Going to install Gentoo.

[TheBigGentoo]

Any recommendation for a good livecd to boot from? Am I crazy?

[continuum]

https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/
does the arm64 version work

[TheBigGentoo]

I usually install from a Mint or Ubuntu livecd as the Gentoo ones are years out of date. Gentoo works fine on arm. I guess i'll give a go at this and report back on my successes and failures. Seems like a fun little project for this long weekend.

[Technogeezer]

@TheBigGentoo 

I just downloaded the arm64 boot media from gentoo.org/downloads. It seems to boot without problems on the Tech Preview. Has a 5.15 kernel. Just needed to have 2048MB or more of memory.

I'm in the process of walking through an installation (using the AMD64 guide as my reference). So far so good. Networking comes up fine, and I've formatted the NVMe virtual disk. In the progress of downloading and installing a stage 3 tarball - was able to get to gentoo.org from the VM.

[TheBigGentoo]

I'm really glad to hear it has gone well for you so far. Thanks for the input!

[Technogeezer]

So far so good on Gentoo. I've gotten through stage 3 install and have a booting kernel with GRUB on my virtual hard drive. 

I'm in the process of installing GNOME. 

I've never touched Gentoo before. It reminds me of the phrases:

• "with great power comes great responsibility"
• "be careful what you wish for"
• "a watched pot never boils"
• "some assembly required" (actually since it's being installed from sources, a lot of assembly is required).

[Technogeezer]

Well, I now have a working Gentoo with GNOME. In the language of the esteemed Mythbusters, this is "Confirmed" that it'll work.

Nice for playing around and education, but not my cup of tea for actually getting something done with a minimum amount of hassle and effort. I guess it's like the discussion of UNIX as a user-friendly operating system:  It's very user friendly. It's just picky about who its friends are.

[TheBigGentoo]

Interesting. What kernel are you using? Did you install the open-vm-tools from portage? I'm struggling a little with both these issues. The kernel (5.16.10) seems to have necessary options hidden behind X86 only requirement and VIDEO_CARDS="vmware" is masked on arm64. Unmasking it leads to compile errors in mesa. 

[Technogeezer]

I'm learning about Gentoo as I go. I still haven't got the hang of this USE/masking/unmasking, etc, what to set, where to set, when to set stuff that is at the core of the Gentoo experience.

I used the distribution kernel after attempting to build a custom kernel failed (didn't boot). I think I also made the mistake of opting for systemd instead of OpenRC (In hindsight, I think OpenRC would have been easier for beginners, but I was able to get systemd working from piecing it together from the snippets across the documentation).

I did not install the open-vm-tools because it is masked and I was having a devil of a time trying to unmask it and its dependencies.

The vmwgfx driver does appear to be built in using the distribution kernel. 

[TheBigGentoo]

Thanks for your help. I'm setting up a desktop now. I've been using Gentoo at home and at work since 2001 so I know how to be productive with it. I'm lost on a mac so the tech preview is very welcome. Someday I may get brave and try bare metal but I don't think Asahi Linux is quite there yet.

[Technogeezer]

If you don't mind, as someone with a lot more Gentoo experience than I, would you be willing to write up a cheat sheet on how to get Gentoo going on the Preview?  I cobbled my installation together by absorbing the Gentoo Handbook on the fly. I'm sure it's not done in quite the best manner.

I'd like to add a discussion on Gentoo to the Tips and Techniques document that I'm maintaining. Tips/Techniques/Gotchas for the Tech Preview

PM me if you would be OK with that.

Thanks.

[Forge128]

As someone who's been buddies with Larry the Cow for a decade or two, I just wanted to say that there is no such thing as a "right" or "best" or "official" way to install Gentoo. It's all about what you want to make of it. If you wanted a simple guide to getting a VM running with Gentoo ARM64/aarch64, I could make you one, but it would mostly be paraphrases of the install guide. It would also end up with a really spartan install, no GUI or anything, since there's a ton of different options when you get that far.

[Technogeezer]

Thanks for the feedback. I’m going to assume, then, that those going down the Gentoo path are a little more experienced, adventurous, and not averse to doing a little web research if they run into a snag. 

[Mikero]

Yah, quite...

I'd love to see a quick guide for folks who know Gentoo tho...

It's been a while since I've done a stage-2, but I used to sysadmin a small DC in Toronto that was 100% Gentoo (we even hosted their co-lo'd Canadian mirror =).

I looked at Sabayon but there's no arm64 ISO variant.

With Gentoo, you should technically be able to pull a new kernel (without the fun bugs we've been seeing) and even pull in the 3D graphics drivers which are in 5.17+. (needs Mesa 20.10 as well).

I just don't have time to write it up these days... Been focused on Ubuntu because of bugs =/