Subj : Arch btw To : DaiTengu From : Accession Date : Thu Nov 27 2025 20:04:06 Hey DaiTengu! On Thu, 27 Nov 2025 10:02:12 -0600, you wrote: > Well, for a new user, it's easier to understand than "emerge -avuDN" > I use "emerge -uDN @world @module-rebuild" for most of my system > updates, because I know what the flags mean. I mean, I get it.. but it was never like that before. I would think it would discourage a user to type damn near an entire paragraph to update their system. ;) > Honestly, I don't blame you. Gentoo is for masochists. I still need to > migrate my BBS off of CentOS 7. I set up a Gentoo VM, put hours into it, > and realized I just don't want to deal with that shit so I deleted it. > I'm probably going to wind up tossing it on Alma/Rocky even though I'd > prefer to use some kind of distro that has a rolling release. As I mentioned, it was 1:30am and I was getting tired. It was at that point I started remembering the almost all nighters on work nights when some compilation failed or whatever. Chasing down the issue and getting it fixed (I wouldn't give up until I was successful). 1-2 hours of sleep at times, it was a complete disaster. > The only thing keeping me from tossing it on Arch is my unfamiliarity > with the distro. Synchronet already has quite a few quirks and > pre-requisites for running on Linux and adding that into the mix sounds > exhausting. By all means, try it out for a bit separately from everything else. Don't try to turn it into your main server distro right away or anything. Go through the installation wiki while you install it. As a lifelong Gentoo fan, you're going to appreciate the time you have left after installation. I'd suggest the first time or two going through the old school way, which is similar to Gentoo except a lot less time consuming (partitioning, setting hostname/locale/timezone, etc. are all pretty similar, just different commands). Once you figure out it's not intimidating whatsoever, future installs you can just boot the installation media, and at the very first root prompt after boot, use 'pacman -S archinstall', and then run it. It's a supported script that runs a TUI where you can set all of the important stuff, and when you hit "Install" it sets and finalizes everything, and then tells you to reboot. It's stupid easy. Familiarizing yourself with 'pacman' is probably 100x easier than Gentoo. Once you get used to 'pacman -S' to install single or multiple packages, 'pacman -Syu' to update your system, and 'pacman -Rsu' to remove package(s) and their dependencies (you don't need much more than that unless you have specific stuff you need to do like query/search the repos or some other random shit you usually don't need to do). You're going to be mad at yourself for not trying something like this out sooner. lol For the record, Synchronet and Mystic, MRC, doorparty, bbslink, and whatever else I've thrown at it run great on Arch. Following Synchronet's wiki with the prerequisites will allow Synchronet to compile from gitlab. The package names may differ a bit from the debian based ones listed there, but I'm sure you're already used to that with Gentoo. Either way, if 'pacman -S ' doesn't work, a DDG/Google search for "archlinux " will point you at the correct package name. > When I built my new PC nearly a year ago, I installed Gentoo on my old > PC, and planned on using it as a replacement for my existing Gentoo > devbox. Currently I have 2 Gentoo devboxes, and I still use the one > that's built on 14 year old hardware more than anything. One Gentoo machine is a part time job. I could only imagine what 2 would be, unless you just don't update them. ;) > We moved to single-CPU 64 core EPYCs a few years ago. We were getting > them for around $23K each after a very heavy discount. I have a > standing offer from work to send me one of the dual CPU boxes when we > decomission them, but I honestly don't want to deal with the power > consumption. The old 8th gen HP DL380 with 2 12 core Intel CPUs that I > currently use as my main NAS (it runs all those docker containers) is > plenty loud enough. I have a ML310e Gen8 at my feet, that isn't loud at all. Granted, it's only one CPU and one PSU, and does BBS things so it's probably not being super strained or anything. It does have those plastic baffles in the main bay after the fans though, so maybe that helps with keeping the sound down a bit. Is it just the dual CPU setup that makes it louder? Or could it be that the rack servers are just louder than tower servers? I'm actually eyeing up a ML350 Gen9 with 2x Xeon 2.6ghz 14 core processors, 128gb ddr4 ram, and like 12TB 10k 12gb/s SAS SSDs. If it's going to be significantly louder, I may rethink that option. I feel I could build a minipc for roughly the same price, but I wouldn't be able to get nearly the HDD space at that price point, and feel like it would be a complete waste of money to turn a newer 16 cores Intel or AMD cpu, ddr5 ram, and gen5 m.2 SSDs into a flippin' server, lol. > In the summer, my electic bill is outrageous between the cost of the > computers and the Air Conditioning. The only advantage is that my > winter heating bill is MUCH lower than most of my neighbors, simply > because so much heat is generated from all the computers in my house. HAH. Well, I know exactly what you're talking about with the summer time. However, I apparantly don't get enough heat from all my computers, because my winter bills are just as high as my summer ones. We get to enjoy about 2 months max in spring, and 2 months max in fall of ~$200 heat or a/c bills (about half of what they would normally be with either of those running) when we can turn either one off and have the windows open. > I'm really considering biting the bullet and installing Arch on my main > desktop (dual booting with Windows). That way I'm kind of forced to > learn it. If you have Windows already, just install Virtualbox if you don't have it already, and install it there. No need to do anything drastic altering your current systems while you mess with it. But, fair warning, you may soon have two Arch dev boxes, and your 14 year old Gentoo setup backed up to a VM. LOL I was hooked after the first time I tried it (it's been about 15 years now). I will still grab and install new and interesting distros when I hear about them, but there's no way anything compares to Arch, IMO, if you want a rolling distro with the latest and greatest - oh, and dislike Debian. :) Regards, Nick .... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal. --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409 * Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (46:1/100) .