What a coincidence, I’m drinking mead and installing Gentoo. Currently compiling gcc, always takes forever, maybe I should’ve gone with the recompiled binary for that one lol.
There is almost certainly a binary version of gcc in Gentoo. I ran Gentoo for 20 odd years and also generally insisted on compiling everything. I recall gcc going from v3 to 4. My laptop ran for over a week on a glass table with a prop to keep the fan vent unobstructed.
I probably should have learned back then that I didn’t really understand exactly how the toolchain worked and how to get from ebuilds to binary code really works. I’m a sysadmin and not a programmer.
With hindsight, I suggest that you pick your fights with care. Use the bin versions of entire packages where available and enjoy the flexibility of USE when it will make a difference.
gcc is not the biggest lump you will compile but it does take a while. It was rather slower 20 years ago.
Yep, I drink mead, i.e. honey wine. It’s really good, doesn’t give me as much of a headache as beer these days. Sometimes it’s too sweet, I haven’t found a good dry one around here though.
I played around with Gentoo a few years ago, got it working but then got annoyed with some binaries taking too long. Wanted to build a machine I couldn’t hack though, and now there’s a repo with precompiled bins if you ask portage nicely, so I figured I’d give it a shot again. Maybe it was the mead but I forgot to do that for gcc though. oops
You having regrets depends on your expectations. If you want a very stable system with little maintenance then you’ll be happy. Packages will be older but that’s what makes it easy to keep stable.
I’m not personally a fan of vanilla Debian because the stable versions are a bit too outdated for the things I like to work with. I do use Debian derivatives though the LTS versions.
If you’re using Debian as a daily driver you can always use a Flatpak if you need a newer version than what’s available in the repos. The foundation is solid, though, and that’s what matters - it’s one of the things that keeps bringing me back to Debian for office workstation use.
You can also use backports for some of the more “system entangled software” that cannot be packaged in a flatpak. Or, you can skip ahead to “Trixie” unstable. It has been great for me for the last several months. It’s arguably more stable than what Ubuntu calls an LTS.
If you need new drivers then Debian is not the easiest distro. I love Debian but I do occasionally consider distro-hopping again to get some complex things working (like ROCm).
I do think Debian is an excellent starting place, though. If it suits you, great! If not, you’ll have a better idea of what you need to look for going forward. Hopping distros isn’t the end of the world, after all.
Main desktop runs Arch but everything else runs Debian. It’s the perfect “install and forget” system so long as you don’t need the absolute bleeding edge packages.
Just ran out of my local brews, Troegs Field Study IPA, so going to be cracking open some Coors Banquet soon. But I don’t think you will. I use Debian 12 with AwesomeWM and love it.