It was announced late last year that Gentoo is now offering binary versions of their packages. I’ve always had an interest in Gentoo, but the need to compile everything has always turned me away from it. I run Arch because it gives me the sense that I have more control of my system, when compared to other distros like Ubuntu, for example, but it still keeps things simple enough for day-to-day use. That being said, when compared to Gentoo, Arch is still rather restrictive, so if there exists an alternative that offers Arch’s simplicity, and also the potential for customization of Gentoo, then I would gladly switch. I am wondering if Gentoo’s new binary offerings fit this description. From what I understand, it removes the need to set use flags, and to compile any packages, but it still allows you to maintain full control over your system.
So, in summary, is a binary Gentoo functionally equivelant to Arch Linux, but with more control over the system? I would like to know more about the following:
- Does the OS installation change, and, if so, how?
- Does package installation, updates, and maintenance change, and, if so, how?
- Do system updates change, and, if so, how?
- Do you lose any potential control over the system when using the binaries, rather than compiling from source, and, if so, what?
- Are there any differences in system stability? Can I expect things to break more readily on a binary Gentoo compared to Arch Linux?
Just a disclaimer: I have never used Gentoo – all my knowledge is second hand, or from skimming documentation out of curiosity. Please correct any inacuracies that I may have in my knowledge.
So, a few things:
The thing that’s “equivalent to Arch” would be Arch. There is really no comparison between Gentoo and Arch outside of the “build your own system” approach; they use different package managers, different init systems (by default), etc.
Arch has the goal of providing user flexibility through its minimal nature — you’re expected to choose the software you want and build up a system that fits your needs.
Gentoo, meanwhile, has the goal of providing user flexibility through its minimal nature as well as through skillful use of compiler flags and machine-specific hardware tweaks — you are quite literally expected to build your system, as in compile your software from source. Even the installation is like that: you grab a root tarball and do a good ol’-fashioned
chrootinstallation, then edit/etc/portage/make.confand let 'er rip.Now, Arch has the ability to offer a certain amount of this flexibility as well; most people become familiar with it by diving deeper into the AUR than just installing
yayorparu. With Gentoo you haveportageandebuildsbaked into the system from the start. You can have complicated setups involving multiple build machines that can combine resources and have it all handled with some basic mucking around in/etc/portage. Gentoo also offers the concept of overlays, which add repositories like GURU that fill similar roles to the AUR but are handled by the default package manager.Using binary packages — those that are offered — is missing out on a key strength of Gentoo and the primary reason one may choose it over another.
That all being said, I can answer at least one of these more specifically:
Well, obviously. You lose all of the ability to choose how the software is compiled, which is most of the point of Gentoo: tweaking compiler settings and optimizing for your specific hardware. Binary packages are built with a predefined set of
USEflags and are meant to be run on a wide variety of systems.There also aren’t a ton of them, so you’ll still likely be compiling the majority of your system from source which… may not be to your taste.
TL;DR: Gentoo offers a lot of the same sort of features that Arch users love — AUR vs GURU as an example — and many people use Gentoo with very little tweaking, but binary packages do not fundamentally change much for someone who has never used Gentoo. There will still be a curve and you will be learning.
Do you get any benefits when compiling giant binaries like FF or chromium?
When I ran guixos those two sat in a separate manifest because compiling them was a “leave it overnight” type of jobs.
You sure do get benefits, at least in the form of being able to select your compile-time options.
Now, does this always result in a tangible performance difference? Absolutely not. It’s more about being able to make decisions like “I don’t want
<insert_favorite_software>to be compiled with<insert_least_favorite_options>and I want it all handled by my package manager.”How much of a benefit this would be to you or anyone else is worth exploring — at least in my opinion — and a large reason why Gentoo has its own unique role in the larger Linux world.
I was wandering about the benefits for specific apps like browsers.
From my limited experience, most compiled updates are finished pretty quickly. The only exception are huge binaries, so a ThinkPad literally takes hours to compile Firefox.
Any benefit — whether that be smaller overall binary size, reduced system requirements, removed dependencies on unneeded libraries, etc. — would be entirely dependent on the machine and what
USEflags you’re messing around with. I can’t really be more specific without knowing your exact hardware configuration and needs. You would have to know what features Firefox has that you explicitly don’t need and are available as flags, then you could start shaving your yak.I can, however, say that in all my time using Gentoo I installed Firefox from source maybe a half-dozen times, and it was always just to test out the upgrade from one CPU to the next. I don’t really need to trim all of the fat out of Firefox in most cases, so if I felt like I needed a really light GUI browser I’d probably just grab
dilloornetsurf.Yes, compiling modern browsers from source on a laptop will probably take a few hours. Same thing with
rustand the usual suspects. This is, of course, where binary packages are not only useful but indispensable.The benefits one could potentially gain from compiling something like a browser are often outweighed by practicality. Then again, a counter to that argument could be something along the lines of “you don’t have to sit there and watch it compile, you could be doing something else.”
Are the benefits of compiling from source noticeable for modern hardware or slightly last gen hardware? Like, a last generation Ryzen 5900x with NVidia 3070 GPU (my current setup).
I know compile flags definitely have an effect, I just don’t know how dramatic a difference there would be.
It certainly can be noticeable, depending on where and at what you’re looking. The issue can be that making a general “yes, you’ll see a difference” statement is usually difficult; opinions of what counts as “a difference” vary wildly from person to person.
What you experience could be as small as shaving a few KiB off your executable or getting an extra 2-3 FPS in a game all the way up to “it just won’t work unless I compile it this specific way because of <insert_variable>.”
As the Gentoo chromium maintainer, not really - we strip most CFLAGS as part of the ebuild unless you enable a special USE flag to keep them and it’s not particularly supported - if you encounter breakage with that enabled the first thing I’m going to ask you to do is turn them off.
Edit: we do have some USE flags that control how the package is built, but that’s mostly choosing between the Google-bundled and system versions of libraries.
Edit the second: there isn’t a package on the binhost for chromium yet, I need to work out how to build it so that it isn’t an issue to distribute.
Gentoo is about enabling choice. The choice to use non-customised binary packages to fill a need is still a choice.
This is essentially what I was referring to.