[DiscourseFan]

I have not had the, ahem, privelege yet of installing Gentoo. I gave up on Linux a while back after I bricked my computer because I missed an update on Arch Linux (no joke). Got a macbook and I’ve been happy ever since…well, at least until I was trying to shareplay Mulholland Drive with my girlfriend while she’s out of town and discovered that the only way to manually adjust audio levels of facetime vs, say, the movie we were trying to watch, which was nearly muted because of the call, was to purchase and install a $20 piece of software. Now, I could go ahead and buy a windows machine which comes preloaded with this feature, but let’s be honest, windows sucks major ass and there is virtually no advantage these days to using it over Linux or a Mac. The software might be a little screwed up but Tim Cook really made some magical consumer grade hardware that outperforms virtually all its possible competitors…still, the audio levels.

I don’t have time to futz around installing Linux distros instead of getting laid like I did as a teenager. I have a job and a girlfriend and more than enough of a social life to keep me busy day to day. But something keeps nipping at my heels, telling me to return to the pen—-the sun is setting on my long sojourn in the warm fields of average life, the long night of idle tinkering approaches once more, that I might sooner forget the morning before it ends.

[techcode]

If you're thinking about Linux/Gentoo - but don't want to spend a lot of time for maintaining/updating and most importantly not need time to fix stuff that broke because you didn't update it in months...

I would suggest Calculate Linux.

It's 100% Gentoo, with additional customization (e.g. profiles presetting not just sane defaults, but also things you usually want on desktop [e.g. samba, network printers ...]), there are pre built binaries for all profiles and basically all the software (but you can still override some and get it compiled with or without specific features) ...

And perhaps most importantly - there's extra tooling/automation around the Gentoo/portage updates and such.

With vanilla Gentoo - beyond regular PITA to update packages due to various package/use-flags conflicts (which would make me do it even less often). I was also regularly (every few years) having to reinstall Gentoo because my glibc/bintools/python/etc were so far behind that during system update something would break and fixing it was basically reinstalling Gentoo from stage3 tarball.

It's been ~10 years that I've "switched" to Calculate Linux - and it's "cl-update" was automatically solving even those things that would've left me with world update broken system.

[graemep]

> I gave up on Linux a while back after I bricked my computer because I missed an update on Arch Linux (no joke)

if you did not want a high maintenance distro why choose Arch? Its meant for the opposite of a Mac user - people who want to control everything, vs people who want it all taken care of for them. There are lots of things in the middle.

> I don’t have time to futz around installing Linux distros instead of getting laid like I did as a teenager.

Install one and resist the temptation to distro-hop. Even better, buy a machine with Linux preinstalled.

[Gud]

What are these Linux distributions “in the middle”?

I use FreeBSD and Arch primarily. FreeBSD gives me a lot of customisation options(ports ftw) while at the same time, it’s remarkably stable.

With Arch I find myself praying shit won’t break with every update, and a lot of 3rd party software just don’t work.

Hence why I keep returning to FreeBSD for my servers.

[graemep]

Depending where on the rather broad spectrum between Arch and MacOS you want to be (GP switched from Arch to MacOS because Arch needs maintenance and can break) I would say any of Manjaro, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, RH and many more.

> Hence why I keep returning to FreeBSD for my servers.

It sounds like you were using Arch on a sever. You use Arch if you are happy fixing breaking changes. its not for something you just want to keep running.

Specifically for servers Debian is an obvious choice. Suse and a few others are fine too. Possibly Alpine if you want something lighter. Nix if it appeals to you. Void is supposed to be a stable rolling distro and is probably appealing to a BSD user. Many more.

[Gud]

I have never used Arch on a server.

I have yet to find a suitable Linux distribution for the server.

The distributions you mention, Debian as an example, are not at all comparable to FreeBSD.

What many Linux users(that I presume that you are), don’t realise about FreeBSD is that while it’s base is stable and well built, ports and packages are well supported and gives me supreme flexibility.

I have not yet seen such a Linux distribution.

[Cider9986]

Check out Fedora Asahi Remix. Runs on M series macs, you keep your regular MacOS install the same. Installed from terminal, runs great.

Before I switched, I did really like the piracy scene. Soundsource, the software you mentioned, was definitely one of the first I got.

Now, I think there's an open source MacOS volume manager thing.

Edit. I think it's this: https://github.com/ronitsingh10/FineTune

[trelane]

> I don’t have time to futz around installing Linux distros instead of getting laid like I did as a teenager

Good news! These days, you can just buy a computer with Linux preinstalled, with support!

Just leave the distro it shipped with alone and live your life.

[DiscourseFan]

Yeah, but if I’m not customizing it, Linux is just worse in every way. If you are going to do that why not just buy a Mac?

[trelane]

> Yeah, but if I’m not customizing it, Linux is just worse in every way

I strongly disagree.

You can customize Linux, but that's not its only benefit.

> If you are going to do that why not just buy a Mac

Because I don't want iOS. I want Linux.

[DiscourseFan]

Well that’s a personal preference, but objectively (and I use that word very loosely here), apple sillicon is equivalent to portage in terms of efficiency, since the software is fully integrated with the machine, to extract as much compute as possible out of it. The problem is that this can’t be configured for every operation on the machine. You can install other people’s software, and the machine has one universal preset basically that governs all the alternative customizations, so other people’s software is not as efficient as it could be if you optimized for it directly, like you can do with Gentoo. But if you just installed a random linux distro without customizing it, it would not even be necessarily well integrated with the hardware, in fact it could not be, since Linux is by its nature reaching towards a universal that no particular machine could possible land totally within. And its true with Gentoo as well, except you can squeeze out far more edges, and arguably go further than apple silicon. But an apple silicon machine will always be more efficient in its preset condition than one running Gentoo in its active use: the problem is that you can’t even know the computer is working unless you start using it, and then all the sudden Gentoo is possibly infinitely more efficient in every actual use case.

[poopstillbest]

This is the worst comment in the history of HN and I was here to see it.

[DiscourseFan]

>account created 10 hours ago

[fragmede]

You have a job. Why not pay the $20?

[DiscourseFan]

Why am I paying $20 for an audio mixer?

[fragmede]

Do you go to stores and just take things, too? There is a thing you want. Someone has spent time and money and effort making it. They want money in exchange for goods or services. Yeah it's great that the church down the street is giving food away for free, but in most places you pay money for things.

[DiscourseFan]

Yes well as another commenter noted, this is actually freely available software, and when people provide goods and services for free it depresses the price of said goods and services. And anyway this was a comment about Apple in general, how every fix costs at least $20. Airpods not synced up? Just buy a new pair! Etc.