Okay, Gentoo round 2 has begun officially (my body was acting up, had to make it chill). Good news, my partitions were remembered from the previous session that ended in doom.
I have used fdisk to confirm their labels are intact from this morning. I do need to mount them before the next step, however, as they are currently unmounted.
This is going a lot faster as it enables me to follow instructions at a reasonable clip. Got to the chroot stage a lot sooner, just took about an hour!
Gentoo Round 2 is going better than expected.
I have achieved the next stage, overcome the dreaded "env-update && source /etc/profile && export PS1="(chroot) ${PS1}" by trusting my gut and not using the default that was marked in the Gentoo Handbook. I selected, "en_US.UTF-8" and now I am ready to build a fucking kernel.
The horrors, now, will probably begin in earnest as I have walked a path of paradise up until this stage due to my previous prep work that got me to this stage a lot faster. It's only been a few hours now.
Gentoo Handbook is still pretty solid in terms of guiding me, a few double takes at times are necessary to fully process the task which is asked of me.
If this were old me, I would've run. However, I am not afraid as I do have safety nets that will allow me to restore this laptop to working order. However, there are 16 miles of terminal wasteland left to traverse...Before the horrors catch up to me, better get to it!
Yep, I reached my hard limit of expertise, while a good mastodon buddy @wendigo was able to assist with enabling a USE Flag. In order to build this kernel there are so many USE Flags to alter, I am getting dizzy because the overwhelm is hitting me like a ton of bricks.
I recognize when I am outplayed, and this is the point in time when I must concede. I will be better prepared, perhaps if I actually try this again in the distant future.
The horrors did indeed find me and I suffered beautifully for my hubris.
Respectfully, I bow to Gentoo this day. As it opened my eyes to the basics.
Made me realize that I am not ready for this level of complexity. I'll install EnvdeavorOS and wade in my Arch Kiddie pool for the time being. ROFL
@wendigo I'm sorry...I can't parse this at the moment, my brain has overheated so much I nearly head-desked.
My apologies, I didn't realize my anxiousness was really going to get this bad to the point I might just shutdown.
@wendigo Yeah, the sad thing is that I did have a portage USE conf basic version set up, but...There was just too much information to parse for my brain to handle.
It's wild that I can carefree handle .pacdiffs and merge them without fail or causing myself any problems. USE and the flags is a different beast all together.
I 100% understand why you left and it removed so many issues from your life too. As Gentoo is really for those that are turned on 1000% of the time, they have absolute brain cell usage at all times.
@wendigo Yeah, my desktop currently has Garuda Linux (arch-based) with a highly customized KDE Plasma on it. I chose SwayWM for my laptop once again, as EndeavourOS offers a pretty version.
If I plan on going back into even shallower waters, I might ultimately choose Pop!_OS + COSMIC (once it has matured as a desktop, it isn't quite there for me yet).
@WanderingInDigitalWorlds @wendigo Interesting. Sound like you chose an unsuitable profile. Can you give me some examples of use-flags you had to enable?
(I'm not trying to convince you to continue, I promise. I'm genuinely curious because not even twenty years ago I've ever had an installation that would require use flag non-trivial* adaptations just for kernel compilation.)
* Yeah, I get that this is doing some heavy-lifting, probably.
@ftranschel It was probably because I chose the desktop profile...As I was trying to give myself a base to install Sway on top of after the process was done. I didn't think it would cause me an issue...
There were a lot of USE Flags required after the -truetype so many that my brain got overloaded with information as I was in a text only environment for way too long. I can't really provide some good examples because the overwhelm caused some memory issues on my part but there were at least 20 packages requesting specific flags...A lot of red text and some blue too. It's truly hazy.
Couldn't parse what was being asked of me and stopped, to be fair this was my first and likely only attempt to install Gentoo. As Gentoo isn't a good fit for me, I am okay wading in the Arch pool. ROFL
@wendigo Thank you, that helped!...I can't ask for more though. As now there is even more issues and it is at this point that I am becoming dizzy with overwhelm.
I reached my limit this time. I will be more prepared next time that I get this crazy ass urge to do something so outside of my wheelhouse.
Once again, I do appreciate your help on this.
@WanderingInDigitalWorlds
Youre braver than me. I haven't tried Gentoo, but do hear it can be good.
You can check out @linuxuserspace who did a series where they installed Gentoo.
@DodoTheDev I was brave up until a point...The USE Flags was a nightmare that nearly melted my brain. I nearly head-desked because of the overwhelm at all the information that I couldn't parse at once.
That was the horrors that I feared, there was just too much happening and not enough easy to parse information. They expected you to know and I failed to assemble the Puzzle Box correctly.
I wisely backed out and respected Gentoo for it being a formidable hurdle for many a nerd. Installed EndeavourOS instead as jumping back into the Arch Kiddie Pool was best for me at the moment. ROFL
@WanderingInDigitalWorlds
Ah, fair enough. Youre still braver than me. There should be a badge for "I tried to install Gentoo" 🤣.
I love EndeavourOS. I'll probably return to it now that fedora has gone all AI happy. Can't be dealing with that.
But I barely use my personal laptop anyway, so its not a rush.
@DodoTheDev ROFL That would be nice, it should even have a point at which you managed to fail. There is a certain amount of pride to be had with that in respect to Gentoo. Ironically enough, doing all the config stuff was simple up until the USE flags.
I only installed EndeavourOS just because I failed it once and to assert my geek dominance I succeeded at it. ROFL Not a good reason, the lack of LLM stuff is also nice. It does lack access to software, there are a lot of things that I had the ChaoticAUR fill my software roster in on Garuda Linux. Might consider...Returning this laptop to Garuda Linux as the software situation is better. Distrobox might make up for it, at least I hope so.
For now Fedora is still leaving it up to users to install optional packages, but I am certainly with you on the concern. Ubuntu plans on going full local LLM nonsense + everyone's favorite thing to hate: Snaps (hopefully with a distinct opt-out at point of install).
I wouldn't rush just yet, but, do keep an eye out on their hijinks because Red Hat has been stabbed in the head by IBM. They have some influence over Fedora and the open source scene.
@DodoTheDev They are doing it using Snaps (everyone's most disliked and recently really insecure package format). Unless the article that I read on the matter has changed, they were talking some features were going to be delivered regardless and you as a user needed to manually exorcise them from Ubuntu. Which I immediately didn't like from the jump.
To me any inclusion is pretty much a slippery slope as it gives a corporation an inroad and that is not good. I don't view Canonical in the best light anymore, so I can't see the good in the situation of them chasing a pointless endeavor like LLMs.
@WanderingInDigitalWorlds
O, I thought it was opt in.
Wait... No, that was KDE Linux. That was also an interview on Linux User Space.
@WanderingInDigitalWorlds
Dear gods, I'm loosing my geek mojo. They won't let me in at the next LUG!
🤣
@DodoTheDev You aren't losing your geek mojo, it's just a lot of information to juggle. If I recall, you also haven't been sleeping particularly great so that messes with knowledge recall! It's all good. Just a bit of confusion, which I am intimately familiar with myself (as I have that goose on the loose energy).
🤣 
@WanderingInDigitalWorlds
Yeah, this week has been pretty hectic. But I guess I'm less interested at the moment.
Maybe once I'm back to one team and my flat purchase is over, and I can think, I'll be in a place to be interested again.
@DodoTheDev Given you have a lot going on too, yeah, I can see it being hard to maintain interest or recall information easily.
It will be all good, as sometimes it's okay to use a computer instead of touch them in an effort to command them to do what you want.
Crest of Light
Brian Nicar
Fabian Transchel
dodothedev🦤💻