this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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It's certainly a distro that will help you understand how a Linux system is put together. It's fairly unmatched in its ability to craft your selection of binaries with just the features you want and no fat. However the downside of that is you get to keep all the pieces of your bespoke collection of binaries when some interaction gets missed. Adding new packages is super easy, especially if the package uses a build system which is already understood by Gentoo's eclasses.
I used to run Gentoo on my x86 desktop but given how frequently things like browsers need to be rebuilt it became a chore. Now I tend to run Debian stable with the occasional backport/snap/flatpak if I want a newer app.
However I do have a nice little 24 core Arm server which sucks a continuous 5w idle or fully loaded. When I got it we were doing a lot of Arm enablement work and Gentoo made sense from a developer flexibility point of view. It runs the ~amd64 profile because I got bored of unmasking stuff for ~arm64 when most packages just work when built on non-x86 these days. The rare cases that don't I can always submit the patches upstream.