -l -p 4444 > /dev/input/event0


localuser@laptop$ cat /dev/input/event0 | nc server 4444

doesn’t work?

I don’t use .desktop files that much… But I guess xfce is X and not wayland. Check the DISPLAY env var for your user and set the same in your script there or run the binary with that env var.

How long since you ran ‘apt update’? I have envountered issues where the local apt cache is stale, causing it to contain packages which are old and removed from the upstream repo. You need to update your cache and try to install again.

Windows XP had been out for quite a while, and I did not want to use it. Staying on 98SE was not going to be possible forever. Ubuntu was quite new, I had recently started uni, and some friends helped me get started. There was one thing that absolutely amazed me: package repository. Just the concept. Windows at the time, to install stuff was finding random pages, sifting through ads, locate download button, hope it is not a virus. Linux had it solved. So far superior it there was no way I’m going back after that.

Do you have to use Teams?

Well, I just wanted it as a secondary browser when troubleshooting firefox.

Nowadays the worst thing appears to be compiling chromium with X and Wayland support.

Then go for it! Gentoo is a wonderful option for that goal.

Are you looking to learn linux more or have a easy living experience, or what is the goal? If you want to get to know linux, learn how to compile a kernel, make your own initramfs and such, then: absolutely! If you want a stable easily maintainable system, then… maybe not. Like it is possible, and Gentoo is very stable, but if you are just starting, then you may make choices that do break when you upgrade. With some experience, this will go away, but expect some downtime in the beginning.

I moved from academia into working with linux. I did some selfhosting before and was well versed in linux. Look for sysadmin or devops roles – I did not know what devops was before I started this. Look for companies that are in process of moving to linux or recently has, they may be looking for increased workforce to handle to move or are in the process of replacing consultants with more permanent staff. Look for companies which have development in C, C++, maybe also rust? Chances are their software ay be running on linux in one way or another, and may need a devops and/or sysadmin. Some banks, companies doing embedded systems, industrial tools and machinery, are examples which fit here that I know of. Might not be the most interesting companies, but the work could be ok.

If you are looking to get a foot in in some open source project, then it is a bit different. I have almost happened to slide into some projects. Use a product, get to know it, read the issues. Maybe closed issues just to find a solved one and try to figure out why that solved it. Start solving open issues. If you think you have something to contribute when a project asks for input, leave a comment. See what sticks. Some projects may take years to get back to you and your contributions, others may ask you to review something after a few weeks if it clicks. That is my feeling at least, but I just have sporadic contributions, more well established folks may have more insight.

Your control over the system is so great in Gentoo. While other distros may pull in a dependency you will never use – say like cups – gentoo allows you to remove the dependency by removing support for it at install/compile time.

I love how the portage packages are maintained, it is so easy to find which versions are available, select version, read about why a package is masked and having all the tools for overriding that decision by the package maintainers and install anyway. They inform you about important updates and migrations when you sync your package repository. It is also super easy to patch the code being installed.

I would not say portage is complicated. For most operations you just install a package, sync, and upgrade like you would in any distro. It tales time to do this, sure. What is complicated is, I would say, figuring out how to boot your machine. You want encrypted this or that, dropbear, systemd or openrc, want to manage your initramfs with dracut or make one yourself, distro-kernel or another flavour, and on and on. I also think that the wiki is not very detailed on a lot of what the different systems do and how they talk to each other.

Anyway, I love it. If I would start with Gentoo today, I would install a Gentoo Prefix

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Prefix

There you can get used to the portage package manager withour messing up your system and without doing a reinstall.

– [x] I’m in this picture and don’t like it.