notes/gentoo/gentoo_install_notes.md
2025-11-22 19:38:25 -08:00

2.9 KiB

On Connecting to Your Wireless Network From the ISO The first time

The handbook doesn't cover exactly how to connect wirelessly the first time. It can't solely be done via dhcpcd.

Firstly find your wireless card interface reference:

ip addr

Or:

ifconfig

It will look like wlps60 or something like that.

The ISO comes with wpa_supplicant for connecting. First configure wpa_supplicant with your WIFI SSID and password:

wpa_passphrase "SSID" "PASSWORD" > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Then configure wpa_supplicant to recognize this wifi network:

wpa_supplicant -B -i wlps60 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Then use dhcpcd to grab an IP address:

dhcpcd wlps60

And use ping to test:

ping 8.8.8.8

You might still have trouble downloading the stage 3 tarball if your DNS does not resolve. In which case simply edit /etc/resolv.conf directly:

# /etc/resolv.conf
# Quad 9
nameserver 9.9.9.9
nameserver 149.112.112.112

# Alternatively:
# Cloudflare
nameserver 1.1.1.1
nameserver 1.0.0.1

On mirrorselect

At some point during the installation process, you'll be asked to select your mirrors. Instead of using the handbook's method, use this instead to get the fastest available mirrors:

mirrorselect -s3 -b10 -D

This will take a bit of time, but will ping and download 100KB from each mirror and then choose the fastest 3 and append it to your /etc/portage/make.conf file.

General Notes

A general speedrun guide to installing gentoo can be found at:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comments/td684v/need_help_for_first_time_setting_up_a_virtual/

Install a basic distribution-bin kernel first, then you can:

You can get your current compiler flags from:

zcat /proc/config.gz

You can just output it and then save it as a default that you have.

Also, you can find these same compiler flags in:

/usr/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build/.config

You actually can use this in the /usr/src/linux-kernel-version

But you just want to make sure to run: make olddefconfig to update with new options/safe defaults before running the compiling make commands documented in the Gentoo Handbook.

Watch mental outlaws videos on configuring the kernel (one is more in depth than the others). Make notes on the options he changes and actually research the specific flags he configures in the handbook.

At some point you can adjust the number of threads the kernel can use, which apparently defaults to a high number. Your Ryzen has 24 threads, but you can find out specifically by running

grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo

Or:

lscpu

And looking at the "Thread(s) per core" section.

Note on Krita/Cuda/obs-studio:

Don't bother installing krita/cuda, the process is too in depth and time consuming, if you really need krita/obs-studio, just use flatpak. If you really need Cuda, consider using Vulkan instead (for llama.cpp).