An Automated Gentoo Linux System Updater Developed Via GSoC

[phoronix]

Phoronix: An Automated Gentoo Linux System Updater Developed Via GSoC

Thanks to this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a student developer took the initiative in working on an automated Gentoo Linux system updater to help begineers and ease the roll-out of security updates to users...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Automated-Gentoo-Updates

[skeevy420]

Taking the spirit of Gentoo... away from itself.

Not necessarily. You still have to get it all setup and configured to your liking. Once that's done, this helps keep the system secured and you can have it configured to send you a message to your phone when it's done doing its thing.

By default it doesn't even update the system, it only does security updates. You have to configure it to update @world and to apply more than security updates.

I hope there isn't a user named world here

[skeevy420]

Useless, Gentoo and portage has countless of problems and what better way to dedicate resources on something nobody wants?

OMG. A new Gentoo user made a tool to make things easier for themselves and shared it with others. Oh the horror. Oh the humanity.

[timofonic]

This and the use of distcc between my few computers at home is making me consider to switch back one of my computers to Gentoo. Gentoo and Arch are my preferred distros. I'm considering Nix and such too. My ideal distro would be the best of all them in one, but that's still a pipe dream.

Despite compiling all packages is crazy, it has many advantages too.

[nvaert1986]

I actually think this is a good idea, as this gives more choices to users and it makes the distribution more user friendly (on Arch Linux level), as long as they don't remove the support for manually configuring the kernel I'm happy. As I do have my set of custom kernel patches (from frogging-tkg) that I apply

[pepoluan]

I actually think this is a good idea, as this gives more choices to users and it makes the distribution more user friendly (on Arch Linux level), as long as they don't remove the support for manually configuring the kernel I'm happy. As I do have my set of custom kernel patches (from frogging-tkg) that I apply

Any interesting patches you'd recommend?

[binarybanana]

It's not crazy at all, so many problems just go away on Gentoo, especially around binary compatibility, updates and mixing software versions, parallel installation of multiple gcc/python/library releases or whatever, etc.

Of course it brings its own can of worms but overall it's quite pleasant to use and not at all time wasting ,at least for experienced users. Unlike other a lot of other distros there is little magick that suddenly just breaks everything (well, at least all graphics output, including system console) merely because you installed a graphics driver for a GPU you haven't plugged in yet.

Yeah, Arch and especially Nix, Guix, etc. bring similar things to the table, but for me it's Gentoo.

[nvaert1986]

Any interesting patches you'd recommend?

The patches that I apply are:

0001-add-sysctl-to-disallow-unprivileged-CLONE_NEWUSER-by.patch
0001-mm-Support-soft-dirty-flag-reset-for-VA-range.patch
0002-clear-patches.patch
0002-mm-Support-soft-dirty-flag-read-with-reset.patch
0003-glitched-cfs-additions.patch
0006-add-acs-overrides_iommu.patch
0007-v6.1-fsync_legacy_via_futex_waitv.patch
0007-v6.1-winesync.patch

From: https://github.com/Frogging-Family/l...kg-patches/6.1. if you set the experimental USE flag on gentoo-sources, it should already add PDS as alternative CPU scheduler (which I use as CPU scheduler) as it increases the performance in games slightly.

[nvaert1986]

It's not crazy at all, so many problems just go away on Gentoo, especially around binary compatibility, updates and mixing software versions, parallel installation of multiple gcc/python/library releases or whatever, etc.

Of course it brings its own can of worms but overall it's quite pleasant to use and not at all time wasting ,at least for experienced users. Unlike other a lot of other distros there is little magick that suddenly just breaks everything (well, at least all graphics output, including system console) merely because you installed a graphics driver for a GPU you haven't plugged in yet.

Yeah, Arch and especially Nix, Guix, etc. bring similar things to the table, but for me it's Gentoo.

Exactly the same for me. It just works. I've been a Gentoo user for several years and what I like is it's stability (as I'm using a very minimal kernel; an 11MB bzImage on my laptop and a 8,9MB bzImage on my desktop) which reduces the chance in vulnerabilities (in a lot of modules I'd never use anyway). I've done several system migrations and rarely encountered any problems.

[binarybanana]

Any interesting patches you'd recommend?

You can look at xanmod's patches to get an idea: https://gitlab.com/xanmod/linux-patc...ref_type=heads
Zen kernel also combines a bunch of interesting patches not included there, like the PDS scheduler, but I can't seem to find a neat list of invidivual patches they apply. It used to be more interesting back when things like MGLRU weren't mainline but some things are still not upstream (BBRv3) or won't ever be. I for one like patching in LookingGlass' kvmfr patch directly into the kernel instead of compiling as an external module because I disable modules entirely. This is quite a niche thing, though.