I have never used regular gentoo OS, nor the gentoo template in qubes OS. However, I am looking to experiement with gentoo template in the near termm, but in the meanwhile I wonder what are some diffs between these two. Afaik, with gentoo, you would be compiling the OS yourself, from the ground up. But with qubes OS gentoo template, I would be getting a pre-compiled gentoo OS, by someone else, who made some decisions about whicc features to compile gentoo OS for us.
Gentoo is usually very complex for 1st time users. Even outside Qubes OS on bare-metal hardware. While veteran Gentoo users might not appreciate a pre-compiled Gentoo template, they still highly appreciate the existing Qubes/Gentoo repository which they could reference as a blueprint.
It is also possible to modify/change USE flags and/or apply other customization; then recompile @world
Also on the main question title (`What are the diffs between gentoo template and regular gentoo OS).
In addition to an ordinary regular minimal Gentoo installation, the template contains some of Qubes OS packages (e.g. for qrexec, shared clipboard functionality, audio, …)
That’s good for me. I was mainly concerned with what else am I going to be missing from the “Gentoo experience”, as compiling it yourself sounds to be one of the core gentoo experiences.
If you use a precompiled template, You will be missing almost “Everything”. If you are an IT professional or a curious person who wants to learn hell a lot about Linux Kernel and the ecosystem (up to the point of crying), you should avoid the precompiled gentoo template (for the 1st time). You have to read the entire handbook and start from lower stages:
I think you are right. I think if I want to learn about Gentoo proper (how to install it from scratch, how to customize its compilations for my specific “useflags”, etc.), the thing I can do is download the gentoo installation from gentoo’s official website, and compile it on one of my qubes, and then run an HVM Standalone VM with it in qubes os. Does that sound right?
Yes. Just follow the (x86) handbook. And choose a stage 3 desktop image (you will be able to practice stage 1 to stage 3 within the finalized HVM later). Usually OpenRC Desktop image is recommended.
I went through a full build of Gentoo a couple of years ago, but I chose a systemd stage file, to make it easier to integrate @fepitre`s qubes ebuild repo at the time. I believe it is very horrible to switch between OpenRC/systemd, and I couldn’t see a way to use the qubes integration without systemd.
Be ready to allocate lots of memory and disk space, especially when Rust gets involved.
I seem to remember getting a workable, but rather large, image, but I failed to work out how to turn it into a usable template. I used some hack with busybox to ‘’‘dd’’ the image into an existing Standalone (or something like that). I should have written the whole process up properly…
A Gentoo build is an excellent experience, IMHO, and I still miss its flexibility and configurability - there is something a little bit soul-less about prebuilt packages in comparison… although nowadays I think the Gentoo project does distribute some, which could speed up first explorations.
[I had a go at making a Catalyst build config (it’s the Gentoo system for automatic creation of install media), which forced me to create a qubes “profile” (you will soon learn about profiles, but normally it’s only necessary to choose one), but other things distracted me, and it’s all a bit hazy now.]